Who other than Gregg Popovich will smile during an interview before a fourth quarter of a playoff game, with his San Antonio Spurs down by 12 against the Golden State Warriors? Probably no one, although David Aldridge did help him on that one. When it came to talking about Manu Ginobili hitting the game winning shot, it was all him though.

Ginobili was having an awful game, shooting 4-19 from the field up to that point. He did add 11 assists with 13 points until the final 3.9 seconds of the game, with the Spurs trailing by one point in a second overtime, but 15 misses is quite a lot to make up for. And yet he hit the game winning three pointer, leaving 1.2 seconds on the clock, with the Spurs winning 129-127. It ended up being a good decision keeping him in, and being an even better press conference afterwards.

Earlier on, when it was much harder to smile and be gracious to the interviewer, something Popovich doesn’t like doing anyway, he was surprisingly calm. A generic question about Stephen Curry, and then no follow up. Popovich went on to question David Aldridge regarding the absence of a second question. He had a good reason to be smiling. Maybe he knew how it was going to end.