PARIS – As the San Antonio Spurs prepare for their second game against the Indiana Pacers Saturday at the NBA Games in Paris, acting head coach Mitch Johnson finds himself in a position he didn’t expect when the season started.
Head coach Gregg Popovich suffered a stroke on November 2, giving Johnson not only a job he hadn’t anticipated for a while, but also perhaps the biggest coaching gig in all of basketball.
Johnson’s job isn’t just to win games. He is also in charge of developing Victor Wembanyama and a core group of young players under the age of 25.
No matter how much you can prepare for a job, if it comes out of the sky and is of this magnitude, it’s not something you just walk into.
And yet here we are. The Spurs are competitive. Wembanyama grows into a superstar. And several other players, such as Jeremy Sochan, Stephon Castle and Devin Vassell, are taking their place in the league.
Plus, Johnson has found a way to make this team his own, and he’s done it right away.
Fans would be forgiven for believing that Johnson would be asked to simply copy and paste Popovich’s philosophy, but as any basketball player – at any level – will tell you: Coaches are people first, and they deal with people.
Johnson makes the Spurs fly around the court more and splash long three-pointers, a shot that Popovich criticizes – often humorously.
“Mitch has done a great job, along with our entire coaching staff,” Chris Paul said Thursday during the postgame new conference following San Antonio’s loss at Indiana.
“I think when you’re in a situation like that and you get into a head coaching position, you’ve already built trust with the guys because a lot of times he was the guy coaching guys, coaching guys and stuff, so he’s done a fantastic job .”
How to connect with players is of course one thing, but any coach worth their salt will have to get behind that in some way, whether it’s making strategic adjustments, sharing basketball knowledge or actually making an impact on players’ careers.
According to 39-year-old Paul, Johnson commanded all the respect of the team because of his playing career.
“He coaches with passion,” said the twenty-year veteran. “You can tell Mitch used to play hoops as a point guard at Stanford. He coaches with passion and I think that fuels him [into] our team. There’s a lot of trust, there’s a lot of communication and it’s great for me to be able to play for him.”
This is high praise, especially coming from one of the greatest point guards of all time, who is older than Johnson, 38.
It further speaks not only to Johnson’s abilities as a coach, but also to how open the players have been to embrace this unexpected change.
Wembanyama – noticeably missing Popovich, who is making positive steps in his recovery – took the team out to dinner on Monday night, as the 75-year-old coach likely would have done.
Getting Johnson through all this while also being asked to win is a ridiculously difficult undertaking. He must allow his team to worry about their head coach while also commanding their respect in the role a legend fills.
Fortunately, winning is not that big of a problem anymore.
The Spurs are already 20-22, after winning just 22 games last season.
While Wembanyama has clearly played a major role in that turnaround, it’s clear that Johnson has done his best and found a way to go first, all challenges be damned.
That alone deserves some praise.