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?

Season 49, Game 34
San Antonio 112, Phoenix 79
28-6, 2nd in the West

What a difference a year makes.

Last December was the worst month in the Popovich-Duncan era. For the first time, the team finished a month with a record below .500. (That, in itself, is crazy. The entire time these two have been together, they’ve only lost more games than they’ve won in a month once. Think about that.)

It wasn’t just the number of losses last December, though, it was also the way in which they were lost. Last minute bank shots; not one, but two triple overtime games; a few other overtime games, just for good measure.

And it wasn’t just the number of losses, it was the sheer number of games: 18. 18 games in 31 days.

The team finished the month 8-10, but in many ways, December was the month that broke the team. By the end of the month, they were still piddling around in the bottom of the West playoff picture. They weren’t able to get much rest for guys in December, and in order to keep up in the West, they weren’t able to get much rest after December.

They fought hard and were one win away from the #2 seed, but it was just that kind of season. Snakebit from the beginning. Kawhi had not one, but two freakish maladies that kept him out early and stunted his season. Right as the team got going late, Tiago suffered another one of his calf injuries that halted all forward momentum and helped to swing that Clippers series.

The Spurs were never able to recover from the worst month in the team’s history.

This December, however, was quite different. The team finished the month 14-2, heading into the New Year with a record of 28-6, the second best ever for the franchise. (The best ever is 28-4, so they’ve equaled the best number of wins.)

More than just winning, the Spurs are destroying other teams. (Like the Suns on Wednesday night. Do you really need me to recap anything from that game? Here goes: the Suns are a mess; the Spurs aren’t. The Spurs completely annihilated them. The game was functionally over after 12 minutes.)

San Antonio sports the league’s best point differential (often the best indicator of future success) at +13.4. Anything above 10 is championship level; 13.4 is historically great. They’ve already held 16 teams under 40 points at halftime; the next closest team is the Jazz, having done it 5 times.

And they’re only 2.5 games behind the Golden State Warriors.

The team is quietly – not-so-quietly in the corners of the Internet occupied by basketball nerds – having as historic a season as those Warriors. Plus, they continue to trend upward; they are only getting better.

If last December was the anchor that sunk last season, this December might be the catapult.

Houston comes to town Saturday night to kick off 2016. Here’s for a good dose of revenge.

Go Spurs Go.