Back in 2005, when I was an editor at SLAM Magazine, I spent a week down in San Antonio working on a Spurs cover story. Everyone knew the Spurs were one of the great franchises in the NBA, having won titles in three of the last seven seasons, but I wanted to know how they got there and what they were doing to stay there.
As it turned out, it wasn’t any big mystery. The first time I walked into the Spurs’ locker room, you couldn’t miss the quote Gregg Popovich had plastered all over the place.