The 20 different emotions of Gregg Popovich

6. Ossified

Like the intervening tension between the moment you stub your cold toe on a brick stair and the moment your brain fully equates it to pain.

Don’t confuse frozen with calm. Calm is a nothingness. This is a transition between two somethings. Usually the coming something is worse than the something that preceded it. This is the moment when one fully recognizes that things are about to get much, much worse, and it’s going to happy very, very quickly.

This is a difficult moment for one to capture on film, especially for the Spurs. Popovich’s team is so full of coachy goodness that moments of visceral awful don’t tend to happen. It’s worth speculating on what’s going on here.

Perhaps David Lee was about to shoot a 3-pointer. There’s a perfect, short amount of time between Lee catching the ball near the arc, taking a half step back, and going into his shooting motion for Pop to feel the full “oh no, Oh No, OH NO.”

Perhaps Pau switched onto a guard and didn’t immediately switch back. That moment between expecting a step away and not actually seeing it is enough for terror to run through the veins.

Perhaps Danny Green was about to do anything. Basically anything Danny Green does makes Pop upset in some way. I’m never really sure what it is, but it’s always there and always something. Maybe Pop saw the name on the back of Green’s jersey and thought “wait a second, he’s playing. WHY IS HE PLAYING?”

Anyways, here is Pop…