The Progressive Pulpit?
The retirement of Gregg Popovich and the politicization of basketball
As Gregg Popovich steps away from the sidelines after coaching the San Antonio Spurs for 29 seasons, a storied chapter in NBA history ends. The Basketball Hall of Famer, who suffered a mild stroke in November and never returned to the Spurs bench thereafter, announced on May 2 that he is transitioning to a full-time role as the team’s president of basketball operations.
While the sports world rightfully acknowledges the five NBA championships Popovich earned and his status as the league’s all-time winningest coach, we must also reckon with another aspect of his legacy: the relentless politicization of the press rooms in NBA arenas into progressive pulpits, a course taken by both Popovich and his ideological twin, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr.
Before examining their activist politics, however, we must first tip our caps to their service and achievement.
Popovich attended the United States Air Force Academy, graduating in 1970 with a degree in Soviet studies. He served five years of required active duty, touring Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with the U.S. Armed Forces Basketball Team. Such distinguished military service deserves respect.
Similarly, the basketball accomplishments of both men stand beyond dispute.
Popovich’s 1,422 regular season victories over 29 seasons with one franchise represents unparalleled consistency and excellence. His five championships at the helm of the Spurs were a result of creating a model organization that is envied throughout professional sports.
Furthermore, under the leadership of “Coach Pop,” USA Basketball reclaimed gold at the Tokyo Olympics and America maintained its dominance at the highest level of the international game.
Steve Kerr’s basketball resume shines equally as bright. As a player, he secured five NBA championships—three with the Chicago Bulls and two under Popovich in San Antonio. As Golden State’s head coach, he added four more titles (2015, 2017, 2018, and 2022).
In 2024, Kerr led Team USA to Olympic gold in Paris, becoming the first person to win men’s basketball senior gold medals as both an athlete (1986 FIBA World Cup) and as head coach.
These accomplishments deserve recognition. But championship rings do not confer moral or political authority.
Reflect. When exactly did America’s basketball courts transform into progressive political platforms? When did locker rooms become launching pads for left-wing diatribes against half the country?
The answers appear when one observes how Popovich and Kerr systematically weaponized their sporting success to advance radical agendas that undermine many of the traditional values Americans hold dear.
Consider Popovich’s October 2024 pre-game press conference. Rather than discussing his team’s preparation for that evening’s contest against Houston, the coach launched into a 15-minute political tirade against Donald Trump.
“He’s a pathetic individual,” Popovich declared. “He’s a small man who has to make everybody around him smaller so he thinks he’s gonna be bigger.”
This diatribe was no isolated incident, but rather part of a pattern of using his position to issue progressive talking points.
In another instance, Popovich labeled Trump “a racist... full of crap and liar. He makes me want to puke.”
Tu quoque, Gregg.
Are these the measured words of a statesman? Or the bitter railings of an ideologue using his basketball platform to sow division?
Steve Kerr has proven equally eager to fuse sport and politics. In August 2024, Kerr spoke at the Democratic National Convention and attempted to use his basketball celebrity to advance that Party’s objectives.
When criticized for abandoning neutrality once expected of sports figures, Kerr dismissed concerns: “I can see the ‘shut up and whistle’ tweets being fired off as we speak,” he said, “But I also knew as soon as I was asked that it was too important as an American citizen not to speak up in an election of this magnitude.”
In case one forgets, he tried rallying Americans to the cause of the empty pantsuit otherwise known as Kamala Harris.
What Kerr considers “important,” at one time, included comparing Arizona’s immigration enforcement law to the Third Reich. While serving as Suns general manager in 2010, Kerr made this outrageous historical analogy, equating democratic legislation with one of history’s most genocidal regimes. Such inflammatory rhetoric reveals not thoughtful political discourse but irresponsible demagoguery.
What drives such relentless political activism?
For Kerr, personal tragedy may provide a partial explanation. In 1984, his father Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut, was assassinated by Islamic Jihad militants who shot him twice in the head outside his office. Such profound trauma might understandably shape one’s worldview, particularly as it relates to violence.
Yet personal tragedy does not justify political extremism. Countless Americans have suffered violence without embracing divisive politics. Instead, Kerr has channeled his experience into caustic partisanship, once comparing Republican senators to schoolchildren while pounding the table during an emotional anti-gun speech.
What explains Popovich’s descent into political radicalism remains less clear. Perhaps decades of adulation from sports media created an echo chamber where his every pronouncement received uncritical praise. Perhaps the insular world of professional basketball, increasingly dominated by progressive groupthink, pulled him leftward.
Whatever the cause, the once mild-mannered former Air Force Captain transformed into a partisan warrior, wielding his coaching prestige as a weapon against conservative America.
The basketball success of Popovich and Kerr deserves praise but requires context, for their championship runs also coincided with fundamental changes in NBA competition. The physical, defensive-oriented basketball of the 1980s and 1990s gave way to a more offense-friendly game that rewarded each of their distinct systems. Free agency patterns and the rise of super-teams created competitive imbalances that both the Spurs and the Warriors exploited.
Popovich benefited from drafting a once-in-a-generation talent in Tim Duncan and he inherited the gifts of David Robinson, one of the top 20 players in NBA history. Likewise, Stephen Curry, perhaps history’s greatest shooter, already had a spot on the Warriors roster when Kerr came to Oakland.
There is no doubt that both coaches maximized their fortunate circumstances, but it is a testament to their basketball acumen, not their moral superiority.
Their championships reflect professional competence, not elevated character or wisdom beyond basketball. When they lecture Americans about ethics, values, and politics, neither man speaks from any special moral authority but merely as a private citizen with an outsized platform.
By transforming basketball courts into progressive political theater, coaches like Popovich and Kerr chip away at the decency America’s sporting culture once appeared to have. During the years of Magic, Bird, Dr. J, and MJ, professional basketball united Americans across political, racial, and economic divides.
When players and coaches inject partisan politics into their games and personas, they continue to fracture this once unifying sport.
Consider the consequences: Millions of Americans who disagree with left-wing politics now feel alienated from a sport they once loved.
It didn’t just start in the “Bubble” in Orlando in 2020.
The NBA’s television ratings continue to plummet as conservatives tune out lectures from millionaire coaches. Young fans receive the message that sports achievement grants license for political grandstanding.
Even more troubling, the musings and rantings of Popovich, Kerr, and others have normalized the unprecedented levels of vitriol from sports figures toward elected officials and voters.
When Popovich declared that Trump “makes me want to puke” or Kerr suggests that Republican senators prioritize power over children’s lives, they poison public discourse. Such inflammatory rhetoric widens America’s divisions rather than healing them.
These coaches could have used their platforms constructively. They didn’t.
What if, in turn, they promoted sportsmanship, discipline, and unity? Would such tactics not play across political lines?
Instead, they chose the easier path of partisan applause from the progressive media, sacrificing basketball’s unifying potential on the altar of political tribalism.
As Popovich steps away from coaching after his health setback, please recognize his basketball greatness but also accept his failure as a public voice.
Nevertheless, his retirement statement strikes a gracious note: “While my love and passion for the game remain, I’ve decided it’s time to step away as head coach. I’m forever grateful to the wonderful players, coaches, staff and fans who allowed me to serve them as the Spurs head coach.”
One wishes this elder statesman of basketball had shown similar grace in the civics lessons he inflicted upon reporters and basketball fans alike.
Sadly, his legacy bears the stain of divisive rhetoric that hastened America’s cultural fragmentation. In the summer of 2024 and now in San Francisco—the new home of the Warriors—Kerr continues this unfortunate tradition, using his coaching prestige to advance partisan causes rather than transcend them.
Basketball deserves better. So does America.
Is it the rightful role of sport to remain a sanctuary from political warfare, or should it continue to be a battlefield in our low-grade cultural civil war?
Consider. If a high-profile coach chooses to weaponize his platform against half the population, the best he can do is to diminish both himself and the game he claims to serve.
While the next generation of coaches would do well to study the basketball strategies of Popovich and Kerr, it must reject their political playbooks.
Americans are tired of partisan lectures from the sidelines.
Sports fans, and Americans alike, should seek a return to a style of coaching that once emphasized values that united previous generations: fair competition, excellence, teamwork, and a pursuit of greatness that transcends the dirty world of politics.