San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich's record is unparalleled among active NBA coaches. He's also known just as much for instilling a kind of franchise-wide ethos at the Spurs organization, to which everyone—the players in particular—subscribes. An intriguing Wall Street Journal profile this week revealed that this extends to a kind of philosophical worldview. He encourages his players to be politically active, to be curious about the world, and to round out their lives beyond the game that has so long defined it—and earned them such a great living.

Below are six of the best life lessons from Coach Pop.

On life beyond work: "If I just did basketball, I'd be bored to death. How much satisfaction can you get out of doing jump shots and teaching someone to deny in the passing lanes? OK, that's cool, that's my job, that's how I earn my living, and I have a good living and I enjoy it. But I'm not a lifer. It doesn't define me. If I win a game, I'm fine. If I lose a game, it hurts, but I'm fine real quick. It's not that important."

On the current election, and the trajectory of great nations: "I worry that maybe I'm being a little too pessimistic, but I'm beginning to have a harder time believing that we are not Rome. Rome didn't fall in 20 days or 30 years. It took a couple hundred years. The question is: Are we in that process and we don't even know it? I really am starting to think about that. It's not just the two candidates. It's the way the whole thing is being treated."

Jeff Haynes Getty Images

On the connection between being an engaged citizen and a fuller life: "I think it's sad if a person's whole self-image and self-worth is based in their job," he said. "Whether you're a basketball player, a plumber, a doctor, a mailman or whatever you might be, why not try your best to live a more interesting life that includes other people, other cultures and different worlds?"

On discussions of race: "I think it's important for their lives, for their kids, their wives, for our basketball team. Everybody's gotta get engaged with this elephant in the room that we all have to deal with, but nobody really wants to. People are, like, tired of it. Is it race again? Do we have to talk about it? Well, the reason we do is because it's still the elephant in the room. Because it still has never been taken care of. Because it's still there."

(Popovich has had his team read Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, watch Nate Parker's slave revolt film Birth of a Nation and Spike Lee's Chi-Raq, and invited John Carlos to come speak to the team. They have held discussions after all of them.)

On Colin Kaepernick, and driving the conversation forward: "I absolutely understand why they're doing what they're doing, and I respect their courage for what they've done. The question is whether it will do any good or not because it seems that change really seems to happen through political pressure, no matter how you look at it. Whether it's Dr. [Martin Luther] King getting large groups together and boycotting buses, or what's happened in Carolina with the NBA and other organizations pulling events to make it known what's going on. But I think the important thing that Kaepernick and others have done is to keep it in the conversation. When's the last time you heard the name Michael Brown? With our 24/7 news, things seem to drift. We're all trying to just exist and survive."

Thanks, Pop.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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