Gregg Popovich delivered a rare, behind-the-scenes rallying cry to the Spurs during a charter flight delayed by a flat tire—an insistence that the team could dig itself out of the hole after painful losses. With Game 4 set for Wednesday night at Madison Square
New York did its part to feel unforgiving again—Madison Square Garden loud, road nerves high, the Knicks waiting for the Spurs to finally slip.
But two days after the Spurs loaded their bags onto a charter plane for the trip to the Big Apple, Gregg Popovich stepped onto that trip like he had something unfinished. He is normally out of view. This time, he wasn’t.
The timing mattered. San Antonio didn’t win Game 3 and stayed alive in the NBA Finals against the New York Knicks. but only after the season’s emotional math turned harsh: the Spurs had just suffered two painful losses at home. and on Monday night they faced one of the most intimidating road environments in the league.
Nobody in the building would have been shocked if the Spurs had gone down 3-0. Instead, they left New York with a chance to turn the series on its head in Game 4 at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night.
That turnaround begins, at least in how the players remember it, with a speech Popovich gave as the Spurs headed out of town—before they even crossed into the city’s noise.
Popovich. who was not joining the team on the trip. made his way onto the plane after a flat tire on the plane ahead of San Antonio caused a significant delay. It was the first time all season that the 77-year-old stepped onto the charter. His coaching career was cut short by a stroke in November 2024. and he now serves as the team’s basketball president.
The message, Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox said, was plain and rooted in confidence.
“He basically said that even though we dug ourselves a hole, that we can dig ourselves out of it,” Fox shared with The Athletic. “He told us just to be confident — to come out here and be confident, that there’s a reason why we got here.”
With longtime Spurs executive R.C. Buford and general manager Brian Wright leading the way in the front office. and Mitch Johnson running the show on the bench after taking over last season. Popovich has mostly stayed in the background of late. But during these playoffs, he has appeared to pick his moments—coming in with his voice behind the scenes.
One of those moments came after Game 3 in the Western Conference finals against Oklahoma City, when the Spurs fell behind 2-1. Fox said Popovich’s tone was tougher then.
In this series, Fox said Popovich’s job was to sharpen belief again.
“He spoke to the group for nearly 10 minutes, then spent an additional 20 minutes individually with players and coaches while seated next to star big man Wembanyama,” Fox said, as the plane waited, then finally left for New York. After that, Popovich left before the Spurs embarked.
For a team built on responding to pressure, that deliberate approach seems to have landed harder.
“It’s always good when he comes around,” Fox said. “He doesn’t talk to the group all the time whenever he’s around. He’ll talk to individuals every once in a while. But yeah, it definitely feels good whenever Pop addresses the group. (He doesn’t) just address the group just to talk.”
The Spurs’ belief has shown up all season, even when it didn’t always translate into easy wins.
Mitch Johnson said during the Spurs’ media availability on Tuesday that this team—one that didn’t make the playoffs last year—has been able to turn belief into elite basketball. Vegas oddsmakers pegged the Spurs for 44.5 wins. but they finished two games behind the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder for the league’s best mark. 62-20 versus 64-18.
Even inside this Finals, Johnson pointed to a kind of calm that didn’t look like panic—just steady conviction.
Wembanyama. for example. insisted he “wasn’t worried in the slightest” after the Game 1 loss and stayed upbeat in defeat after San Antonio dropped Game 2. Now. with the Spurs aware that a win in Game 4 would spark panic in Gotham City while putting them in prime position to take control of the series at home in Game 5. they are trying to keep that emotional trend alive.
“We’ve played over a hundred games now,” Johnson said. “We knew that the belief was going to be there. That doesn’t mean you’re going to win or lose a game, just because you believe or not. There’s a lot of things that go into it. But we’ve just been honest all year. So, every time we keep getting asked — ‘Do we believe?. Are we confident?. Can we do this?’ — we do. That doesn’t mean we always play our best. Doesn’t mean that we don’t make mistakes. Doesn’t mean we don’t lose games.”.
He added: “(But) we believe in what we put into this deal. and each other. and how we go about and how we operate and how we’re going to respond. That’s been through adversity and success throughout the season. …That’s not an age thing or an experience thing. That’s a makeup and a personality thing.”.
There’s a link here between belief and timing—between the Spurs needing the right kind of focus in the moment and Popovich choosing exactly when to send it. Popovich’s speech didn’t show up as noise. It arrived as a quiet insistence that the hole could still be dug out of.
That same confidence thread runs through other parts of the Spurs’ week, including how Stephon Castle describes his path to San Antonio.
When second-year Spurs guard Stephon Castle looked at the lottery landscape heading into the 2024 Draft. he said one idea stood out: fitting alongside Victor Wembanyama. Castle told The Athletic that he was “just looking on the defensive side of things (in San Antonio). where being able to pair with Victor was definitely a plus in my eyes.”.
He felt the situation would be a “perfect fit,” and he said he thought less about forcing himself into the No. 1 spot and more about where he could land.
At the time, there were reports that Castle’s choice not to conduct private workouts with several teams was driven by his desire to avoid teams that already had an established starting point guard.
One of those teams was the Houston Rockets. They ultimately took Reed Sheppard out of Kentucky with the third pick, after Zaccharie Risacher went to Atlanta with the first pick and Alex Sarr went to the Wizards at No. 2.
Per league sources, Rockets coach and former Spurs assistant Ime Udoka was a huge fan of Castle. But with veteran Fred VanVleet manning the point guard position and young Jalen Green at the two-guard spot. Castle and his camp signaled the kinds of constraints that eventually led to him landing in San Antonio.
Just as he hoped.
“I think being (in San Antonio) was always number one on my list,” Castle said. “Internally, I always felt like I was the best player in that draft. (But) I didn’t know what could happen. My agent always told me, like, anything can happen in a draft. Like. you could not work out for a team. not have talked to a team. and they can still take you. So, I mean, I wasn’t really planning on playing in Houston. I didn’t really know how any of that worked. I was kind of hoping I could slide my way to San Antonio. It kind of worked out for me.”.
The irony, Castle acknowledged without sugarcoating it, is that the Spurs have added two lead guards since adding Castle to their roster: De’Aaron Fox and Dylan Harper, who the Spurs took second last year out of Rutgers.
But Castle’s Game 3 performance showed why his value didn’t depend on the starting point guard label. In the Spurs’ Game 3 against the Knicks, Castle finished with 23 points on 8-of-14 shooting, five rebounds, five assists, two turnovers, and a plus-six mark.
Trade chatter also kept buzzing through the league’s orbit.
Per league sources, Sacramento and Charlotte have had recent talks about Kings big man Domantas Sabonis. A deal is not imminent and appears unlikely before the June 23 draft. Still, the Hornets have some interest in the 30-year-old, three-time All-Star.
The sticking point is the draft assets. The Kings have been hoping to land one of Charlotte’s two first-round picks—Nos. 14 and 18—in a Sabonis deal. The Hornets have signaled a desire to retain their picks and discuss Sabonis later in the summer.
Sabonis has two seasons left on his contract: $45.4 million next season and $48.6 million in 2027-28.
And outside the basketball court, the tone shifted again after Game 3.
This week’s street-level violence drew sharp concern from Spurs fans and the people tasked with protecting them. There was violence after Game 3, and NYPD reported that five of their officers were injured. The account described several Spurs fans as being attacked. The report framed it as something that shouldn’t be happening just for wearing the opposing team’s jersey.
The story also pointed to the fact that the guilty parties don’t represent the fanbase at large, but it’s still terrifying—because it turns a rivalry into something physical and permanent.
In response, players and coaches from both sides spoke out against the attacks on Tuesday.
In New York, even the small routines that athletes rely on were hard to keep separate from the spotlight. As Wembanyama has often said, he values his routine. He has a habit of visiting with his two agents, Bouna Ndiaye and Jeremy Medjana, immediately after every postgame press conference.
The informal gathering is typically off to the side in the back of the arena, with media members milling around but not encroaching on their space. That didn’t happen in New York after Game 3.
The three men were surrounded by cameras of every shape and kind after Game 3. Still, the observation from the scene was that they managed to act as if the lights weren’t there while (presumably) discussing the series-changing events from that night.
Back inside the core question—how a young Spurs team survives when everything says it should fold—the answer being offered is not strategy tweaks or schedule math.
It’s focus. It’s belief. It’s the kind of fear that becomes fuel.
And it arrived, according to Fox, before the Spurs even landed: Popovich stepping onto the plane after a flat tire delay, reminding them that the hole they dug wasn’t the end of the story.
MISRYOUM Spurs Knicks Game 4 Gregg Popovich De’Aaron Fox Victor Wembanyama Stephon Castle Domantas Sabonis