I've only been a member of this community for a few short weeks so please forgive me if my blog structure and such isn't up to snuff.  I look forward to growing more comfortable with this community and blogging in general but for now my stuff shall more than likely be tragically flawed compared to the rest of yalls.  Anyways now to business.

Last night was a sad night for me.  Being a freshmen in college I find I no longer have the time to watch my beloved Spurs as often as I'd like, thanks to PTR however I've been able to follow links to feeds and watch the games on my computer.  If only the games were still fun to watch.  Like I said earlier, last night was a sad night.  I came home from class and quickly flipped to ESPN.com to see what time the game was going to be on, I was surprised to see it already underway and even more surprised to see our Spurs with a 17 point lead!  Sadly though an all too familiar feeling of dread quickly set in because I knew, I just knew, we were going to blow it.  I began to watch in horror as the twisted plot unfolded before me.  The Blazers, a respectable team but hardly the Lakers, worked through our defense like it was invisible, while on offense I saw nothing even coming close to the fluid ball movement of our glory days.  What I saw was a sloppy, old, confused basketball team, and as I shut off the feed in anger after seeing Timmy blow an easy rebound I came to the realization that our window might finally have closed.

I wasnt born in San Antonio, I moved here when I was about four from Washington D.C. in 1994.  My mom could care less about athletics, and my dad while a bigtime sportsfan, had basketball loyalty to his Georgetown Hoyas and little else.  Needless to say I had no idea who these Spurs were, if you were to ask me who my favorite team was I would have told you the Toronto Raptors for the obvious reason that their mascot was a badass dinosaur.  Sure I eventually learned who David Robinson was.  I knew they played in the Alamodome, and I knew they had pink in the logo...that was about it.  Then came 1999.  

    He was so good he could score 20 points a game! He could block shots!  He could pass! He could even dribble all the way down the court and score, something I thought only little guys could do!  He was Tim Duncan and apparently he was really really good, or at least my dad said so.  The playoffs had just started and everyone in town was excited.  I can still remember seeing the bright green and pink GO SPURS GO signs all over town, and even though at the time I knew absolutely nothing about basketball or the Spurs I was still excited.  My dad even let me stay up late with him, (sometimes til 10:30!) to watch the games.  From my dad I learned all about what a bad guy Latrell Sprewell was, or how Rasheed Wallace was a big baby.  I felt bad when we beat the Timberwolves because they had really cool uniforms, and I jumped up and down when we beat the Lakers, having only recently heard the name "Kobe".  It wasn't until a certain memorial day though that I truly experienced basketball magic for the first time.  When Sean Elliot hoisted up that off balance 3 i felt it, that feeling where time seems to stop and the ball just hangs in the air like its being held up by a wire forever, until all of a sudden you snap back to reality and the ball is passing through the next like a penny dropping into a pool of water. I was screaming, I was jumping, I was high fiving everyone in sight and my dad was hoisting me up on his shoulders as we went running through the house.  I barely knew who Sean Elliot was but at that moment in time he was my hero.  And in a way he still is, because his shot kick-started my love for the greatest game on earth.

After that incredible run to the 99' title I couldnt get enough basketball.  I watched constantly, a tough task because with our basic cable we only got the saturday/sunday ABC games and the locally broadcast Spurs games.  I scoured ESPN.com pouring over stats and checking power rankings.  The favorite part of my night was going over game recaps while drinking a glass of hot chocolate.  I began to defend the Spurs with ferocity and I grew to hate their opponents even more.  Those three years between titles were tough, but it only made it all the sweeter when we made those Lakers cry in 2003. I have so many memories about the Spurs among them...

I remember hooting and hollering like a spider monkey when Malik Rose went top shelf on Dikembe Mutumbo in 2003, and then writing him a letter with plenty of smudges because my misty eyes were keeping me from seeing straight after finding out he was being traded. 

I remember watching Bruce Bowen play defense and feeling like everytime another player took a shot at him  they were taking a shot at me.  All those years of him putting the clamps on all the prima donna guards I grew to hate only inspired me, a plucky skinny white kid, to play my guts out on defense.  

I remember watching a young Argentine named gino-BEE-li steal the ball from Richard Jefferson and signal an incredible comeback as I stood pacing our houses den, chewing on my shirt with anxiety.  Or how about the time we beat Phoenix, in its first year of the Nash Revolution, in Phoenix when Manu scored 48 points and we came back from 17 down. Classic.  Obi-Wan Ginobili will always have a place in my heart.

I remember being completely ready to crown Tony Parker as the best point guard in the league, only to watch in horror as he inexplicably collapsed under pressure.  I remember when ABC piped in french audio for a few moments right as Tony was doing his thing.  "OOOOh LaLaLaLa" Priceless.  I was so proud when he was able to hoist that Finals MVP trophy because I knew how far he had come.

And I remember Tim. I remember the most underrated performance in Finals history (21 points-20 Rebounds-10 Assists-8 Blocks). I remember the way he put us on his back in game 7 of 2005.  I remember his never miss banker, his horribly bad GUNN commercials, and the autograph he gave me way back in 1998, after he almost tripped over me in PetsMart, "Your Friend Tim Duncan, #21".  I could fill up a blog with Tim memories.  He was and will always be my absolute favorite player and the absolute best power forward to ever play the game.

Each playoff run was about so much more than basketball. Whether it was burning Dirk Nowitzki posters during that heartbreaking 2006 series. Or running around downtown painted in silver and black screaming with my best friends all night because WE WERE 4 TIME CHAMPS!!  Or crying softly as Derek Fisher sunk his .04 catastrophe and my whole world seemed to crumble around me.  I feel like I grew up with this team, through my parents divorce, through my grandmothers death, through my moms battle with alcoholism, through middle school, through highschool, through first kisses and broken hearts the Spurs have been there.  The Spurs have always been there, helping the community, never complaining, winning with the fundamentals, and by the grace of the basketball gods making magical buzzer beater after magical buzzer beater.  The Spurs kept me going through some very tough times, I'll always be grateful for that.

In the back of my mind I knew this day would come.  I knew that my childhood heroes would eventually grow old and turn in their capes to make room for the new stars.  So to the Spurs I'd just like to say thank you, thank you for every late night barn burner, for every playoff run, for every rodeo road trip, for every buzzer beater, whether Horrys, Kerrs, Ginobilis, Avery's, and even Masons, for every riverparade, for everything.  I'm so proud to call this team my team, and tehy will have a place in my heart forever.