NBA – Behind the scenes of the icy relationship between Dennis Rodman and Gregg Popovich at the Spurs

Par Pierre-Andréa Fraile | Journaliste sportif

Dennis Rodman spent two turbulent seasons with the Spurs before joining the Bulls, where he enjoyed the success everyone knows about. Not least because of his less than cordial relationship with Gregg Popovich.

The fact that NBA fans associate him more with the Pistons or the Bulls is hardly surprising. After all, Dennis Rodman won his first two championship rings in Detroit, before completing a memorable Three Peat in Chicago. In the meantime, however, he had a two-year stopover in San Antonio, which was far more anecdotal and tricky on a human level.

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Relatively manageable before joining the Spurs, Rodman began to go off the rails away from the courts. This earned him some retaliation, as the members of the Texan franchise were already charged with going straight at that time. At the time, David Robinson was the team’s leader and an example to follow in terms of behavior, and was almost delighted when he left in 1995:

David Robinson: I’m not going to miss Dennis. We tried to show him that we loved him and cared about him, that we didn’t want to change him and were willing to let him do what he wanted, but we had to turn the screw when we had to. We didn’t get a response from him. After being a zoo last season, we’re a basketball team again now.

And Robinson wasn’t the only Spurs figure with a grudge against Rodman. According to Jack Haley, considered The Worm’s main confidant in the San Antonio dressing room, Gregg Popovich wasn’t his biggest fan either:

Jack Haley: Dennis and Popovich rarely spoke to each other, other than to call each other names. They didn’t like each other at all. They were just two guys who weren’t on the same wavelength.

Popovich, a simple general manager at the time, was very attached to the good conduct of his players, and had little sympathy for Dennis. The latter left the Alamo and joined Michael Jordan in Chicago with the label of pariah on his forehead. However, according to Haley, in this stormy episode in the history of the Spurs, the blame was more evenly shared than it might seem:

Jack Haley: It’s easy to point the finger at Dennis and say it’s all his fault, but the truth is he was there for the game and always ready to go to war. Off the pitch, of course he did things that may have been distractions at times. But there were several other distractions that plagued our team. The chemistry problem concerned the whole group.