The NBA’s all-time winningest coach has a new deal.
The San Antonio Spurs announced on Saturday that Gregg Popovich, who has led the franchise to five NBA championships, has agreed to a new five-year contract with the team.
Popovich’s deal is worth more than $80 million, sources told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, surpassing the value of Monty Williams’ six-year, $78.5 million deal he signed earlier this summer with the Detroit Pistons.
Popovich, 74, passed Don Nelson in March 2022 for the most career wins by a coach in NBA history. Following the 2022-23 season, Popovich has a career record of 1,366 wins and 761 losses. He’s also third all-time in playoff victories (170).
Popovich also serves as the Spurs’ president of basketball operations, and it’s possible his new deal allows him to earn out the contract even if he doesn’t coach the full five years.
Popovich took over as the interim coach for San Antonio in 1996. The team drafted Tim Duncan the following season after winning the NBA lottery and started a streak of 22 consecutive trips to the playoffs.
That streak ended in 2019-20, and the Spurs have had four consecutive losing seasons. However, they won the lottery once again and selected French big man Victor Wembanyama, who has been heralded as one of the best basketball prospects of all time.
Following the draft, Popovich talked about how much he enjoyed this past season despite going 22-60.
“We enjoyed the season because we had such great guys character-wise that it didn’t matter how many we lost in a row, what mattered was the film session the next day and what we have to do, and they’d be at practice or the next game and try to fulfill everything we wanted them to do,” Popovich said.
“So in a sense, it was one of the most — this will sound strange — more enjoyable years. It was fun in a way, not being on TV much and you just go to work and you don’t worry about results other than players developing and a team understanding going forward.”
This story originally appeared on ESPN
