I remember sitting on the couch next to my father. It was a warm, typically humid night in Memphis, Tennessee, in the middle of June \u2014 nothing out of the ordinary.<\/p>\n
Except it was Game 5 of the 2014 NBA Finals, the San Antonio Spurs versus the Miami Heat. Veteran Tim Duncan\u2019s team facing off against LeBron James\u2019 South Beach squad.<\/p>\n
My dad \u2014 with all of his glorious ball knowledge \u2014 cheered the same way he always did: a loud, emphatic yell that would startle me, no matter how prepared I was for the inevitable, followed by a cacophony of applause.<\/p>\n
I knew then that I was witnessing history \u2014 or about as much as a fourth grader could. It was an Avengers-level ensemble complete with Duncan, Kawhi Leonard, Tony Parker, Danny Green and Tiago Splitter.<\/p>\n
From that moment, I became a Spurs superfan, cheering on the same team and same players my dad had as a child \u2014 or so I thought.<\/p>\n
Life would prove otherwise.<\/p>\n
Among my newly-formed obsession with college athletics, the incessant requirement of streaming subscriptions to watch non-local NBA games and life\u2019s demands, I found it difficult to follow the Spurs as closely as I wanted to.<\/p>\n
Moving to Northern California made me an obligatory Warriors fan, and the time difference made it nearly impossible to watch games at odd and often inconvenient tipoff times.<\/p>\n
Granted, I did keep up with the larger stories: Leonard being traded; Gregg Popovich\u2019s stroke and subsequent retirement; Victor Wembanyama going first overall in 2023. But the minute, day-to-day, often inconsequential games and front office actions fell by the wayside.<\/p>\n
More often than not, I followed the Spurs in passing through box scores on ESPN and updates on X. After making the playoffs 22 years in a row, they went six seasons without even seeing the bracket. Objectively, I knew the Spurs hadn\u2019t had the best recent seasons, which reminded me of something I heard while back.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m paraphrasing, but it was something along the lines of, \u201cEvery team has their dynasty, and you have about 20 more years of watching them lose before they\u2019re great again.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Now, I will say this was in regards to Alabama football losing to an unranked Florida State after Nick Saban retired, and I\u2019m not ready to give up on the legacy he left behind.)<\/p>\n
But I feel that the advice was general enough that it could apply to all sports franchises.<\/p>\n
Yet, despite their lackluster performance and minimal success, I gradually began watching the Spurs again \u2014 listening to broadcasts at the gym on weekday evenings or tuning in to a stream on bus rides. It became a familiar background noise for the mundanity of my everyday life.<\/p>\n
Except this time, I wasn\u2019t on a brown couch in my childhood home, but charting my own path. I was cheering for a team not because of my father but because I truly wanted to.<\/p>\n
Seeing Wembanyama play for France during the 2024 Paris Olympics piqued my interest in a team I hadn\u2019t \u201ctruly\u201d kept up with since I was a child.<\/p>\n
The starting lineups changed and the team improved, but the magic remained the same \u2014 and that was the important part.<\/p>\n
They say your dad\u2019s team often influences who you cheer for. And while I refuse to utter a single word of praise toward the New England Patriots, I can appreciate what the Spurs have done down in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
Watching Wembanyama block Deni Avdija\u2019s shot in Game 5 of a playoff series against the Trail Blazers made me feel \u2014 if only for a second \u2014 like the 10-year-old girl watching Popovich lead his team to a championship. I found myself cheering like my father. No yelling, of course, because I have roommates, but I will admit there were a few loud claps.<\/p>\n
That right there is worth more than a championship trophy in my book. But I\u2019m not playing for a championship, so take my words with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n
And, perhaps, that moment showed me that maybe it doesn\u2019t take two decades for a dynasty to return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I remember sitting on the couch next to my father. It was a warm, typically humid night in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3778],"tags":[3872,7,1333,980,3349,144,529,185,293,295,189,3881,6,1220,6547,969,534,689,15840,1674,2968,1617,693,255],"class_list":["post-732428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami-heat","tag-2024-paris-olympics","tag-basketball","tag-danny-green","tag-deni-avdija","tag-gregg-popovich","tag-heat","tag-kawhi-leonard","tag-lebron-james","tag-memphis","tag-miami","tag-miami-heat","tag-miamiheat","tag-nba","tag-nba-finals","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-san-antonio","tag-spurs","tag-tennessee","tag-tiago-splitter","tag-tim-duncan","tag-tony-parker","tag-trail-blazers","tag-victor-wembanyama","tag-warriors"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116561911664696212","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}