I’ll never forget Tim Duncan leaving the floor for the last time in Oklahoma City. A talented, interesting, and ultimately lacking Spurs team had just lost to the Thunder in Game 6 of the Western Conference Semifinals. Timmy slipped off the court, raised his hand briefly, and disappeared into the tunnel. Blink and you miss it. The Spurs as we knew them were done.
I remember panicking in that moment because you could tangibly sense that something bigger than basketball was leaving with him. I wasn’t
sure what things were going to look like moving forward, but I knew I’d never experience anything like it again.
Sure enough, I spent the next ten years settling into that feeling. Understanding how the rest of the world lived and just exactly how scary it is out there. Star players decide they want to leave. The playoffs aren’t some birthright you’re entitled to. You lose a lot. You check out from time to time. That thing I was so scared of when Tim walked off the court did come to pass. It really was over. Sure, it became less scary the more it became our reality, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still a little sad. Every season felt a little bit more like a cold reminder that not only was what we had singular, it was also finished. We should just be grateful we got to see it at all.
I had fully accepted all of that. Made my peace with it. Spurs fans don’t get to have nice things forever, and that’s fine. That’s basketball. That’s life.
This season has been special though. Frankly, everything has been a little special since that ping pong ball bounced our way three years ago, but this is the season where it really started to click. Where this team stopped feeling like an idea and started feeling like a reality. It was a familiar feeling, even if I think a lot of us were still keeping it at bay. We’d made our peace, right? The other shoe had come. We’d had our golden era. We’d had our time in the sun. Ignoring the evidence piling up in front of us seemed prudent. Necessary. Wise, even.
So yeah, I wasn’t really expecting this game to cleanly close the loop on Duncan’s last dance. It didn’t occur to me that it was even something that was on the menu. The thing about making your peace with something is that you stop looking for it. You can’t recreate what Tim Duncan was. I’d accepted that. What I hadn’t considered was that maybe you don’t have to.
The other night in Oklahoma City didn’t feel like a recreation. It didn’t feel like an echo. It felt like something new that somehow carried the same specific gravity that made those old Spurs teams feel like more than basketball. These kids have never really known a Spurs team that mattered. They’ve heard about it. They’ve seen the highlights. They play under those banners every night and they know what it means. But they carry themselves with the focus and urgency of a group trying to build something of their own. They put on the silver and black and inherited the franchise the same way you might inherit a house. Maybe you didn’t build it, but it’s yours now.
For the rest of our lives, we get to remember guys like Julian Champagnie, who hit six threes in a Game 7 on the road. He didn’t exactly win the game on his own, but he went out of his way to disprove my theory that there can only be one Champagnie Game. In the third quarter alone, off the same Victor Wembanyama screen run again and again, Champagnie just kept shooting. Kept making them. A guy who by every reasonable measure should not be here and should not be capable of meeting this moment was absolutely owning it.
We get to tell stories about Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson. These are guys who lived through the other version of this. They absorbed every tough stretch and false start, every early exit, every “we’re building toward something” speech that probably started to feel a little hollow after a while. Every trade rumor too, and there were plenty of those. They took all of it in stride, kept showing up, kept believing in what this thing was becoming. Last night Keldon was out there hitting impossible threes and Devin was throwing down exclamation point dunks as time expired. They celebrated harder. Laughed louder. When it was over they looked like guys who understood exactly what it had taken to get there, because they were there for all of it.
And then there’s Victor Wembanyama, who doesn’t fit neatly into either group. He’s not a veteran carrying the weight of the bad years, but he’s also not some kid unburdened by history. He’s something the league hasn’t quite seen before. Importantly, he’s also not Tim Duncan, something that’s worth saying out loud every once in a while.
They play differently. They carry themselves differently. They almost feel like they come from different planets entirely. Tim seemed to float above everything, a silent pillar, steadfast and consistent. Victor crashes into it, a wild and extraordinary talent bursting at the seams, always pushing against the edges of what’s possible. The contrast is almost remarkable. And yet somehow, in this moment, the feeling was the same. Twenty-two points. Seven rebounds. Western Conference Finals MVP. Quiet in result if not in method, and without any apparent concern for how impossible this was all supposed to be.
Tim Duncan raised his hand and walked into that tunnel ten years ago and left something hanging in the air that I eventually stopped looking for. Saturday night, in that same building, down that same tunnel, Victor Wembanyama walked off the court and I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Not relief, not joy, but something closer to recognition. Like the answer had been coming all along and I had just stopped asking the question.
Whatever is happening right now might feel familiar but, rest assured, it’s something else entirely. The Wembanyama era isn’t going to look like the Duncan era. They probably aren’t going to win five titles over the next decade. They probably aren’t going to set the standard for professionalism. They certainly aren’t going to do it quite so quietly. What they are going to do is make it their own. The possibilities are endless.
We’re not going back and we never were. What we are doing is moving forward. This isn’t a return at all.
It’s an arrival.
How amazing is that?
Takeaways:
- I can’t believe we got our LeBron James chase down block moment and that Luke Kornet was the one who did it. Or should I call him by his full official title, “The Much Maligned Luke Kornet”? Lost in the sauce of how crazy that play was is that I think my body almost had a full blown panic attack at the turnover that preceded it. Harper, God love him, trying to force that pass into Luke, and Hartenstien screaming in front of it and then racing down the court. Can you imagine a seven footer trying to run a fast break? Where does he even get these ideas? Anyway, the idea of I-Hart of all people being the one to make this amazing play and draw the score back to a four point game almost ended me. The crowd was going to erupt and my insides were going to leak out of my ears. I don’t know how Kornet got there so fast. I don’t know how he got it so clean. I don’t think I want to know. Some miracles don’t need to be explained.
- I can’t believe the Thunder led twice in this game. Excluding Game 1, it felt like in this series that shifting momentum back once you lost it was almost impossible. Like we were only allotted one big swing, and if you let the other team regain the upper hand it was over. When Shai caught fire in the second quarter, every alarm bell in my head went off, blaring about how we’d seen this movie before. The craziest part is that I didn’t even really have time to have a panic attack. The Spurs calmly just regained control. Fox hit a three. KJ scored. Fox hit another three. They just shut it down. The half ended and I was out of breath, like, what just happened?
- Same thing when Caruso put them up in the second half. 61-60. Before I could even recognize the icy dread closing around my throat, Jules banged in a few threes and we were off. I think it was like a 16-2 run directly from that moment. It was like the Thunder put everything they had into clawing back that lead and all the Spurs had to do was outlast them. Y’all, Game 7s are insane.
- I’ve been steadfastly avoiding even thinking about the concept of playing the Knicks in the Finals because, obviously, that would’ve been a death blow to the Spurs chances here (yeah, I guess in a way it is like I’m on the team, thanks for asking). But now, oh my god, I can’t believe we’re about to play the Knicks in the Finals. This is going to be insane. The dirtiest basketball secret I hold in my heart is that I kind of love watching playoff games at MSG because it’s fun watching that crowd go insane and the arena is so old school and all the celebrities, etc. It’s very fun! The concept of our sweet boys rolling into that cauldron as the enemy sort of hurts my heart. Please allow me like 10 more minutes to grieve before I put my game face back on.
- WE’RE GOING TO THE FINALS CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?????
WWL Post Game Press Conference
Have you inquired yet about getting a press pass for the Finals?
No, look, as much as I think it’d be swell to go cover these in person, I think it would go against the integrity of what I do here to actually be in the building for one of these.
You think so?
Yeah, I mean, what I do here is raw. Right? Like, this is pure, uncut fandom over here. I’m not out there hobnobbing with the big shots on media row acting like some capital J journalist. I’m over here getting real. I’m writing notes on the back of a Moana coloring book with a red crayon about disliking Chet Holmgren’s face. I’m spinning up charming anecdotes about my dogs perking up whenever they see Carter Bryant on screen because “Real recognizes Real.” Plus, I think if I ever saw Tim Bontemps in person I’d need to be escorted out by security.
So, on the record, if you were offered a press pass to one of these finals games, you would politely decline?
Hello?
It’s gone quiet on your end, everything ok?
Hi, sorry, the connection got choppy, didn’t hear that last question.
You would turn down a press pass and a chance to cover the Finals in person?
Look, pal, you’re breaking up, let’s pick this up later, GO SPURS GO!
