San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich made waves in the NBA world on Monday when he called out Golden State Warriors center Zaza Pachulia for what he thought was a dirty play.

In the third quarter, Pachulia's foot ended up in Leonard's landing zone and the star forward injured his ankle when he came down on it, missing the rest of the game.

Though Pop was understandably furious that his star player was injured, he actually once defended one of his players for doing the same thing back in 2006.

In this archived MySA.com story, Pop was furious that Bowen was warned for a play where Steve Francis injured his ankle after landing on Bowen's foot. He said the league was targeting Bowen when there were plenty of other instances of similar things happening where players weren't warned by the league:

"Did (the league) call them?" Popovich said. "Did they call all those guys (Dirk) Nowitzki landed on when he sprained his ankles the past three, four years? The answer is no.

"So why did they call Bruce? Because it's happened to him twice? Bruce guards an All-Star every night. If he was doing what they're accusing him of doing, wouldn't it have happened a higher percentage of times?

"The people who cry about it are just frustrated about having to go against Bruce."

Obviously, much like he was doing when he called out Pachulia, Popovich is always going to defend his players.

Popovich wasn't done back then, though, continuing to rip the league as he encouraged Bowen to continue playing his style of defense:

"The league is just trying to cover its a--," Popovich said. "I told Bruce, 'You be Bruce Bowen. You're the best (expletive) defender in this league. You will NOT change the way you play defense.'"

Those comments are understandably questionable now that he ripped Pachulia for doing the same thing, but they are different situations that happened more than a decade apart.

Of course, with the Bowen comments coming more than 10 years ago, it's entirely possible that Popovich has changed his stance on the issue, especially after the league specifically outlawed that particular type of play a few years ago.

Pachulia was assessed a common foul on the play and the NBA has said the Golden State center will not face any additional discipline for the incident. Popovich probably thinks Pachulia should at least receive a warning from the league like Bowen did 11 years ago, though.