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2014 NBA Playoffs: Gregg Popovich and Tim Duncan stories - ESPN
You have to go way back in time, or all the way across the Atlantic, to find a boss/superstar duo that can trump the longevity and success shared by Gregg Popovich and Tim Duncan.
We're talking Honus Wagner and his manager, Fred Clarke, whose 19-year partnership began in 1897. Or Sir Alex Ferguson and Ryan Giggs, winners of 13 Premier League titles in their 23 seasons together.
The ever-efficient San Antonio Spurs quietly prefer the comparison they've been known to make internally -- Bill Belichick and Tom Brady -- but even the NFL's signature coach/franchise player partnership hasn't been at it as long as the NBA's modern-day Red and Russell.
"I'm jealous of Tim," Kobe Bryant tells ESPN.com, "playing for the same historically great coach for his entire career."
"When you look at what Russell and Auerbach did, now that's a whole different stratosphere," says ESPN's Avery Johnson, former point guard and captain for Popovich, as well as Duncan's former teammate. "It was a different time. But I will say this: They're not far behind.
"They were not in a Boston or a Chicago, like Michael [Jordan] and Phil [Jackson], or an L.A. You're talking about doing what they did in San Antonio."
We're talking about it again because the Spurs are tantalizingly close to another NBA Finals appearance. Provided they find a way to survive this almighty struggle with their uberathletic nemeses from Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals, it would be the sixth time Pop and Timmy lead the team from the league's fourth-smallest TV market onto the sport's biggest stage, chasing their fifth title together to pull even with Bryant's haul.
Kobe, Avery and many others have been asked in recent weeks to talk about the Spurs to help us in our unending quest, after all these years of concealment, to get a better sense of how the man steeped in military intelligence and his own QB for 17 years (and counting) really operate.
The following collection of vignettes was culled from more than two dozen interviews this postseason with those who know Popovich and Duncan best and have studied them the longest. So consider this your primer on the NBA's Power Couple and the uniquely chaos-resistant empire they've built with the help of Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.
Chief among those Duncovich experts is R.C. Buford, who has headed up San Antonio's front office for the bulk of this run and contends that the duo's connection is even closer than you think.
"Soul mates," Buford says, "is not too strong a statement to make about these two people."
You have to go way back in time, or all the way across the Atlantic, to find a boss/superstar duo that can trump the longevity and success shared by Gregg Popovich and Tim Duncan.
We're talking Honus Wagner and his manager, Fred Clarke, whose 19-year partnership began in 1897. Or Sir Alex Ferguson and Ryan Giggs, winners of 13 Premier League titles in their 23 seasons together.
The ever-efficient San Antonio Spurs quietly prefer the comparison they've been known to make internally -- Bill Belichick and Tom Brady -- but even the NFL's signature coach/franchise player partnership hasn't been at it as long as the NBA's modern-day Red and Russell.
"I'm jealous of Tim," Kobe Bryant tells ESPN.com, "playing for the same historically great coach for his entire career."
"When you look at what Russell and Auerbach did, now that's a whole different stratosphere," says ESPN's Avery Johnson, former point guard and captain for Popovich, as well as Duncan's former teammate. "It was a different time. But I will say this: They're not far behind.
"They were not in a Boston or a Chicago, like Michael [Jordan] and Phil [Jackson], or an L.A. You're talking about doing what they did in San Antonio."
We're talking about it again because the Spurs are tantalizingly close to another NBA Finals appearance. Provided they find a way to survive this almighty struggle with their uberathletic nemeses from Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals, it would be the sixth time Pop and Timmy lead the team from the league's fourth-smallest TV market onto the sport's biggest stage, chasing their fifth title together to pull even with Bryant's haul.
Kobe, Avery and many others have been asked in recent weeks to talk about the Spurs to help us in our unending quest, after all these years of concealment, to get a better sense of how the man steeped in military intelligence and his own QB for 17 years (and counting) really operate.
The following collection of vignettes was culled from more than two dozen interviews this postseason with those who know Popovich and Duncan best and have studied them the longest. So consider this your primer on the NBA's Power Couple and the uniquely chaos-resistant empire they've built with the help of Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.
Chief among those Duncovich experts is R.C. Buford, who has headed up San Antonio's front office for the bulk of this run and contends that the duo's connection is even closer than you think.
"Soul mates," Buford says, "is not too strong a statement to make about these two people."