While Boris Diaw and Ronny Turiaf helped Tony Parker put on his jacket, Gregg Popovich quietly waiting his turn. The Spurs coach, the most successful in NBA history, waited until he was 74 to enter the Hall of Fame, and his induction coincides with that of TP, his playmaker from 2001 to 2018! They won four NBA titles together, yet their first meeting was a chill. It was before the Draft.
“I hated him” revealed Coach Pop’. “I said I didn’t want him. He was a whiner. He was not aggressive. He didn’t like contact, he was 19 and I didn’t want to see him.
Parker’s agent asks Popovich to give the Frenchman a second chance. RC Buford also urges Popovich. The Spurs coach is still not convinced and he asks NBA veterans to challenge the Frenchman, including the late Lance Blanks.
” They were more than mean and we put this playmaker (Parker) in front of them”recalls Popovich. “He had to run the game and he kicked their asses. He proved to me that I was wrong and that I had misinterpreted what I had seen with my own eyes. »
The rest, we know. While Parker thinks he is chosen by the Celtics, he is finally selected in 28th position by the Spurs. No one imagines the Frenchman playing a lot for his rookie season. He is only 20 years old. And yet, after five matches, he became a starter!
“After three or four games, I gave him the ball and said, ‘It’s up to you,'” Popovich said. “Given what he had put together in training and at training camp, you had to throw him in the deep end and see if he could pull through. The rest of his story is the Hall of Fame.”
