Full-court press
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich teams up with San Antonio mayor to court voters
San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg has teamed up with San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich to court voters.
In a 31-second video posted February 25 to the mayor’s Twitter account, Popovich — standing next to Nirenberg — urges San Antonians to cast ballots in the election currently underway. Early voting in San Antonio (and the rest of Texas) ends February 28, while the election itself is March 3.
“We’ve all got to get out the vote,” Popovich says in the video, which had been viewed more than 10,000 times as of press time. “It’s what has to be done to get this country straight. Please go out [and vote].”
Getting out the vote is “huge,” he adds.
“We have a lot on the line in this community and throughout the country,” Nirenberg, who’s not on the 2020 ballot, says in the video.
Although neither the mayor nor the coach mentions any politicians by name or makes any endorsements, Popovich has not shied away from venting about President Donald Trump, who’s running for re-election.
In a November 2019 exchange with sports journalists, Popovich trolled Trump, employing some of the president’s catchphrases in describing the Spurs’ losing streak. Two years earlier, in October 2017, Popovich criticized Trump as a “soulless coward” and a “pathological liar.”
Brad Parscale, a former San Antonian who’s managing Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, has returned the fire. In a July 2018 tweet, for instance, Parscale wrote: “Maybe Spurs coach Gregg Popovich should have been less worried about politics and more focused on trying to prove he can actually coach without Timmy [Tim Robinson]! Spurs lost their franchise player.”