Gregg Popovich is one of the most successful coaches in NBA history, with the San Antonio Spurs he has won five NBA titles and was Olympic champion at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics, but sometimes his methods of controlling his players are extreme.
Popovich hired a detective to follow Vernon Maxwell.
In 1989 Vernon Maxwell came to the San Antonio Spurs from the Denver Nuggets for a draft pick the following year.
Maxwell had a reputation for partying, so Popovich told him it had to stop or he would leave the team, and the player didn’t mind the warning and left in the wee hours of the morning.
Maxwell gave an interview to the podcast “No Chill with Gilbert Arenas” and recounted the bizarre situation
“I couldn’t do that s— he wanted me to do,” Maxwell said. “I’m from Florida. I’m new in San Antonio and these are trying me everywhere I go, so I’m knocking out in the streets. So Pop tells me ‘no more clubs. The next time you go to a club, I gotta get you out of here.
“That day, six hours later, I was at a damn bar, in a club. He called me the next day, about six in the morning — ‘hey, I need you down here.’ He said, ‘I told you.’ They had a PI follow me. My dumb— didn’t even know. He told me, get your s— packed. I’m trying to find a team that wants your a–. He called me back and said ‘you’re going to Houston.‘ That’s when I took off from there.”
Maxwell joined the Rockets in 1990 and stayed with Houston until 1995, then played in Philadelphia, Orlando, Charlotte, Sacramento, Sacramento, Seattle and finished his career with Dallas in 2001.
