I’ve been a basketball fan – a Spurs fan – since I was about 5 years old. I remember how it started, it was the beginning of first grade in Seguin, TX, and I had just won some sort of competition in P.E. class. (Sadly, however, this did not propel me toward a future as a professional athlete.) My prize was a poster pack featuring some players on the Spurs current roster, namely David Robinson. At the time, I had no idea who this man was or what the hell a Spur was, but it didn’t matter. As soon as the kid next to me told me David Robinson was a big deal and tried to swindle the posters off me, I knew I’d come across something good.


Photo credit: Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Up until my fifth birthday, I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area with my family. Caring about basketball was not high on any of our lists, but moving to Central Texas quickly changed that. With no other major sports franchises in the area, people put every ounce of passion they can muster into cheering for the Spurs, and that passion spread to my family shortly after we settled down.

You could say the timing was right, because although the Spurs didn’t win it all the first few years we lived there, it’s hard to imagine anyone beating those Michael Jordan-led Bulls teams. Of course, as soon as Tim Duncan arrived, San Antonio became something of a basketball Mecca.

I’ve never known a terrible Spurs team as an adult, as much as I’d like to believe that the 2009-10 Spurs (seventh in the West) were an uncontrolled dumpster fire, despite them making it to the second round of the playoffs. They’ve never given me a reason to question my allegiance, which is more than I can say for my NFL team of choice (49ers… yeah, I know, I know, I knoooooow). For all this, I am very grateful and have always been proud to be a fan of the San Antonio Spurs.

On the flip side, I have an uncle who has lived in Santa Cruz, CA nearly his entire life, and for as long as I can remember, hated the NBA.

“It’s just a bunch of thugs. I don’t get how anyone can support the NBA,” he would tell me every time we’d come out to visit, as I’d scan the ESPN BottomLine during SportsCenter, looking for updates on the Spurs.

“Not the Spurs!” I would plead, trying to explain the philosophy of the franchise and Gregg Popovich, to no avail.

It’s no use trying to explain the Spurs ethos to outsiders, it seems.

Flash forward to Thanksgiving 2015, and guess who just can’t stop gushing about the Golden State Warriors? Mmhm. Same uncle.

“Oh, they move the ball so well, they’re so unselfish, it’s incredible what they’re doing,” he said.

“… But I thought you couldn’t stand the NBA – they’re all just a bunch of thugs, right?” I prodded. “What’s with the change of heart?”

To his credit, he answered very honestly.

“Winning has a way of changing things,” he said, before pausing briefly. “And, I just feel like the guys on Golden State are good guys.”

“Yeah,” I sputtered, feeling plagiarized. Everything he just said about why he likes the Warriors is everything I’ve ever tried to explain about why I love being a fan of the Spurs. The Warriors didn’t invent this brand of ball, man.

“I finally think I understand why you like the Spurs.”

Aha! He gets it! He finally gets it! Vindication!

Now, I’m definitely going to give him crap for not becoming a Warriors fan until a few weeks before they won their first championship since 1975, but I appreciate the fact that other people are seeing a little bit of the Spurs Way in what Golden State is doing.

While we’re on the subject, I don’t know if I can blame him for not caring about Golden State until now. They had horrible owners, bad management, and handled the draft so poorly, for so long, I’m shocked they had any fans left by the time the current iteration of the team came to be.

Meanwhile, things in Spursland have been business as usual. Just one 50+ win season after another, capped by (usually) a deep playoff run. So, if you’re anything like me, after watching San Antonio’s failed effort to beat the middling Houston Rockets on Christmas Day’s slopfest, you did a lot of cursing, name calling, punching of Jason Terry voodoo dolls, and general pouting about how stupid it was. Then you realized how stupid you were for complaining that San Antonio might only have 27 wins going into 2016, and how spoiled we’ve been for nearly 20 years now.

I’ll maintain that any San Antonio fan is totally allowed to moan and groan any time the team loses to a bunch of idiots like the Rockets – on national TV no less – but please remember how great it is to be a fan of this franchise when you do it.

The Spurs might not be the toast of the town. They might not set a record for number of regular season wins. They might not be the bandwagon fan team of choice. They might be, dare I say it, boring.

But really, would you have it any other way?