San Antonio head coach Gregg Popovich had much to say about Golden State after the Warriors swept the Spurs in the Western Conference Finals Tuesday night, and it was in a much better light than his comments last week regarding Zaza Pachulia.
The long-time coach, who has spent his entire 21 season career with the Spurs, used his post-game press conference Tuesday to praise the Warriors, saying they won the West with “class.”
“Congratulations to the Warriors, they were fantastic,” Popovich said. “You know it’s all of them, from ownership, to Bob, to Steve, Mike and the whole staff, Ronnie and the whole group. The players obviously, they play a great brand of basketball, fun to watch. They were fantastic and they did it with class so hats off to them.”
Popovich would praise the Warriors again a few minutes later when asked if their stacked roster was bad for the game.
“They are talented, they’re really talented, that’s not the whole equation,” he said. “That’s not everything that describes them. This is maybe the best defensive team in the league, on top of everything. They don’t just play with talent, they execute on the defensive end of the floor. On offense, no team is more unselfish on finding the open man and that sort of thing. They get credit for that, coaches are always trying to get their team to do that, but they’ve got a multitude of people who are unselfish in that regard and play a beautiful game and on top of that, play D at the other end. So they deserve a lot more credit than ‘well they’re talented, they’re supposed to win.’ That is disrespectful to them in my book, they’re way, way more than just their talent.”
The Warriors will advance to the Finals for the third consecutive year and look to avenge themselves against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Cavs will take on the Boston Celtics Wednesday night at 5:30 p.m. Cleveland currently leads the series 2-1.