The Spurs

May 21, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

I’ve not slept well the last week or so. I’m not entirely sure why. Some of it may have to do with the weather: it’s been hot this past few days, and I often struggle to sleep when the temperature is too warm. But I suspect the primary reason is probably that the Spurs are making a deep playoff run.

Even as I write this, you are both well aware that your dad is a huge fan of the Spurs. What you probably don’t know is the story of how that came to be. I figure now is as good a time as any to share that story.

I grew up in northeast Texas, a couple hours east of Dallas. My original teams in professional sports were all Dallas teams: the Cowboys, the Rangers, and the Mavericks. I’m still very much a Cowboys fan (again, as you already know). I stopped following the Rangers years ago, because my MLB fandom declined forever after the 1994 strike ended the season abruptly, without crowing a champion. That was the year my interest in baseball peaked and a season that was shaping up to be historic; I decided if neither the owners nor the players cared, why should I?

But in 1989, two things happened: my maternal grandparents moved to San Antonio and became Spurs fans, and David Robinson joined the team. At the time, I was a six-foot tall sixth grader who towered over my peers the way Robinson towered over his. Robinson blocked shots like crazy, and so did I. Robinson was an excellent scorer, and I fancied myself the same. Robinson brought elite athleticism to the center position, something I had never seen before. Other kids aspired to be Michael Jordan, but Michael Jordan was a guard and I was a center. I wanted to be David Robinson, and wore his number 50 for the rest of my basketball playing days.

I still remember the starting lineup from that year: Rod Strickland at the point, Sean Elliot and Willie Anderson at the wings, and Terry Cummings at power forward. That team was fun to watch. I still don’t understand how that team never made any real noise in the playoffs (they won 55+ games twice, but never advanced past the second round with that core group of guys). I wasn’t a mature enough fan to have a perspective regarding what was missing from that team. But I liked them, and I enjoyed following them.

Then the Mavericks fell into a historic state of disrepair. Over the next nine seasons the team averaged 22 wins, and set what were then records for most losses and worst winning percentage in NBA history. They were practically impossible to watch and root for as an adolescent, and I don’t recall any of my friends being big Mavs fans. Most of my friends just rooted for good teams. I was the only one I knew who rooted for San Antonio.

I went to college in San Antonio. The Spurs were not part of the decision, but were a happy benefit. The liberal arts school I attended (Trinity University) didn’t have a ton of basketball fans, and most students weren’t from San Antonio and thus didn’t root for the Spurs anyway. My point being: even though I went to college where the Spurs played, I was still one of the only Spurs fans I knew.

The summer of 1999 was pretty special, both for me and for my Spurs fandom. To bolster my resume with some professional experience, I got an internship working at the San Antonio branch of the Federal Reserve bank of Dallas, where I co-wrote a paper analyzing the South Texas economy. The internship was unpaid, so I got a job waiting tables at night to pay for my apartment and help me save up some spending money for the school year. My girlfriend at the time also stayed in San Antonio, along with several other friends. I was experiencing a lot of new things while secure on a foundation of familiarity thanks to the location (I had completed three years of college in San Antonio by this point) and having some friends around.

The best part of spending that summer in San Antonio, though, was getting to experience a Spurs’ playoff run in the city. I couldn’t believe what I witnessed. Downtown skyscrapers (or what pass for skyscrapers in San Antonio) hung (or in one case, wrapped their entire buildings with) huge signs reading “Go Spurs Go”. Signs and flags popped up in homes and offices all over town. Seemingly half the cars in town had Spurs flags raised from the front windows. The energy in the city was palpable.

Perhaps best of all, I was working with people who were from San Antonio, and who loved the Spurs as much as I did. The mood at work (and especially at the Fed, where more of the folks were locals) was electric. I’ll never forget when one coworker, a wonderful woman who informally took to looking after me that summer, casually said “we’re going to win it all this year”. Until she said it, I hadn’t considered the possibility. But she said it with such confidence that it stuck with me.

The Spurs had a good record that year, but it had been a strike shortened season. The league played a brutally compact 50-game schedule, forcing teams to play games on more nights with less rest than normal. The Spurs compiled a 37-13 record (good for a 60+ win pace), but it was hard to tell how real that was. The Spurs’ best player that year was no longer David Robinson, but Tim Duncan playing in only his second year. And just a few years earlier, the Spurs put together the best record in the league, only to be embarrassed in the playoffs by Hakeem Olajuwon and the Rockets. So I was by no means as confident as my coworker, but I at least took note and started looking for clues.

A week or two later I took advantage of the long Memorial Day weekend and attended a game. Back then the Spurs played in the Alamodome, a football stadium. They put a tarp roughly down the 50-yard line and assembled a basketball court on one half of the football field. They erected makeshift grandstands in front of the tarp, but otherwise fans sat in seats designed for watching football. It wasn’t a great basketball venue (despite hosting some of the largest crowds in NBA history), but it offered one critical benefit for a poor college student: upper deck tickets were cheap. I purchased $8 tickets for my girlfriend and me. We were actually stationed behind the tarp, with an excellent view of the unused half of the football field; but we were so far away that we still had an unobstructed view of the court.

The Spurs were playing the Portland Trail Blazers, the team I thought might be the best in the NBA that year. The Spurs had won game one, but weren’t giving the fans much to root for in game 2. The Spurs trailed 48-34 at halftime, and were thoroughly outplayed that half. I remember heading to the restroom while grasping for signs of hope; Sean Elliot had played pretty well, but otherwise I could’t find much reason for optimism.

The Spurs hung around in the second half and got close a couple of times, but each time the Trail Blazers responded with a run of their own. The Spurs were down six with a minute to play, a situation that felt pretty hopeless unless the Spurs found a way to deploy Sean Elliot’s hot hand.

Well, Elliot hit a three to cut the lead to three. After a stop, Mario Ellie got fouled and sank two free throws to cut the lead to one. The Spurs fouled Damon Stoudamire, who sank one of two free throws to push the lead to two. The Spurs called timeout with twelve seconds to play. At this point I had long since given up on the Spurs winning; this just didn’t feel like their day. I knew they technically had a chance, but I sorta couldn’t imagine them pulling it off.

What happened next is the stuff of San Antonio lore. The Spurs inbounded the ball to Sean Elliot who, thanks to a defender flying by, caught the ball very near the sideline. He pivoted with his toes inbounds, but with his heels hovering over the sideline: if he put his heels down, he would have been out of bounds for a turnover. But he never put his heels down. He never looked at anything other than the basket. David Robinson stood wide open at the rim; Elliot ignored him and let the ball fly.

Elliot scored, and what happened next I will never forget so long as I live. Absolute, utter pandemonium. The Trail Blazers called a timeout, and the PA system started playing a song. But the place was so loud, I couldn’t make out the song for over a minute; I could only hear the beat (the song turned out to be “YMCA”). I was high-fiving strangers in the crowd. I was delirious, and so was everyone else in the building.

The Spurs put together a smothering stop to end the game, and we filed out of the stadium in a state of bliss. I drove home past cars honking and Spurs signs everywhere, savoring one of my favorite memories as a sports fan. With a 2-0 lead in the Western Conference finals, and having ripped the hearts out of the Trail Blazers by stealing game 2, I suddenly began to believe the Spurs might really win.

Well, they did win. The swept the Trail Blazers (I really do think that game 2 loss carried over into games 3 and 4; they were too good to get swept, even by that Spurs team) and went on to beat an overachieving Knicks team in the Finals 4-1.

I was waiting tables during game five, so I knew the Spurs won but didn’t watch the game closely (although I definitely snuck into the restaurant bar, along with several other wait staff, to catch parts of the game – including the ending). After my shift I was so excited the Spurs won that I just wanted to celebrate with other Spurs fans. All I could think was to drive downtown, assuming I could find some fans on the Riverwalk.

I never made it to the Riverwalk. Once I got to downtown, the streets turned into a parking lot. Cars everywhere just honked and celebrated. I’m not sure I travelled a mile over the course of the next hour (not because I didn’t try, but just because there was nowhere to go). I didn’t care: I had found my people. It may not have been exactly the celebration I sought, but it felt perfect as it unfolded.

After college I moved to Austin, where there were few Spurs fans back then (there are more now). Two years later I moved to Phoenix, where there were even fewer. By the time I moved to Phoenix, online news articles became available. For the first time, I could read about the prior day’s Spurs games without a subscription to the San Antonio newspaper (impractical when living in other cities). I distinctly remember wasting work days each spring devouring any and all articles I could find the day after a satisfying win. I remember feeling like I could sense the years when the Spurs would win. The Spurs won three titles in a five year span between 2003-2007, and were close enough in the other two years that I can name the plays that effectively eliminated them (Derek Fisher’s shot with 0.4 in 2004 and Manu’s foul on Dirk in 2006).

The Spurs remained competitive over the next several years, with Tim Duncan aging just enough that the team slowly turned the reigns over to Manu Ginobili and then Tony Parker. By 2012 the team started getting close again; in another strike-shortened season, the Spurs ripped off wins in their first ten playoff games, sparking my favorite sportswriter at the time to start pondering where they would rank among the all-time great teams. Unfortunately, the Spurs lost their next four games to the outrageously young but talented Thunder. In 2013 the Spurs made it back to the NBA Finals against what seemed like a juggernaut Miami Heat team. What I remember most about that Finals was game 6. I was at a networking event when my phone started blowing up with text messages from high school friends that the Spurs were about to win. The Spurs had a 3-2 series lead, and were ahead 94-89 with 28 seconds to play. I started tracking the game on my phone, partially ignoring the dinner conversation going on around me. LeBron made a three, then Kawhi missed one of his two free throws; I remember this being the first indication something wasn’t quite right. I only found out later that, after an ensuing timeout, Pop left Timmy on the bench, and that Chris Bosh jumped over smaller defenders to secure a rebound, and that Ray Allen hit that incredible shot backpedalling back to the corner. At that point, all I knew was that the Heat tied the game, and that the Spurs were going into overtime.

I still appreciate that team for remaining competitive, both through the overtime in game 6, and throughout game seven. I’ll never forget Timmy missing a bunny over Shane Battier with about a minute to go in game 7. More than the miss, it’s Timmy’s reaction I’ll never forget: Miami called a timeout, and Timmy slammed his hands into the floor with all his might. He was distraught. At that point the Spurs, at least in theory, still had time to win. I don’t know if Timmy gave up, or if Timmy knew. But the air went out of the Spurs, as if they had spent every last drop of emotional reserve they could muster, but couldn’t muster any more after that miss.

The 2014 team was apparently pretty special. I say “apparently” because that was the year your mom and I moved to Singapore, and I missed almost the entire season. But to this day, sportswriters wax poetic about how that 2014 was one of the most aesthetically pleasing of all time. I’ve seen clips, and they passed and moved and shot with such pace that it really was beautiful to watch. I took a day off of work to watch the closeout game, when the Spurs exacted revenge on the Heat. At that point both teams knew the Spurs were the better team, and it was only a matter of time before the dam burst. It didn’t take long, and a game highlighted by a Manu throwback dunk (he was almost 37, after all) and an insane 90-second barrage of 3s from the bench mob unit buried the Heat for good. Just like I had a decade earlier, I scoured the internet for every article I could find that helped me enjoy my celebration of the Spurs championship.

At that point I knew how lucky I was to be following a team with such an extended run. Fifteen straight years of excellence isn’t supposed to happen in the NBA. I knew eventually the run would end, but decided to cherish what remained. I even subscribed to NBA league pass that next season to watch games from Singapore. That team didn’t have much postseason success, but I enjoyed watching the games regardless. I was on borrowed time with that team.

Sure enough, things slowly unraveled. Kawhi emerged as a great player in the league, capable of anchoring a championship caliber team. Even with Duncan’s retirement, it looked like the Spurs might pull off the impossible and remain relevant for the foreseeable future. Alas, Kawhi had some bad injury luck and decided he wanted out of San Antonio. Teams in the NBA don’t replace stars like that, and Kawhi’s departure spelled the beginning of the end for that run of excellence. The Spurs fought proudly for a few more years before admitting defeat and tearing the team down for a full rebuild.

There were some lean years but, honestly, the Spurs got about as lucky as they could have. They missed the playoffs in ’20, ’21, and ’22, but were close each time. They didn’t go into full teardown until ’23. And that’s the year that changed everything. They won a draft featuring a truly generational player, a guy that legitimately looks like he could go down as not only an all-time great, but compete for the GOAT title. It’s way too early to make projections, but the Spurs got insanely lucky landing Victor Wembanyama in the draft.

The luck didn’t end there. The Spurs managed to draft probably the best player in a weak 2024 draft with the fourth pick to get Steph Castle, and then lucked into the second pick in a loaded 2025 lottery to get Dylan Harper.

I’ve started subscribing to League Pass again, just because I want to watch as much of Wemby’s career trajectory as I possibly can. I’m old enough to know what I might be watching, and really want to watch as long as he remains on the trajectory I think he’s on.

Which brings us to this year. Prediction markets had the Spurs pegged to win 40-43 games, depending on where you looked. Assuming they stayed reasonably healthy, I expected the Spurs to beat those projections. But even I never could have anticipated what I watched this season: the Spurs put together a 62 win season (one of the best in the franchise’s storied history) while all the young talent dramatically outperformed expectations.

And now, here we are, in the playoffs again for the first time in seven years. I had almost forgotten how much the playoffs mess with my nervous system. Teams inevitably lose games, and these series are short enough that losing a single game can start to worry you that your season might soon be over.

Based on their record, one would have predicted this Spurs team to win their first two playoff rounds before losing to the Thunder. Well, so far that prediction would be on track. The team won their first two rounds (again, not without some drama) and are now locked in a battle for the opportunity to go the NBA Finals. They won game one and lost game two. Based on what I saw in those two games, if both teams were healthy I would feel pretty great about the Spurs’ chances to win the series. But multiple Spurs players are now nursing injuries that sound likely to prevent them from playing altogether, or best case limit their effectiveness. I never expected the Spurs to win in this round, but watching them win game one I suddenly realized they absolutely have the ability to win, and so now it will hurt terribly if they lose.

Of course, it would have hurt terribly either way. The NBA playoffs are like that. Your weaknesses get exposed in ways that are excruciatingly uncomfortable, and you fight tooth and nail to play to your strengths and limit or hide your weaknesses. But worthy opponents expose your weaknesses; sometimes those weaknesses come as a surprise, sometimes they have long been known and you just hope you can survive through them. Those brutal losses hurt dreadfully, but they serve as gifts: they tell teams, in no uncertain terms, exactly where they need to improve in order to get better.

This particular Spurs team was never supposed to get this far this fast. They are way, way ahead of schedule. And it’s an almost ironclad rule in the NBA that teams have to suffer painful losses in the playoffs before they can come back in future years and win. Part of what has made this team so special is they make you suspend the disbelief that they are too young to win, and that they have to lose before they can win. Maybe they do, but these guys are so good they make you wonder if they might be the first to ever break through on their first real chance; that sense of wonder and awe is worthy of gratitude just by itself.

Zooming back out, there are a couple parting thoughts I want to explore. The first is just how lonely my Spurs fandom has been overall. As I mentioned before, I didn’t grow up around Spurs fans, I didn’t go to college around Spurs fans, and other than one brief and immortal summer in 1999, I haven’t really lived among and interacted regularly with Spurs fans.

One of the benefits of social media is that you are able to find communities of people with like interests. Nowadays I often go on X to celebrate with fellow Spurs fans, scratching the itch I used to scratch by reading articles online the following morning. Only now I can celebrate immediately with a sense of community after a game, and then look into deeper analysis the next day. And my fandom has won some converts along the way. You two are helpfully rooting for the Spurs alongside me. My dear friend, whom we affectionately call Uncle Regan, roots for the team at least in part because he’s my friend and he knows how much they mean to me. And your real Uncle, though he’s genuinely a Warriors fan, roots for the Spurs when they don’t play the Warriors, again at least partly as a show of affection to me. So I have more sense of community around my Spurs now than I have since that summer in 1999, and for that I’m grateful.

The bigger question I’ve been wrestling with this season has to do with attachment. There’s a concept I’ve been wrestling with: that pretty much everything we encounter in life is a gift from God, but once we become too attached to any of those gifts, they begin to get in the way of our relationship with God and the other gifts available to us. And so, when I watch the Spurs, I find myself constantly asking whether I have found the right balance. I truly love the team, and feel like watching them has been a gift. And as long as I watch with a sense of appreciation and gratitude and love, I am doing fine at maintaining that balance. But I’m constantly checking (and, I’ll admit, wondering) whether I’m crossing the line into attachment. I am competitive and emotional, and I would be silly to pretend otherwise. One thing I am starting to understand and accept is that one can be competitive and truly want to win without being attached to outcome. That might sound counterintuitive, but I think it’s true. Here, I think, is the distinction: ultimately we have to be able to differentiate between process and outcome. If we’ve tried our best, we have to be willing to honor that effort and accept whatever outcome. If, in those situation, losing hurts, that signals how we should use the loss as an opportunity to learn and improve. If we didn’t try our best, we can learn the value of putting our best effort into something, discovering how much more it hurts to fall short because of a lack of effort.

Obviously, when it comes to the Spurs, I don’t have a lot of influence on outcomes. And yet I care, pretty deeply. I’ll be curious to know if I ever feel a sense of attachment or a call to surrender that attachment. As of now, I sense the Spurs have more to teach me, presumably about living in the discomfort of uncertainty. If I could will the Spurs to victory, I most certainly would. But I don’t think it works that way. So I try to watch my team from a place of love, wanting to see them grow and improve and reach their potential, presumably because I want the same for myself. Perhaps therein lies the learning opportunity. I’m not entirely sure, but having written this note, the places I intend to explore are how sitting in discomfort can help me in other areas of life, and how I can pursue my full potential knowing I might “lose” on occasion.

I love you both. Thank you for watching the Spurs with me. Whether you continue to follow the Spurs, or any other team, I do hope you find something you care enough about to put your whole self into, even (and in fact especially) if you risk the crushing disappointment of failure.

Love,

Dad