My favorite coach in the NBA is Gregg P. I have loved the Spurs' brand of ball for years and enjoy his wise cracks and dry humor. He's one of a kind.

I was in Salt Lake, either attending a conference or a series of seminars at Western Governor's, and I decided to go to the temple as I had not been to the Salt Lake temple in years. This is one of the temporal blessings of temple attendance, but as it was a little cold, but not terrible, I determined to walk the few blocks to temple square rather than take TRAX to enjoy the night air.

I was on the phone with my wife when I recognized this dude walking. I thought "where have I seen him before?" and then it dawned on me that it was Gregg Popovich. I told my wife: "Uh, I've got to go" and hung up without really thinking about it. <digression> I've told myself that if I ever met someone famous, I was not going to waste the moment asking for a signature, but rather would try to exchange some brief small talk before parting on my way, and allowing the other person the same. Such was the case here <end of="" digression="">.

As I passed by him, he was about to go into a pub of some sort and I called out and said: "Hey, are you Greg Popovich?" Now, I've seen him with side line reporters and wondered what he might say, but he could not have been more gracious. He turns and walks over to me and extends his hand to shake mine. I was caught off guard a little, not expecting this.

Then I said: "I just wanted to say that I am a big fan of your work and really appreciate the way your team plays". He then said: "Well, everything we do in San Antonio, I learned right here in Salt Lake from Jerry Sloan". As I mentioned before, with Jerry's departure, and the way it unfolded, I stopped being a Jazz fan a long time ago, but I thought that was such a super classy thing to say.

We exchanged a few more brief words and then I told him I didn't want to keep him and we parted.

It was such a cool and memorable experience. Every time I see him on television with his snarkiness with reporters, I think that on an individual level, he was very cool to a complete stranger on a dark street in Salt Lake one night.

Parenthetically, I also met Steve Young one day in the Phoenix airport. I was watching the Seahawks in a playoff game, while waiting for my flight, and a dude with four kids and a double stroller sidles up to me and starts watching the game. It took me a second to register that it was Steve Young.

I was blown away and, not wanting to give him away, I just said: "BYU class of '83?". He too was amazingly generous, and said: "Yeah, what's your name?" and reached out his hand. I was a little more awkward in this one, as again, I was not expecting that, and just said my name and "class of 2007". I don't even remember the brief chit chat, but again I ended it quickly, not wanting to garner attention or keep him.

Anyway, those were too fun memories meeting some really down-to-earth, Hall of Famers in their respective sports.</end></digression>