{"id":2093077,"date":"2026-08-14T10:00:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T07:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2093077"},"modified":"2026-08-14T10:00:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T07:00:54","slug":"gregg-popovich-nba-legends-remember-don-nelson-whose-heart-was-bigger-than-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2093077","title":{"rendered":"Gregg Popovich, NBA legends remember Don Nelson, whose heart was \u2018bigger than the moon\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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DALLAS \u2014 In 1994, Gregg Popovich had a job offer he was mulling over.<\/p>\n

The San Antonio Spurs wanted him to return to the franchise to become the team\u2019s general manager. Popovich had previously worked for the organization as an assistant on Larry Brown\u2019s staff from 1988 to 1992. Brown and his staff were fired, but just two years later, the Spurs were offering Popovich the chance to return and run their front office.<\/p>\n

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Popovich told his boss, Golden State Warriors coach Don Nelson, that he had a five-year deal on the table with annual raises of $50,000. Popovich told Nelson he loved working for him in Golden State and wasn\u2019t sure whether he should take it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018You big dummy, Poppo, you\u2019re going back there,\u2019\u201d Popovich recalled. \u201c\u2018And this is how you are going to do it. Call them back and say, \u2018Add $50,000 to my first year. From there, $50,000 on top of that.\u2019 So at the end, after five years, you will have made $250,000 more. That will pay for your house.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Popovich was one of nearly a dozen Basketball Hall of Famers who gathered inside the Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church on Thursday for a ceremony to honor Nelson, who died Sunday at 86<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Popovich and Del Harris, whom Nelson considered his \u201ccoaching brothers,\u201d spoke. Former Dallas Mavericks coach and current Indiana Pacers boss Rick Carlisle was also there to honor Nelson, the second-winningest coach in NBA history. So were Sidney Moncrief and Paul Pressey, who played for Nelson in Milwaukee; Chris Mullin, Mitch Robinson and Tim Hardaway, whom Nelson worked with in Golden State; and Steve Nash and Michael Finley, two of Nelson\u2019s players in Dallas.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHis heart was bigger than the moon and as soft as marshmallows,\u201d said Popovich, who has taken a step back from public life since a stroke forced him from the sidelines nearly two years ago. \u201cThat\u2019s what he was to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson, the son of an Iowa hog farmer, won five championships as a player over 11 seasons with the Boston Celtics while earning the respect of Red Auerbach and Bill Russell. Then Nelson got into coaching, where he revolutionized the game by playing smaller, faster lineups than his opponents and disregarding conventional beliefs about a player\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

\u201cSmall ball. Stretch big. Point forward. Position-less. These are all common terms today,\u201d Carlisle said. \u201cNellie invented this stuff. And it wasn\u2019t like he invented it a few months or a few years before everyone figured out this is the way the game should go. He was decades ahead of everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Don Nelson and Rick Carlisle share a laugh in June 2025. Nelson was honored with the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Basketball Coaches Association before Game 2 of the NBA Finals that year. (Alonzo Adams \/ Imagn Images)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Two of the shrewdest moves Nelson made came on draft night in 1998. Alongside his son, Donnie, Nelson swung separate trades for Dirk Nowitzki, a jump-shooting 7-footer from Germany, and Nash, a Canadian point guard whose NBA career started with two unmemorable seasons in Phoenix.<\/p>\n

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Under Nelson\u2019s watch, both players blossomed, and the Mavericks turned into the NBA\u2019s highest-octane offense. In 2001, the Mavericks ended a 10-year playoff drought and upset the Utah Jazz in the first round, and in 2003, Dallas came within two wins of reaching the NBA Finals.<\/p>\n

\u201cLarger than life,\u201d Nash said. \u201cBasketball genius. Scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 6-foot-6 Nelson could also be physically intimidating. In a January 2000 game against the Jazz, Karl Malone elbowed one of Nelson\u2019s players, Shawn Bradley, in the face. Nelson took exception to it. He got in Malone\u2019s face and was ejected. Video of the interaction<\/a> made the rounds on social media this week, which Finley found amusing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you read his lips, he said, \u2018I\u2019m not scared of you, motherf\u2014-r,\u201d Finley said.<\/p>\n

Nowitzki, who played for Nelson for six-plus seasons, was unable to attend because he was visiting his parents in Europe. But Nowitzki made sure his close friend Nash read a letter on his behalf. One of Nowitzki\u2019s observations in his letter was that Nelson had \u201caura.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that word gets used a lot these days,\u201d Nowitzki wrote. \u201cBut when he came into a room, everything just lit up. He was funny. He was loud. He was always joking. He was truly one of a kind. And he was the ultimate player\u2019s coach. I don\u2019t think there is a player in the history of this game who benefited from Nellie more than me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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What You Should Read Next<\/div>\n
\n \"Don<\/p>\n
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\n Don Nelson, an NBA genius who extracted the extraordinary from the most unlikely spots\n <\/div>\n
\n Don Nelson was as complex as coaches come, but he understood something special: That what makes people difficult can also make them great.\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Nelson retired from coaching in 2010 and moved to Hawaii. He had regular poker games with famous friends like country music legend Willie Nelson and actor Owen Wilson on the island of Maui. He also liked to golf barefoot.<\/p>\n

Wilson, who was born in Dallas, recorded a video message that was played during Thursday\u2019s ceremony. In it, he remembered Nelson\u2019s ribbing on the 18th hole of a golf course. They had a sizeable wager on the hole, and Nelson was trying to gain a mental edge.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNellie drives up,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cHe\u2019s looking at me, and he\u2019s like, \u2018Christ, did you have Polio as a kid? Your legs are so skinny. There\u2019s no definition.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson also saw Nelson\u2019s tender side. In 2007, Wilson survived a suicide attempt<\/a>. Nelson came to visit him once he was released from the hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember him grabbing me and saying, \u2018It\u2019s time to compete now. You have to compete,\u2019\u201d Wilson said. \u201cThat kind of became my rallying cry as I tried to find my way back.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a sentiment that Wilson believed contained larger meaning.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe Nellie was tackling the big question,\u201d Wilson said. \u201c\u2019What are we doing here?\u2019 We are here to compete. We are here to do our best. We are here to try to live meaningful lives. And we are here to try and be part of the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thank God I was on his team.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DALLAS \u2014 In 1994, Gregg Popovich had a job offer he was mulling over. The San Antonio Spurs wanted him to return to the franchise to become the team\u2019s general manager. Popovich had previously worked for the organization as an assistant on Larry Brown\u2019s staff from 1988 to 1992. Brown and his staff were fired, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-2093077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2093077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2093077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2093077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2093077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}