NBA: Gregg Popovich Has ‘No Regrets Whatsoever’ For Curbing ‘Hateful’ Booing Of Kawhi Leonard – News18

Gregg Popovich referred to as Spurs’ followers booing of Kawhi Leonard “hateful” and “mean-spirited,” and the San Antonio coach has no regrets taking the microphone and imploring the house crowd to knock it off.

“Absolutely not,” Popovich stated Friday night time earlier than the Spurs performed the Warriors. “It’s pretty easy to understand. I listened to it for a while and it just got louder and louder and uglier and uglier, and I felt sorry for him, and I was embarrassed for our city, for our organization.

“Because that’s not who we are, that’s not how we’ve conducted ourselves for the last 25 years. It’s the opposite of the way we’ve conducted ourselves, the way we’ve worked in the community.”

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While Popovich thought of it a “one-off” with the followers’ habits and credited them for his or her years of help, he nonetheless discovered it extraordinarily disrespectful to deal with former Spurs All-Star Leonard, now with the Clippers, that means in his return to Frost Bank Center.

Late within the first half of Wednesday’s 109-102 loss, Popovich took the mic and advised the gang to cease the booing. San Antonio misplaced its tenth straight recreation.

“It’s kind of an indication of the world we live in today. It was hateful,” Popovich stated.

“It was really disrespectful, it was just mean-spirited. We’re the team that when somebody comes back to town after having been a Spur, so you first come back to town, we show a video of them. I can remember when Kawhi and Danny Green came back from Toronto, we showed videos of those guys and the crowd didn’t react like that. That tells the whole story, and now it’s five years later, six years later, and that’s going to happen.”

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Popovich famous that the quantity of hate at present on the planet makes the followers’ habits much more disgraceful — to not point out serving to gas Leonard’s play, too.

“I think it’s indicative of the way the world works now. There’s enough hate the world where I think that’s totally inappropriate. It’s not what you would teach your kids to do,” Popovich stated. “… So it doesn’t make any sense, it’s unwise, so on every level, I have no regrets whatsoever.”

(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is revealed from a syndicated information company feed – Associated Press)