OAKLAND -- San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich, who has earned a reputation for having an acute awareness of the world beyond basketball, conceded Sunday that the current state of American affairs is unnerving to say the least.

Asked 90 minutes before tipoff of Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals against the Warriors if there are times when he finds himself distracted by the political climate in recent months, Popovich conceded he did.

That was only the beginning.

“Usually, things happen in the world and you go to work and you’ve got your family and you’ve got your friends and you do what you do,” he said. “But to this day, I feel like there’s a cloud, a pall, over the whole country in a paranoid, surreal sort of way. It’s got nothing to do with the Democrats losing the election. It’s got to do with the way one individual conducts himself.”

Though he never mentioned Donald Trump by name, it was brazenly clear Popovich was referring to the tone set by and behavior of a president who, among other things, has devalued truth, mocked the disabled, inflamed ethnic tensions and governed largely by impulse.

“It’s embarrassing,” Popovich said. “It’s dangerous to our institutions and what we all stand for and what we expect the country to be. But for this individual, he’s in a game show. And everything that happens begins and ends with him, not our people or our country. Every time he talks about those things, that’s just a ruse. That’s just disingenuous, cynical and . . . fake.”

And with that, Popovich concluded his pregame news conference.