Full Q and A with Gregg Popovich on Mike Budenholzer

[GameTime]

http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/atlanta-hawks/2013/jun/03/full-q-and-gregg-popovich-mike-budenholzer/

A quick check in from my time off. I hope you all had a chance to read Steve Hummer's excellent Sunday story on Mike Budenholzer, the Hawks new head coach. It was a really good read. Much of the story was written from our exclusive interview with Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich. He had some really interesting things to say (with some humor thrown in). So as promised here is the complete text of the 20-minute interview. It's lengthy, but there is a lot of good detail. Read it in a couple takes if you want.

Q. Can you explain what Mike’s role was on your staff? I understand he’s big in analytics and player development.

A. He was my right-hand man. He came through the ranks. I first brought him into the film room 17 years ago or something like that, or more, I can’t remember but he started there for several years. I put him on the bench and he moved up. As time went on I depended on him more and more. He became my top assistant, top confidant, but over time he’s just acquired an ability to understand the whole deal. As a coach your primary responsibilities are preparing your team to go win, that’s a variety of things as we know. It’s not just O’s and X’s, it’s relationships with players and managing practices, developing strategy and making it fit with the players you have, all that sort of thing. He also along the way really developed a knowledge of the (salary) cap, how trades are made, how free agents affect the group, what’s the five-year plan, what’s the eight-year plan. He became very valuable in all ways here in the organization. He’s basically got it all, no exaggeration. He’s a really skilled individual in a lot of areas. You can see how as time went on we were co-head coaches than anything else. Then we would be in discussions with R.C. (Buford) and his group and he said a lot more intelligent things than I did as far as why we should make a trade or not make a trade or whether to add this free agent to our team or not. He’s done it all for me, quite honestly.

Q. Did he seek your counsel about this job and this time?

A. Well sure, we’ve known each other for a long time. I recruited him when I was at Pomona College as a player. He wasn’t that good so when I came in as a freshman I knew I had to leave so I went with Larry (Brown) and joined the NBA because he wasn’t that good a player. Which means he could be a hell of a coach, I always figure we who couldn’t make the league become coaches.

Q. Was he a better golfer at that stage?

A. Sometimes I think he thinks he’s a pretty good golfer. I haven’t golfed with him in 10 years. It takes too long. He doesn’t golf very much anymore either.

Q. What do you think Bud’s biggest, most lasting contribution to this run of success has been?

A. There is never one thing. It progresses. When you have a guy who has been with you that long and you depend on him, we’d plan practices together, we’d execute the practices together, practices are over and he’s with guys watching film, I’m with guys watching film. We are in games and you’ll see people come off the court and go to him as much as they come to me to say what the hell are we doing? What’s this? Or we are not getting back in transition. We basically did it together, these last few years especially. He just finally decided that he wanted to do it on his own. He’s interviewed before in places with the thought of I’m not going anywhere but I’ll do this and interview and see what it’s like and see what other people are thinking. If somebody blows me away with something maybe I will think about it but I’m going to stay here. I love what I’m doing. Then in the last couple of years I talked to him more and more about well, you know, there aren’t that many chances and there aren’t that many people who get an opportunity. You should look at this a little bit differently. He decided that you know what I am going to interview with the thought of I’m going to take a job. So, he had a totally different mindset when teams came at him this year. He wanted a job. That has really not been his focus in the past. He enjoyed his position here and his value because he was so valuable to me and R.C.

Q. What was his and Danny’s relationship like?

A. It was great. Danny knows what Bud can do and when I get booted out of games, which is now and then, Bud would always take over so Danny got a look at Bud under pressure and doing what you have to do as a head coach. He developed a respect for him way back when when he was a player. When Danny came back to us as one of our managers, he would be in a room with Bud when Bud was talking about this trade or that trade, or how it affects our cap, our money and the owners. He already knew what Bud did in practice and how I depended on him. It was really a great relationship between the two of them. That is always important if the coach and the GM can work in the same territory and not have separate territories, like a lot of clubs have, you’ve really got something special.

I think the last question, as I’m thinking about this, if you want a real specific on his importance, as I said there is not one event, somebody’s importance develops over time, your owners asked me a question – what is one example of something that is really significant that affect the team that would be the George Hill-Kawhi Leonard trade. Bud was all over me for that one. I didn’t want to do it because George Hill was one of my favorite players all-time. I had a real special relationship with that kid. To this day, we still work together on a couple of community things in San Antonio and Indianapolis. I did not want to do it but Bud was the driving force behind it. He was hammering myself and R.C. because we need a 3, we need a bigger 3. George Hill would have continued to play behind Tony Parker probably, in all logic I assume that would have been true. With Manu (Ginoboli) at the 2, George wasn’t going to get all the minutes he deserved. With a need at the 3 so Manu wouldn’t have to play the position, or Danny Green, we thought this would make some sense. I remember right up until draft night, I’m sitting up there with Peter Holt, our owner, and Bud is done there hammering on R.C. and looking up at me. They are looking up, at me and I’m thinking “I don’t want to do this. Jesus I don’t want to do this.’ He made me pull the trigger and it’s been a great trade for both teams. That was something very specific that he had his hand in.

Q. Both Danny and Bud said (last week) that expect to have heated exchanges in the decisions that have to be made. How does that relationship work where you can walk out of that room unified?

A. The ability to initially disagree and discuss, come to a conclusion and then follow that as a team speaks to people’s character, maturity and ability to be comfortable in their own skins. That is the kind of people who can get that done. If you don’t have those qualities, you can’t do that. Bud’s imminently used to that. We have a participatory sort of style here the way we do things. If I’m having a meeting about players or free agents or whatever it might be, R.C. and his guys are in the room, whether it’s been Danny or Dell Demps or Sam Presti or whoever, Bud will be in there and probably one or two other coaches. Maybe eight, nine, 10 people will be there. We will get feisty and we all are a bunch of wise asses to some degree anyway, and we give each other crap and this, that or the other and we get through it. If it takes four minutes or four hours, it doesn’t matter. We get through it together. By the time we finish, everybody has been convinced one way or the other and by the time you leave the room it’s one decision and everybody follows it – to the extent that if anybody doesn’t give their opinion, their ass will be out of here soon because I don’t need it. I don’t need anybody here who won’t give their opinion and stick by it. If Peter Holt came to our practice facility and came to the film room and asked the film guys ‘What do you think about Pop doing this? Or waiving this guy? Or trading this guy?’ If there opinion is the opposite of mine and they don’t give it, I don’t need that guy in the film room. Peter Holt knows he is going to get that kind of answer. If everybody feels empowered that they can, without fear, give their opinion on something and it doesn’t affect their position, now you have something powerful working for your organization and now those ideas are out there and they can be taken and they can be used and we don’t give a damn where the idea came from. I know Bud and Danny will do it exactly the same way.

Q. There are not going to rename the town San Atlanta just yet but obviously there is a lot of San Antonio influence coming this way. What do you think Mike’s biggest challenge will be in taking what he did there and what he did there and grafting them on another team?

A. That is a great question (Steve) because you guys are the Atlanta Hawks. You are not the San Antonio Spurs. All the things that might have worked here doesn’t mean they will work there. I think what Bud is going to take, like any of us, he’s going to take the things organizationally or fundamentally that are sound for basketball. These things win and lose. It doesn’t matter where you are. After that, you take on the Atlanta character. Whatever the skill sets are, the players, what the fan base is like, what ownership has for a vision and adjust accordingly. No matter how you slice it, Tim Duncan makes a lot of the things we did look pretty good. I’m not trying to be Mr. Humble at all. People laugh when I say that. It’s true. You draw a play and it works better if Michael (Jordan) is running the play than Joe Blow. It’s part that to our success. Organizationally we do some really good things but after those fundamentals that we talked about – participatory approach, no territory, all that stuff is good – but after that you have to know who your people are and you have to adjust. He’s going to be able to do that because he’s been exposed to so many different players from so many different organizations and coaches because me being here so long and my relationships. He’s been around Larry Brown and Don Nelson and Jerry Sloan. He sees things from all these programs that he thinks are good and he adopts for himself. I know there are certain things that he is going to do that he’s always wanted me to do here and I haven’t done it. He’ll have his own head, his own mind and he’ll adjust it to what you all have there on the floor.

Q. From your earliest days together when Bud was a film guy, did you recognize certain things that were going to lead him to this point?

A. I can go back further than that. Before I brought him to San Antonio, I brought him to Golden State in ’92. When Larry went to the Clippers and I went with Don Nelson to Golden State. When I got there, Bud had graduated from Pomano and had played in Denmark – some place that was worthless enough for him to play in – and he was back, a civilian sitting in the Bay area. I called him and said ‘Hey Bud, do you want to help? I said come down to the arena and this is what I’m going to have you do. I’m going to. I have to put these tapes together to put these reports together to give to Nellie (Don Nelson) for each of the games. You can help me. I’m going to put you back in the film room back there. I’m going to tell you what I want and you are going to put it on film for me so I can look, whether it’s pick-and-rolls, post D or whatever. Don’t talk to me. Don’t ask for tickets. Just give it to me and leave me alone.’ He did it for a whole year for me there. He wasn’t hired, just did it to get his feet wet. When I got to San Antonio a couple of years later, I brought him. I knew then, when I would get the films from him, that he knew what was going on. He really has a feel for the game. That is when I knew I really had to have him with me.

Love what I am hearing about Bud.

[theheroatl]

Really nice stuff.. Didn't know he drove the George Hill trade.. That had a lot of people wondering WTF

[Dimesadozen]

Sounds like a good one.