Gregg Popovich handed the San Antonio Spurs’ coaching job to Mitch Johnson in late April of last year, opening the door for a 39-year-old successor to take over one of the NBA’s most recognizable benches. Johnson was set to become the 19th head coach in franchise history after a private meeting in Brian Wright’s office that changed both his career and the club’s direction.
That move matters now because Johnson has already turned his first full season into a breakthrough. He guided the Spurs to a 62-20 regular-season record, pushed them into the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2017 and put himself in the frame for the 2026 NBA Coach of the Year award. For a franchise that missed the playoffs from 2019 to 2025 after 22 straight postseason trips beginning in 1998, the turnaround has been striking enough to revive old expectations around Victor Wembanyama, De’Aaron Fox, Stephon Castle and rookie Dylan Harper.
The transition away from Popovich was handled face to face. When Johnson arrived that day, Wright, owner Peter J. Holt, team president R.C. Buford and Popovich were already waiting. Wright later described the moment as emotional and celebratory, saying the new coach had built a deep bond with Popovich over roughly eight or nine years on the staff and had earned the trust of the people in the room.
Popovich’s shadow still hangs over every part of the job. He is the winningest coach in NBA history, won five championships with the Spurs and remains the only coach in San Antonio history to take the franchise to the Finals. Johnson was stepping into that legacy, not replacing its weight, and the early results suggested he understood the difference. Wright praised his poise, his sense of the moment and his ability to push players while giving them enough respect and confidence to respond.
Now the test is harsher than any regular-season surge. San Antonio entered Tuesday down 3-2 to the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder after a 127-114 loss in Game 5, and Johnson said the Spurs would need to be much better to have a chance against a team of that caliber on its floor. The next game was set for tonight in San Antonio, a win-or-go-home chance that would either extend the youngest chapter of the Popovich era or end it one round short of the Finals.
What began as a quiet office meeting in late April has become a franchise-defining handoff. Johnson has already given the Spurs a season that looked out of reach only a year earlier; the remaining question is whether the first Western Conference finals trip since 2017 becomes the start of something bigger.
