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NBA adjusts Gregg Popovich’s record, transfer most 2024-25 games to Mitch Johnson

Gregg Popovich missed all but fives games last season after suffering a stroke on November 2 before announcing his retirement in May. Now, the NBA and Spurs have officially agreed to adjust his record. The 77 games then-interim-now-official head coach Mitch Johnson coached are now a part of his official record, while Pop’s ends with their Halloween win over the Utah Jazz, [per ESPN](https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/45647204/nba-adjusts-gregg-popovich-career-record-credits-mitch-johnson-games-24-25).

> Popovich’s final record has been reset to 1,390-824, which is where it was entering a game on Nov. 2. That was the day that Popovich had a stroke at the team’s arena in San Antonio, and Johnson, one of his assistant coaches, took over as acting coach.

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> Popovich missed the remainder of the season and Johnson coached the final 77 games, going 32-45. The NBA and the Spurs agreed that it made sense to remove those games from Popovich’s record and credit them to Johnson, who was named head coach when Popovich announced his retirement earlier this year.

Even with the subtraction of 32 wins, Pop still remains the NBA’s all-time winningest coach with a 1,335 wins — 53 ahead of Don Nelson. The subtraction of 45 loss also improves his all-time winning percentage by a few ticks from .621 to .628, keeping him at 7th place all-time among coaches who coached 400 or more games.

For Johnson, all things considered, 32-45 is not a bad start for an NBA coaching career. Even though the Spurs were still rebuilding, many first-time coaches walk into much tougher situations. Despite an extremely grueling schedule from January on and countless injuries — including to his two best players in Victor Wembanyama and De’Aaron Fox — his team kept soldiering on and remained in play-in contention until almost the bitter end.

Now, Johnson has a more complete and healthy team heading into his first full season as head coach, and despite being the Wild Wild West, the Spurs should be a playoff contender once again. He will get his first look at a few of the new additions to the roster soon with Summer League set to begin this weekend. 14th overall pick Carter Bryant will make his Spurs debut at the California Classic on Saturday, and 2nd overall pick Dylan Harper will hope to join them in Las Vegas on July 10th.

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