San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich named ‘Coach of the Year’ for the 2011-2012 season – NBA News
San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich has been name the ‘Coach of the Year’ for the 2011-12 season.
In his 16 year tenure with the Texas side, Popovich has now been the recipient of this prestigious award twice, the first one coming back in 2003 when the Spurs went on to win the second of four Championships.
Popovich is one of the best tacticians in the game and such has been his impact that he is in the list of nominees for this award every year. Popovich has always been able to get the best of the resources available to him and this
year, no one can doubt that Gregg is the worthy recipient of the Red Auerbach Trophy.
Nevertheless, Gregg remains humble and has given all the credit to the ability of the players, he has had to coach in his years with the Spurs. In his 16 years, Spurs have been very consistent and winning the Championship on 4
occasions is mere proof of that fact.
'If you can draft David Robinson and follow that up with Tim Duncan, that's a couple of decades of very, very possible success unless you just s***w it up,'' Popovich said. ''So it's hard to take credit when circumstances have
gone your way so consistently.
Popovich has always been known for blending in a bunch of experienced and some under rated players together to form very formidable sides, throughout his time in Texas. This year has been no different as at the start of the season
with the schedules being jam-packed, a lot of naysayers would have written the Spurs off as being too old.
However guiding the Spurs to a 50-16 win loss record and the number 1 seed in the Western Conference has proved a lot of the critics wrong and if the Spurs continue on in similar fashion, they do have a very fair chance of going
on to lift the Championship at the end of the season.
“The pace was a little bit different. We probably had to be a little more simple," said Popovich on the short format of the season. "We've become a little bit more of an offensively-oriented team as we evolved”
According to the format of voting, Popovich has a total of 467 points which included 77 first rank votes. Chicago Bulls coach, Tom Thibodeau stood second in the voting and Indiana Pacers, coach Frank Vogel stood third in the voting’s
After a 16 year long illustrious career with the Spurs, Gregg stands second with 847 win coming only second to the all time great, Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan who holds the record with 1,127 wins with one team.
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