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Popovich says

By Tim Reynold's AP basketball author

Gregg Popovich will not train this season. He does not rule out a comeback in the future.

Popovich met the San Antonio Spurs on Thursday and then published an explanation to publicly make his decision about this season – and hope for the next season. The 76-year-old Popovich, the coaching winner of all times of the NBA, had a stroke in the team of the team in San Antonio on November 2 and has been away from the team since then.

“I decided not to return to the sidelines this season,” said Popovich in a explanation distributed by the team. “Mitch Johnson and his employees did a wonderful job, and the determination and professionalism that the players showed and hold together during a challenging season was excellent.”

Popovich was in regular contact with Johnson, some team officials and at times spoke to some players in his absence – but he was not seen in games or has not been known in any exercises since the stroke.

“I will continue to concentrate on my health in the hope that I can return to coaching in the future,” said Popovich.

Popovich's visit to the team came a week after the Spurs announced that the All-Star Center Victor Wembanyama and then defensive players of the year, and someone who will no longer play a serious candidate for the production of the all-NBA team this season after a deep venous thrombosis or a blood clot was found in his right shoulder.

Wembanyama, who played as a professional as a professional as a professional in the draft of 2023 as a professional as a professional, called Popovich to his greatest basketball influence.

“Pop is not just a coach or a boss,” said 21-year-old Wembanyama at the beginning of this month. “Pop is a leader.”

The Spurs have not updated the rehabilitation process of Popovich for some time, except to say that it should recover a complete recovery. The team has not announced what Popovich has dealt with since the stroke.

In 2023, Popovich agreed to an extension of the contract of five years with the team, which would have signed him for the 2027-28 season to be on the sidelines. His only public comment before Thursday about his health and his future came in mid -December when he said that he and his family were overwhelmed by the “support of the support we received during this time”.

Popovich mentioned that he had returned to coaching in this statement, but did not give a schedule in a self -ironic joke. “Nobody is more excited that I returned to the bench than the talented people who conducted my rehabilitation process,” said Popovich in the declaration in December. “You quickly learned that I am less than trainable.”

Popovich's record was 1,388-824, when he had the stroke, and the record of the Spurs Seit-22-30, all with Johnson as an active trainer, also led his career numbers according to the league rule to his career numbers, since he is still listed as the head coach of the team.

No coach was with a team for more games than Popovich, who led the Spurs to five NBA championships and led the USA basketball to an Olympic gold medal in 2021.

Popovich is one of only three coaches who wins the NBA coach of the year three times. Don Nelson and Pat Riley are the others. He is one of five coaches with at least five NBA titles; Phil Jackson (11), Red Auerbach (nine), John Kundla (five) and Riley (five) are the others.

Popovich has been part of the Spurs for 35 years. From 1988 to 192 he was an assistant coach and returned to the club on May 31, 1994 as Executive Vice President for Basketball Operations and General Manager. He fired coach Bob Hill and appointed coach on December 10, 1996.

Popovich has run the Spurs since then.

“I was blessed to be able to grow in my voice and to be strengthened by him in many ways,” said Johnson when the Spurs were against the Indiana Pacers in Paris last month. “And we are constantly in contact. He observes games that were still as impressive than ever before and competitive, and what they would think – and spend me out at the same time. “

The Associated Press contributed to this article