He’s bored the crowd by coaching a slow and deliberate style. He’s also stunned with an aesthetic passing game that reached perfection during the 2014 Finals.

Starting this week, Gregg Popovich begins his third major revision of the Spurs. While it’s certain the end result will be somewhere between the extremes of boring and stunning, no one in the organization is sure about much else.

Including Popovich.

“We’ll start with what we know,” he said Saturday, figuring the unknown will present itself soon enough.

Popovich and his assistants got together last week to unofficially launch the season. This time they chose Laguna Beach for their annual retreat, and they did what they always do. They watched video, and they identified issues.

They also sat down for some enjoyable meals. This time Popovich made room for a guest at the table, former Lakers and Cavaliers coach Mike Brown. Popovich, ever fearful of group thought, wanted to add an outside voice.

Brown’s strength has always been defense, and maybe that’s a clue where Popovich’s concern is. But offense is where the intriguing tweaking will come, because both LaMarcus Aldridge and David West will change the way the Spurs have played.

The Spurs will be better with them, naturally. But the mid-range scoring of Aldridge and West goes against the analytics of a franchise that had embraced the new-era strategy.

To sum up it in one sentence, it has been this: The only shot better than a 3-point attempt from the corner is a layup.

Considering what Popovich has done for most of two decades, these adjustments won’t be dramatic. Popovich’s first years, for example, were complex emotionally but simple strategically. He wanted to build a defense, as well as an attitude to go along with it.

Popovich had thought the previous coach, Bob Hill, relied too much on the power of X’s and O’s. As one on staff put it recently, Popovich saw them as “pretty plays.”

Popovich corrected that. In his early years as the head coach, the Spurs mostly ran ugly ones.

Some, such as Steve Kerr, understood but hated the lack of movement. Most liked the results. The 1999 championship was a tribute to low-post basketball.

But then the rules changed, as did personnel. Soon there was a French point guard slicing through the lane, and later an Argentine iconoclast. Tony Parker and especially Manu Ginobili pushed Popovich where he didn’t want to go, toward a faster, more creative game.

They also pushed him deep into strategy. Even those who now see Popovich as the game’s best also believe he wasn’t that before. He “grew,” as one put it, and this is how much: Popovich has become known for his own pretty plays.

All of his teams have been impacted by talent more than tactics. Before Tim Duncan passed through the most dominant phase of his career, for example, the Spurs could get by with role players surrounding him.

That’s how Popovich won a title with a point guard who wasn’t a good shooter (Avery Johnson). With a small forward who struggled to dribble or drive (Bruce Bowen). And with a center (Fab Oberto) who rarely scored five feet away from the rim.

Popovich, at least on paper, has no such offensive holes among this season’s projected starters. That’s why the questions now are less about talent than chemistry. Last week Popovich and his staff addressed that at length.

“We have a lot of questions,” he said, “and what people won’t think about is personality and fiber and what we had camaraderie-wise. We lost some of that.”

The Spurs coaches talked about what they gained, too. And after breaking down what they think they will do — such as run more post-ups than they have in recent years — they were still as uncertain as ever at the outcome.

“In the beginning,” Popovich said, “we’re just going to be teachers. We’re going to tell everyone how we usually like to do things. And then we’re going to watch them play.”

At some point in the season the rotation will change, as will minutes. At some point Popovich will rethink how certain lineups fit together, and he will rethink strategy, and he might even come up with more pretty plays.

If that’s the nature of the game, it’s also that of the coach. Popovich has evolved as his teams have, and now he is starting over, yet again, with the same franchise.