Kawhi Leonard with Gregg Popovich (Credit: Twitter)
Popovich found it extremely disrespectful to treat former Spurs All-Star Leonard, now with the Clippers, that way in his return to Frost Bank Center.
Gregg Popovich called Spurs’ fans booing of Kawhi Leonard “hateful” and “mean-spirited,” and the San Antonio coach has no regrets taking the microphone and imploring the home crowd to knock it off.
“Absolutely not,” Popovich said Friday night before the Spurs played 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.
READ: New York Red Bulls Courts Fan Ire for Catch in Holiday Package Tied to Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami
While Popovich considered it a “one-off” with the fans’ behavior and credited them for their years of support, he still found it extremely disrespectful to treat former Spurs All-Star Leonard, now with the Clippers, that way in his return to Frost Bank Center.
Late in the first half of Wednesday’s 109-102 loss, Popovich took the mic and told the crowd to stop the booing. San Antonio lost its 10th straight game.
“It’s kind of an indication of the world we live in today. It was hateful,” Popovich said.
“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.”
After the Spurs 10th straight loss, Greg Popovich personally delivered Kawhi Leonard and his teammates thanksgiving dinner to apologize for fans booing them throughout the game.“This is who we are”
Class act by coach pop pic.twitter.com/JAOKFus5cP
— Legon Hoops (@LeqionHoops) November 23, 2023
READ: Switzerland To Make Bid For 2030 or 2034 Olympic Winter Games
Popovich noted that the amount of hate currently in the world makes the fans’ behavior even more disgraceful — not to mention serving to fuel 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 said. “… So it doesn’t make any sense, it’s unwise, so on every level, I have no regrets whatsoever.”