One of the NBA’s most extreme, left-wing coaches, the San Antonio Spurs’ Gregg Popovich, took a few moments to praise being “woke” on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day with a rant against Republicans before the Spurs met the Atlanta Hawks.
Popovich, who is loudly in favor of every far-left shibboleth one might name, went on a rant about the non-existent “book bans” that liberals accuse Republicans of engaging in and insisted that his job is not to just serve as a basketball coach but to teach his young players about “history,” Fox News reported.
“These days and in our situation for a long time, we’ve gotten a lot more satisfaction out of our jobs in San Antonio,” Popovich bloviated. “And I think that’s gone across the league as time has gone on, by making sure we’re spending time with the players with lessons in history about people, about events, things that have happened, because I think it’s been missed to a great degree.”
The white coach then invoked the experiences of his “black friends.”
“I mean, even Black friends that I know would say, ‘I didn’t know such and such until I was 32 years old.’ Well, it didn’t get taught to any of us – Black or White – for a very long time. So, it’s not a surprise.”
San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich reacts to a call by official JD DeRosa during a game against the Golden State Warriors in the second half at AT&T Center on April 9, 2022, in San Antonio, Texas. (Ronald Cortes/Getty Images)
Popovich then went into the mythical “book banning” he imagines that Republicans support.
“But now that we have this book-banning culture rising up, it has to be fought because if we don’t fight it, if we don’t inform, if we don’t teach off-the-court basketball stuff, it doesn’t mean much. But off the court, it’s important because there’s a void there, and it’s an intentional void at this point.”
There are no book bans in the United States. Schools refusing to shelve inappropriately sexualized material and gay porn in grade school libraries is not at all the same thing as a “book ban.” The books grooming small children for gay sexual contact are still available at any online retailer or bookstore, even in the areas where those same books were removed from children’s libraries.
Then Popovich objected to people using the word “woke” as an insult.
“So, we can’t let it become normal. When it becomes normal, then we have real problems,” the coach exclaimed. “And I think that’s the goal in a lot of ways, to change the status quo of so-called ‘woke.’ Woke ain’t bad. Woke means you’re alive. It means you’re paying attention. Now, some people can overdo it in a certain degree in a certain way. But in general, woke should be a positive term.”
Head Coach Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs looks on during the game against the Golden State Warriors on April 9, 2022, at the AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas. (Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)
Capping off Popovich’s plaintive plea to normalize extremist leftism, the Spurs lost to the Hawks 109-99. And while the Spurs may be well trained in “wokeism,” they seem less adept at basketball. This season, they have lost a whopping 32 games and only won seven. The Spurs are currently one of the worst teams in the NBA, with only the Detroit Pistons having lost more games.
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