Pop’s Locker Room Speech After Winning The Gold: ‘How The F*ck Do You Like Us Now?’

The USA men’s basketball team didn’t have the smoothest run to a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, with two losses to start their exhibition run, two replacement players, three players who missed all of camp during the Finals, and a loss in their opening game against France.

Despite those hiccups, they eventually found their stride and steadily got better as the Olympics wore on, ultimately avenging their loss to France in the gold medal game. Afterwards, no one had forgotten the questions and comments about whether they were capable of winning the gold, and players and coaches all reveled in the opportunity to prove them wrong. That included Gregg Popovich, who offered an emotional speech in the locker room after winning the gold, telling his team that he was appreciative of being a part of this group and appreciative of the way they battled through adversity.

At the end, he collected himself and had one message for everyone who had doubted they could do it: “How the f*ck do you like us now?”

You can see that the players loved it and you can also tell how much this meant to Pop, who was finally getting his chance to coach Team USA in an Olympics, only to hear for most of the run how this team was underachieving, not good enough, and not being put in the right positions to succeed by the staff. Winning the gold medal wasn’t just fulfilling a dream for Pop, but also validation of what he was trying to do with USA Basketball and you can see how much that mattered to him in sharing the moment with this team.