When Gregg Popovich speaks, people listen. That tends to happen when you are a figure synonymous with coaching excellence. And I was working on my original topic for this column, I came across this and immediately reversed course:

The interview was classic Pop; a mix of snark, self-deprecation and dismissiveness that we (somewhat oddly) consume with like candy. Hidden inside it -- around the 4:15 mark in the video -- is an interesting gem on the approach of the Spurs' head coach and his staff. When asked about the changes in Rajon Rondo’s game, Pop gave a response that was rather thought-provoking:

"I don’t see any reason to watch film. When my team has a game when they have zero turnovers and we shoot 60 percent, and the other team scores 40, then I’ll start worrying about the other teams. But until that happens, I have enough to correct and teach on my team and that’s how I spend my time."

Now to keep that in context, Pop watches film of his own team. He alludes to the fact when answering other questions in the same interview so it’s not as if he just shows up to games and practices without doing one of the trademark tasks we associate with coaches. He is referring to the fact -- maybe flippantly -- that unlike say, the allegedly obsessive Tom Thibodeau, he doesn’t choose to spend countless hours in a dark film room breaking down Rondo or any player or team’s approach until his eyes start to bleed.

Pop goes on to say that his assistants bring to him their recommendations and he makes the final call. None of that is particularly noteworthy. Most college and NBA head coaches delegate their opponent prep to assistant coaches and rely heavily on them for the intricate details of what to expect. Coaches like Thibodeau, Lawrence Frank, etc. are actually probably more the exception than the norm, at least when it comes to head coaches. And as Pop alludes to again, when you’ve been in the league for as long as he and his star trio has, there are no surprises. No one is reinventing the wheel so it’s not like there’s going to be some crazy wrinkle in a scheme involving actions no one has ever seen combined on the basketball court before.

Especially when you’re in Pop’s position -- the head coach of a smart, veteran group with unparalleled continuity (at least among its core members) that treats the regular season as a warmup -- it’s easy to focus on your own team. A head coach of a team fighting for their playoff lives, like Mike Malone in Sacramento, or a coach in desperate need of winning for his the sake of his employment, like Monty Williams in New Orleans, doesn’t have the luxury Pop does when it comes to treating each regular season game as part of a larger process. For most NBA coaches, those individuals wins are vital and being locked in on an opponent is considered a necessity.

None of this is probably news. At best, it’s a refreshing way of looking at something you probably already knew about the league you follow. But for me as a coach, it wasn’t the refresher on that topic that ignited my interest. Instead, Pop’s words triggered a deeper examination of a central question you are always trying to answer when you’re teaching basketball: how much time do you really need to spend on knowing your opponent?

The reason that thought came into my head was because listening to Pop made me think of another great coaching icon, John Wooden. Wooden was famous for never scouting his opponents. Now granted, such a comparison is overflowing with context as Wooden coached in an era where his teams, at least near the end, had a monopoly on talent and access to information on opponents statistics and tendencies wasn’t even on the same level that even casual fans enjoy today. Pop exists in a time where the financial pressure has put the NBA into a cauldron of innovation and data, the latter of which is so overwhelming it’s hard to parse what actually matters.

That’s where I think we find the subtle brilliance behind adhering to this philosophy. In a time where new stats and digital tracking systems are causing franchises to whip themselves in a frenzy searching for the next big inefficiency, Pop and the Spurs seem content to remember basketball isn’t about reinventing the wheel.

Basketball plays are just a series of coordinated movements designed to get players into a basic action like a pick-and-roll, post up or off-the-ball screen. Getting too caught up in how a team gets to each thing loses site of the fact that each play contains a few of these actions in some combination. For example, if a team has a play that calls for flex action -- where a player sets a cross screen then immediately comes off a down screen -- into pick-and-roll, is it more important to know when that play is coming or that your team knows how to defend both flex action and pick-and-rolls?

Given his response in this interview, Pop would tell you it’s the latter. If the Spurs can defend pin downs, flex cuts, pick-and-rolls with shooters (like Ryan Anderson) and dive men (like Tyson Chandler) because it was drilled and taught well in his training camps and practices throughout the years, it doesn’t when or how often it comes. Pop’s players will be well drilled enough to communicate the action and defend it properly, no matter the sequence in which it appears on the court. So when facing the Hornets, the Spurs aren’t obsessing what plays have pick-and-rolls or when they are going to be run, instead the assistants help Pop marry a team’s concepts to opposing personnel.

And that seems like the practical way to approach it. For NBA players, there is so much to learn and identify about what their own team is supposed to be doing on the court that it seems like overkill to try to cram a laundry list of opponent’s concepts into their heads as well. Especially if it’s a young player still getting his bearings with the speed and complexity of the league. Now some players, like the recently retired, stats-savvy, Shane Battier, may get something from intensive opponent prep, but the dirty secret is most don’t. A lot of players tend to just pick up opponent tendencies just by the sheer volume of times they play against a particular player or team.

And that seems like the smart approach. The NBA game moves so fast that players don’t need to be overburden details about their opponents or it risks paralyzing them with indecision. Besides, you can tell players that Chris Paul is going to try and get back to his right hand against a drop coverage or the Hawks are going to run wide pin downs for Kyle Korver and guess what? Those guys are going to get their shots anyway. That’s basketball. Pop realizes this and instead focuses his time on getting his team ready to execute his own schemes on a macro-level rather than try to drill the minor nuisances of Rondo’s skill set or Boston’s pistol action into their heads during a practice or walkthrough the morning before a game.

In a league where more and more brilliant ideas and minds are infiltrating it by the day, there is a continued push for the new, intricate ways to view the game. But as Pop and the Spurs regularly remind us, sometimes the smartest people are in the NBA are the ones that remember to keep it simple.