[Alternative read] Pop's other secret of success - food n wine

daywalker02 · Apr 19, 2019

http://global.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26524600/secret-team-dinners-built-spurs-dynasty

IN SUMMER 2013, before an NBA Finals loss to LeBron James and the Miami Heat, Gregg Popovich is asked about his coaching legacy. "What's my legacy?" he quips. "Food and wine. This is just a job."

He's kidding -- but he's not. As much as Popovich knows about hoops, he really knows food and wine. "I don't know that he doesn't know more about wine than he does about basketball," former Spurs assistant coach P.J. Carlesimo says. Popovich scouts restaurants and wine lists as obsessively as he might any opponent. Before games, in his office, he can be found watching the Food Network. Sommeliers and restaurateurs claim to owe their careers to the man.

As absurd as it seems, one of the greatest basketball coaches in history might be more revered in the culinary world.

There's a restaurant in San Francisco that Cavaliers forward Kevin Lovefrequents, and when he visits, "Everybody in there is always like, 'Popovich, Popovich, Popovich,'" Love says.

When former NBA coach Larry Brown visits Sistina or Scalinatella -- restaurants in New York -- staffers there ask him, "Oh, have you seen Coach?" And he knows exactly who they mean.

"You can't say enough about the man," says Rick Minderman, store director of Corti Brothers, a gourmet grocery store and wine shop in Sacramento, where customers directed to the store by Popovich will often come in and say, "What does Coach buy?"

"I've never forgotten him," says Virginia Philip, a master sommelier who served Popovich in the 1990s at Ruth's Chris Steak House in San Antonio.

Chris Miller, a master sommelier who's served Popovich in several cities, says, "I can't possibly express the respect that I have for that man."

In Phoenix, James Beard award-winning pizza maker Chris Bianco, who has also served the coach, says: "I'm a huge Gregg Popovich fan."

Chef Wolfgang Puck says simply: "[Popovich] knows wine."

Over the past few decades, Popovich has sliced a culinary trail across America -- one curated in private, if not in secret. He's patronized the finest restaurants, spent millions of dollars, left countless four-figure tips, turned himself into a first-order oenophile. He's forged fast friendships with the nation's premier gourmands. And all to a singular purpose. As one source close to Popovich says, "It's a passion for him, but it's also a tool."

In the NBA, the Gregg Popovich meal is the dining room where it happens -- a roving retreat through which the Spurs have forged a team culture that's the envy of the league. But for those in the league who've not secured the invite, Pop's legendary dinners remain shrouded in mystery and no small amount of fascination.

And so it was that over the past 18 months we talked to dozens of NBA and college coaches, current and former NBA players, team executives, chefs and sommeliers, all to answer a question: Why does Popovich -- the NBA's all-time winningest coach and architect of a two-decades-long basketball dynasty -- care so damn much about dinner?

BORIS DIAW STRIDES the sideline after a Spurs practice, armed with a burning question. He approaches Steven Koblik, a friend of Popovich's since his days coaching Division III Pomona-Pitzer College, where Koblik was the team's academic adviser.

"Has Coach always been like this?" Diaw asks.

"Boris," Koblik replies, "he came out of the womb like that."

The "this" that Diaw is referencing, and the "that" Koblik is confirming, are what could generously be called Popovich's "legendary intensity" and less generously his "legendary withering disdain." You've seen it unleashed in team huddles, seen sideline commentators cower before its wrath. But for as long as Koblik has known Popovich, he's known this: Popovich could not be such a famous curmudgeon unless there were another side of him. A side expressed, quite often, through food.
IT'S THE FIRST round of the 2010 playoffs, and the Spurs are getting trounced by the Mavericks in Game 5 in Dallas. Typically, during the postseason, Spurs coaches convene in Popovich's hotel suite after games -- over a meal, of course -- to break down film. But during this blowout, Popovich turns to a Spurs official and tells him to call The Capital Grille; the whole team is coming in.

"Hey, we're together," Popovich tells his troops after the 103-81 loss. "Let's eat. That's basketball. ... We'll get back to work tomorrow."

The Spurs close out the series in the next game.

Before Game 6 of the 2013 Finals, Popovich prepares a title-clinching celebration at a favorite Miami restaurant, Il Gabbiano. But then Heat guard Ray Allen buries a miracle corner 3-pointer to send the game to overtime -- and the Spurs lose. "I had never seen our team so broken," Spurs guard Tony Parkersays later.

"Pop's response was, 'Family!'" Brett Brown, then a Spurs assistant, later tells ESPN. "'Everybody to the restaurant. Straight there.'"

Popovich is already on his way, making a mad dash in a private car to the waterfront eatery. Tables are rearranged -- the team will sit in the center, coaches nearby, a ring of family around them. Popovich orders food. He orders the wine. He sits at the head of a table, takes a sip of wine and gathers himself. As the team bus arrives, he greets every Spur who passes through the door.

Over the next few hours, Popovich works the dining room -- talking to players, rubbing their shoulders. "In terms of just trying to just hook everybody up to life support and resuscitate everybody, it was the most amazing display of leadership," former Spurs assistant coach Chad Forcier says. And though the Spurs didn't win that series, losing to the Heat in Game 7, they would destroy Miami the following June, in five games.

Some investments, like wines, take time to mature.

"Dinners help us have a better understanding of each individual person, which brings us closer to each other -- and, on the court, understand each other better," former Spurs guard Danny Green says. On the road, whenever possible, the Spurs tend to stay over and fly out the next morning. "So we can have that time together," former San Antonio center Pau Gasol says. "I haven't been a part of that anywhere else. And players know the importance of it as well -- and how important it is to Pop."

Says one former player: "I was friends with every single teammate I ever had in my [time] with the Spurs. That might sound far-fetched, but it's true. And those team meals were one of the biggest reasons why. To take the time to slow down and truly dine with someone in this day and age -- I'm talking a two- or three-hour dinner -- you naturally connect on a different level than just on the court or in the locker room. It seems like a pretty obvious way to build team chemistry, but the tricky part is getting everyone to buy in and actually want to go. You combine amazing restaurants with an interesting group of teammates from a bunch of different countries and the result is some of the best memories I have from my career."

ONE NIGHT SEVEN years ago, at Michael Mina's flagship San Francisco restaurant, which bears his name, the Michelin star-winning chef, who oversees an empire of restaurants, watches Popovich talk to his team. Mina has long admired Popovich from afar, admired how consistent his Spurs were, night after night, year after year. He wonders what Popovich's secret is.

"I honestly thought he was just this really hard-nosed, bust-your-ass coach, and that's how he got them to do it," Mina says. But now, watching Popovich with his players in the dining room, Mina realizes "how gentle he was, and how it was about educating in a much different way."

Later, when Mina grills Popovich about team-building, Popovich says the key is to take people out of their element, have them experience new things, and learn from it together. Consider one meal in fall 2016, part of the Spurs' annual preseason coaches retreat -- held, naturally, in Napa Valley. During retreats, it's long days watching game film in conference rooms. At night, they feast. And on this night in mid-September, with training camp days away, they head to nearby Yountville, to one of the most prestigious restaurants in the world.

If so, know this: At the end of the night, Popovich picks up the tab -- always -- including for former Spurs who happen to be in the same restaurant, even if they're not in his group. It's a generous bylaw, and it has more than once created a cat-and-mouse game where former Spurs try to glean -- through the hotel concierge or friends in Pop's circle -- where he's dining that night. Then, like clockwork, they just so happen to arrive at the same restaurant for a free meal. (Two primary culprits in this scam, sources say, are Kerr and Danny Ferry. Popovich has been known to sometimes try to trick offenders by alluding to certain places, but they often find out anyway, much to his delight.)

The value of the golden ticket is, in many ways, incalculable: Nuggets coach Mike Malone says he owes his entire NBA head-coaching career to a 2005 Basketball Without Borders trip, when he says he spent a "week and a half in Argentina drinking wine with [Popovich]." Afterward, Popovich made a call on Malone's behalf, helping him earn an NBA coaching gig.
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daywalker02 · Apr 19, 2019

The life of the "other" Greg Popovich
It was late May 2018, and a man was on the phone with a staffer at Spago in Beverly Hills, asking whether he could move a dinner reservation for a party of six the next night. Could he come in an hour earlier to the flagship restaurant of the Wolfgang Puck Dining Group? "Oh, that's going to be really difficult," he was told. "What's your name?"

He gave his name and got an immediate answer: "No problem." One day later, he approached the hostess stand: "Popovich, party of six," he says.

He knew the drill: the initial buzz among staffers as they peer beyond him, toward the valet, expectantly. But instead, he was there, presenting his business card: Gregory Popovich, president and owner, Castle Rock Winery.

Gregory Popovich -- who, make no mistake, is not Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich -- watched their faces sink, could feel the air leave the room, as it has the past 20 years. Imagine if a palpable disappointment was what greeted you every time you walked into a restaurant? "I have to live in this guy's shadow," Gregory says, laughing.

Does it annoy Gregory Popovich? Not really. Gregg, he notes, is a legendary coach who loves food and wine, is cultured and is intelligent, and Gregory has never, not even once, heard a bad thing about Gregg Popovich. And believe him when he tells you that he hears about Gregg Popovich all ... the ... time.

Moreover, Gregory does tend to score hard-to-get reservations at elite restaurants, is greeted like a rock star, gets the best table in the house, receives impeccable service, as if the restaurant were expecting someone else -- which, of course, they were. All in all, Gregory Popovich has had many memorable meals simply because of the legend of Gregg Popovich.

"It's an honor to share the name," Gregory says.

And if they were ever to meet, what would Gregory Popovich like to tell Gregg Popovich? "I owe you one."

CometsWin · Apr 19, 2019

Great stuff.

durvasa · Apr 20, 2019

This was a surprising fun read, for something that had almost nothing to do with basketball. Popovich is quite the character.

delta69er · Apr 20, 2019

Love Pop, Spurs fans are truly blessed to have him as their Godfather. The man epitomizes leadership.

DrNuegebauer · Apr 20, 2019

Dear author of article,

It is spelt whine

Sincerely
DrN

Outlier · Apr 20, 2019

Here comes hey partner to give whatever hater input he has in this thread

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[Alternative read] Pop's other secret of success - food n wine

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