Raised by Popovich: A Love Letter to San Antonio April 25, 2015

Manu’s bald spot shines under the bright lights. Tim runs down the court with a knee brace more often than not. Tony is no longer that 19 year-old upstart making stupid mistakes and getting yelled at by Pop on the sideline every five minutes (although it still happens).

As a 24 year-old Spurs fan, I can only vaguely remember a time when the Spurs didn’t make the playoffs. I was 7 years old when the Spurs won the lottery with Tim Duncan. We’ve gone to the playoffs every year since. Shockingly, the players that helped shape my childhood are still on the team. They have literally been the most consistent part of my life. I’ve moved across the world, I’ve tried wearing all black and ripping holes in my jeans, friends have come and gone, but the Spurs have always been there. It’s like having a child that is so consistently well behaved you forget to praise them for it.

The San Antonio Spurs are so much a part of the community in San Antonio that they feel like old friends. In 1997, something incredible happened. Peter Holt, a businessman in San Antonio devoted to an ethics-based, community-minded business model, acquired the team. Popovich was appointed head coach during the 1996-1997 season, and R.C. Buford became the team’s Director of Scouting that same year. Popovich would later relinquish his title of General Manager to Buford. This holy trinity has managed the Spurs franchise to perfection, creating and maintaining a community-minded team that is recognized for teamwork, integrity and selflessness.

I used to keep a framed picture of David Robinson in my desk in elementary school, and I will never forget what it felt like to see him walking down the school hallway in person. He was considering sending his son to my school.  I froze in my tracks and stared up at a giant, who in turn laughed and held his hand out to me. My mother recently told me a story of seeing him in the lobby of an apartment building. She smiled and said, “Hi, David,” despite never having met the man.

I will never forget the Memorial Day Miracle, when Sean Elliott sank a 3-pointer in the final seconds against the Portland Trailblazers in the Western Conference Finals on the their way to their first NBA Championship in 1999.   He was off-balance, on his tiptoes with his heels out of bounds. I have a holographic card of the moment in my wallet so I can watch the ball soaring from his fingertips whenever I want. I’ll also never forget the way the city rallied around him when his kidneys failed and his brother donated one of his for a transplant, or the pictures of Elliott in a wheelchair in the San Antonio Express-News. I met him at Taco Cabana, a Tex-Mex fast food restaurant.

I’ll never forget standing in line for two hours at ten years old, waiting for Tim Duncan’s autograph. When I reached the front, I was so overwhelmed that when he asked me who to make the autograph out to I forgot my name. He laughed as my dad told him my name, and I walked away feeling accomplished for making the notoriously shy Duncan smile, even at my own expense.

I’ll never forget going to games in the Alamodome, a stadium built by former mayor Henry Cisneros in a bid to bring an NFL team to San Antonio. The NFL team never came, so they put up a gargantuan, deep-blue curtain down the middle of the stadium and threw down a basketball court. I always preferred the $5 nosebleed seats (bear in mind, these were designed to be football nosebleeds, so binoculars were required) because that’s where the party was. That was when people still argued that their first championship was a fluke and that they could never win one in a full season. A lockout that year had shortened the season to only 50 regular season games per team.

I’ll never forget the newspaper the morning after the championship with a picture of David Robinson and Tim Duncan standing side by side, smiling at each other and hoisting the Larry O’Brien and Bill Russell Trophies into the air with ‘champs’ written above them in all caps. That was the first time I ever heard Queen. The headline was ‘Nice Guys Finally Finish First’. I had a blown up, poster-sized version of it framed on my wall. Back then, Duncan and Robinson were called the Twin Towers, and the real buildings were still standing.

I’ll never forget how it felt to lose to Lebron James and the Miami Heat in 2013 in Game 7. I was still in college and chased a Heat fan down the street, finally throwing a shoe at his retreating back. Nor will I forget how sweet it was to beat the Heat soundly in 2014 in the ultimate battle of star power versus fundamentals. I like to give the Spurs credit for destroying the Death Star that was the 2014 Miami Heat team.

Now, its 2015: we’ve made the playoffs every year since 1998, won five championships and enjoyed the Golden Age of what I argue to be the greatest franchise in the history of professional sports. What’s more is that it’s been accomplished with a class and loyalty unheard of in professional sports. As a Spurs fan prone to getting into arguments with fans of opposing teams, the three most common rejoinders I hear are (1) The Spurs are boring, (2) The Spurs are old and (3) Manu Ginobili dives all the time. They never realize they’re complimenting them. The Spurs play fundamental basketball. They played unyielding defense before it was cool. They valued ball-movement and assists over flashy dunks. Their unselfish style of play and notoriously deep bench contributes to the longevity of the all of the players’ careers. Ginobili perfectly encapsulates what has made the franchise great. He is a 2-time NBA All-Star. That number could’ve been higher had he not conceded to becoming the Spurs’ sixth man, a weapon coming off of the bench rather than a starter. When Ginobili drives down the lane, he looks like a whirling dervish, limbs flying awkwardly at all angles as he throws himself towards the hoop with no regard for his own body. It looks anything but graceful, but more often than not he comes up with points or a foul call. He absolutely plays up any contact, and certainly did not deserve all of the free throws he took. I like to think that he might get this from growing up in soccer-loving Argentina.

This brings me to another unique attribute of the Spurs: they are an international team. I am currently teaching English as a Second Language abroad. I have met people from all over the world in my travels and have discovered that the Spurs are a global conversation topic. I met Brazilians and discussed Tiago Splitter. I waxed poetic about Tony Parker and Boris Diaw with a couple of French tourists in Bali. I met Argentinians who revered Ginobili and went to see him on his South American tour with the Larry O’Brien trophy. I met a Turkish man in Lubbock, Texas and was shocked when he also remembered Hedo Turkoglu playing for the Spurs. I met Australians in Kuta who talked about Patty Mills’ and Aaron Baynes’ fame in their country. I met an Italian in Prague who brought up Marco Belinelli when I told him I was from San Antonio.

Professional sports have long been known to be a place where business tycoons and celebrities rub shoulders with blue-collar workers and plebes. They break down barriers, and this phenomenon takes on even greater significance in San Antonio. Mark Twain famously said “there are only four unique cities in America: Boston, New Orleans, San Fransisco and San Antonio”. To some, it might be surprising that San Antonio is on this list, but it certainly won’t be to anyone who’s lived there.

Last night I was trying to explain Fiesta to a friend here in Indonesia, which is happening now as the first round of the playoffs continue. Fiesta is a citywide celebration that happens every April: San Antonio’s answer to Mardi Gras, it celebrates Texas’ independence from Mexico. The irony, however, is that fiesta is a Spanish word and that the party is characterized by mariachi bands, margarita drinking, Tex-Mex cuisine, and sombreros. It’s sort of like celebrating American Independence by having tea and crumpets and listening to The Beatles.

This is the beauty of San Antonio, however. It’s a city colored brightly by the fusion of Mexican and American culture. I grew up speaking Spanish concurrently with English, which is lucky because lots of billboards in San Antonio are in Spanish. My go-to hangover cure was either Bean and Cheese tacos washed down with a can of Big Red or menudo. I actually know all of the words to “La Macarena” and “La Bamba”. This is not to suggest that it is all sunshine and rainbows. Tales of conflict on the border brought on by the drug war, the too-often-ignored abuse of women at the hands of coyotes, and arguments over illegal immigration were the background noise of my childhood, long before it was the national conversation that it is today. Our housekeeper was an illegal immigrant whom my father helped to get a green card. I remember sitting on the kitchen table watching telenovelas while she cooked. On Christmas Eve, she would make tamales from scratch and we would all be elbow-deep in homemade masa. In high school, students were threatened with expulsion if they had unexcused absences on the day of a city-wide protest against voter identification laws. But if there is one thing that truly unites the diverse demographics of the city, it is Los Spurs. We yell “Va Spurs Va”. We love them with one heart.

I know that I will never be part of something like this again, and so at 24 years old I am already dreading the coming days when I will gab on about the good ole days to anyone that will listen. I have often imagined how I will react when Tim Duncan inevitably retires. Will I faint? Will I cry? Will I remain in denial? For now, I am simply enjoying the ride and will be forever grateful for the values that have been instilled in me by Coach Pop and the San Antonio Spurs. Viva San Antonio, Viva Los Spurs, Viva Fiesta.  

*Update: I cried very hard when Tim Duncan retired