Steve Kerr could have told DeMar DeRozan it would be this way. Twenty years have passed since the Golden State coach first suited up for Gregg Popovich, but the old grump hasn’t changed since then.

Popovich is happiest when everybody expects him to be miserable. Always has been.

So maybe DeRozan was surprised over the past few days, when in the midst of a three-game Spurs losing streak, his notoriously hot-tempered new head coach was more upbeat than ever. But Kerr expected as much.

Back in the old days, Kerr remembers, Popovich would yell his head off when the Spurs were beating the heck out of the rest of the league. When they were slumping? That’s when Popovich started buying fancy dinners.

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“I always noticed he was better in crisis,” Kerr said.

On Sunday night, the Spurs responded so well to their latest rough patch that they might put their coach in a bad mood again.

In beating a patchwork version of the Warriors 104-92 at the AT&T Center, Popovich’s team proved him right about a few things.

It proved he wasn’t crazy to proclaim, three nights earlier, that he was “thrilled” with the way the Spurs were playing even at the end of a disastrous road trip.

It proved he had good reason to ignore two of the worst shooting performances of LaMarcus Aldridge’s career, to focus more on his effort, and to declare that Aldridge “wasn’t struggling at all.”

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And it proved that perhaps Popovich still knows a little about the joy of working with a team in misery.

“(He was) more patient than I expected,” DeRozan said, smiling late Sunday night when asked how Popovich had handled the first rough patch of the former Raptor’s tenure in San Antonio.

There were no tongue-lashings after road losses at Sacramento, Phoenix and Los Angeles against the Clippers. Even as the team’s record plummeted to the .500 mark, and as the daunting nature of staying in Western Conference playoff position began to make itself evident, Popovich’s mood improved.

Ever the contrarian, he relished pointing out that things were not as bad as they seemed. He jumped at the chance in Los Angeles to note that, although Aldridge had made only 30 percent of his shots on the road trip, the veteran big man actually “busted his butt” and did “great things.”

And how did Aldridge respond to those compliments? By racking up 24 points, 18 rebounds and two vicious blocks, and by helping DeRozan and Rudy Gay dominate the final couple of minutes after Golden State had threatened to make things interesting.

“I think he sees the hard work that I put in every day,” Aldridge said of Popovich. “I’m not just sitting around on my tail every day. It’s going to come back. The law of averages is going to average out, and at the end, you are going to get better.”

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That kind of message might have played well in the visitors’ locker room Sunday, too. Kerr (who in the past week has seen his previously enviable job as head coach of the NBA’s biggest superpower turn into that of part-time circus ringmaster, part-time Jerry Springer show bouncer) has been asked a lot lately about his approach for managing his own crises.

And when someone inquired how much of his current approach he stole from Popovich, he answered, “Pretty much everything.”

“He’s one of the most practical people I’ve ever met in my life,” Kerr said. “He’s got a great perspective on life. I think he’s doing well with the team. They’ve had all these injuries. They’re still night in and night out competitive and right in the thick of it.”

The way Kerr sees it, Popovich will not have to change much even though he is dealing with a team that — for probably the first time in 20 years — does not carry the expectations of a championship contender.

And the way Popovich sees it, Kerr probably doesn’t need as much guidance with his current locker-room circus as people think.

“I’m sure no matter or how you all think or write or talk about it, it’s not as big a deal as you’ve all made it,” Popovich said.

Maybe not, but Kerr acknowledged that the Warriors, with their injuries and infighting, now find themselves in the toughest stretch they’ve endured during his tenure as the Golden State coach.

“We’ve been in this dream,” Kerr said. “And now we’re faced with real adversity.”

He has real problems to solve now, and it looks absolutely miserable.

In fact, it’s almost enough to make his old boss jealous.