San Antonio has a special place in Kelvin Sampson’s heart, which may add an extra shot of sentimentality to the 2025 Final Four for Sampson and the home state Cougars, who are back in the national semifinals for the first time since 2021.
The Alamo City played a roundabout role in helping Sampson rebuild his career after being fired from Indiana in February of 2008 because of repeated rule-breaking tied to restrictions on cellphone usage, a flagrant abuse of a rule from an era of college sports that resembles almost nothing to the one we’re in now. Hours after he was fired, Sampson received a phone call from Spurs coach Gregg Popovich offering him a job — any job.
“I got fired on a Friday morning,” Sampson told CBS Sports in February. “At 2 that afternoon, Pop called me and said the Spurs want to hire you and you can pick your title. I was unemployed from 11:30 until about 3 o’clock.”
Sampson and Popovich had struck up a friendship at the 2002 Fiba World Championship, where they served as assistant coaches under George Karl. Almost every day Sampson and Popovich would take marathon walks, sometimes as long as seven or eight miles, and talk themselves tired. After the ’02 championships, Sampson returned to coaching at Oklahoma, then went to Indiana in 2006.
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Fast forward a few years and Sampson was en route to San Antonio, where he found Popovich waiting for him at baggage claim … even though the Spurs had a game that night. Sampson was whisked to the team facility, where then-assistant Mike Budenholzer had the scout.
“My head’s just spinning,” Sampson said, recalling that day.
It was the first time he’d ever seen an NBA scouting report. He heard everyone from Tim Duncan to Manu Ginóbli to Tony Parker to Bruce Bowen chiming in, chirping with feedback.
“My eyebrows shot up,” Sampson said, laughing. “Wow, you mean there’s another way to guard a pick-and-roll? You don’t just hedge it?”
He grabbed a notepad, jotted until his hand cramped and organized his notes every night. He was in basketball grad school as Indiana finished 3-4 that season without him, losing immediately in the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments.
“I absorbed the learning, I learned so much,” Sampson said. “It was almost like a reboot.”
Sampson later became an assistant for the Bucks and then the Rockets and returned to the college ranks in 2014, resuscitating a moribund Cougars program. The rest is history.
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