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/
Popovich has always showed tremendous respect to other countries and been against American exceptionalism so this is pretty much in line with his belief. Nothing surprising.
What’s surprising is players like Durant who has been exposed to multiple cultures and befriended with a ton of international players can’t even have a capacity to be open-minded to this idea and acts like he’s played basketball in the small corner of Texoma his whole life.
I honestly feel like they don’t hate the idea. They just hate the messenger himself. Which is why they have no problem with Popovich or Giannis who essentially gave Lyles a seal of approval.