Gregg Popovich showed that the NBA really cares when he held a town hall meeting with renowned scholar Dr. Cornel West and The Nation sports editor Dave Zirin to address high school students last Sunday. The 21-year Spurs head coach organized the meeting following his recent comments about president-elect Donald Trump, in an attempt to further address today's social issues to San Antonio youth. The event took place at the Jo Long Theatre of Performing Arts at the Carver Community Cultural Center.

Afterwards, Pop spoke with ESPN's Michael Wright about the recent rise of hate crimes and harassment towards minorities, immigrants, and physically and mentally disabled citizens as the reason why he felt the town hall meeting was imperative for the 350 students in attendance.

"It was about the kids. In today's environment, one can talk a good game about we need this or we need that. We need fewer disparaging remarks. We need more attention to healing the atmosphere for a lot of minority groups, whether it's racial or things that have been said about women or handicapped people or any such talk is just talk. But at some point, there's got to be follow-through where people are engaged... "The purpose of it was to show the kids that even though the environment is as it is, and we've heard some pretty rough talk through the election, that there are people, many people at all levels who value them greatly. They don't need to be as fearful or feel less than because we know who they are. We depend on them for the future."

Dr. Cornel West tweeted about the powerful messages in the meeting.

Dave Zirin repeated Dr. West's sentiment in this tweet below.

Spurs guard Manu Ginobili was in attendance and gave his praises. "It was big time. Cornel West is amazing," Ginobili said. "He's been fighting that fight for a long time. He's very clear, very well-spoken, had a lot of examples and names. He was right there. I had listened to a few of his interviews, and it's just mesmerizing to listen to him. So it was good to get to meet him and to listen to him face to face. And if you add that to the fact that there were 350 kids from Sam Houston High School learning and listening, I think it was very powerful. It was a great, great move."

Popovich also stated that this is the first of many similar events to come. The Sacramento Kings recently held a similar town hall meeting earlier this month with high schoolers and the city's police department.