Quoted in 2010:
‘There are no world champions in the NBA, so anybody that has the flag up that says world champions is not correct,’ said Popovich prior to last night’s 94-73 Spurs win. ‘It’s not appropriate. The world champions, I believe, are the Spanish team right now. USA is the Olympic champion. The Lakers are the NBA champion. It doesn’t make sense for an NBA team to call themselves world champions. I don’t remember anybody playing anybody outside our borders to get that tag. Isn’t that true? I keep waiting for somebody to tell me I’ve missed something.’ When someone mentioned Toronto, Pop said, ‘There’s a team in Canada. That’s true. The world’s bigger than North America. I know sometimes we as arrogant Americans don’t respond to the rest of the world, but it’s true. There’s a big world out there.’
Full article: https://www.slamonline.com/archives/gregg-popovich-hates-the-term-world-champions/
Okay, that doesn’t make any sense. The Olympics are the premiere international competition, the team that wins the Olympics is the world champion. The team that wins the FIBA World Cup can argue that they’re the world champions before the Olympic tournament happens, but the prestige of that competition is so much lower that it’s not going to be respected by many people.
But he’s not even talking about FIBA because Germany won that. What competition did Spain win to claim the mantle of world champions?
he probably misremembered who won fiba wc, cant think of any other means to claim a world championship. the “I believe” suggests uncertainty