Cinco Anillos — My take on Spurs’ championship

Post on 23 June, 2014 by Dallin Malmgren

Cin­co Anil­los – My take on the Spurs’ championship

 

manu It’s been a week now, and I’m still rid­ing the wave, even if the water’s get­ting shal­low­er.  I don’t think about it as often, but when I do a big smile breaks across my face.  We got num­ber five!  In one of the most glo­ri­ous runs of all-time, a run that came with very lit­tle stress and anx­i­ety, if you don’t count the Mavs.  Being the self-cen­tered per­son I am, I will always equate num­ber five with my own waltz into retire­ment, God’s icing on my cake of joy.  April, May and the begin­ning of June cruised by as I planned my life sched­ule around which nights the Spurs had a play­off game.

Did I expect  them to win it all?  I am opti­mistic by nature, but, heart of hearts, not real­ly.  The ago­niz­ing end to last sea­son (see my blog entry Los Spurs)…  Do you remem­ber the first two (or three) months of this sea­son, when we were crush­ing the teams that sucked but couldn’t get a win against the poten­tial play­off teams?  I was afraid of the Clips, Hous­ton, the War­riors, the Griz­zlies, the Trail­blaz­ers, and OKC.  Espe­cial­ly Port­land and OKC.  (I didn’t even think about the East­ern Con­fer­ence.)   So I was hope­ful, at best.

But the Spurs inspire such pas­sion, devo­tion and love.  I con­fess I am a ter­ri­ble fan.  I don’t go to games, don’t own any Spurs gear or para­pher­na­lia (though I do want to get a stick­er for my golf cart), and don’t attend the parades and cel­e­bra­tions that go with win­ning it all.  All I do is watch their games, read about them in the Express News and on the inter­net, and smile as the nation­al sports media essen­tial­ly ignore them.  If I were typ­i­cal of our fan base, the Spurs would go broke.   But I’m not.  Our fans are as diverse as our play­ers.  There’s a cou­ple in Cor­pus Christi who dri­ve up for every sin­gle home game.  I think they’ve missed one in fif­teen years.  Of course, the Spurs have been good for fif­teen years—how many teams can say that?  I know there are oth­er NBA cities with large His­pan­ic pop­u­la­tions, but I’d bet any­thing that the Spurs rank num­ber one world­wide among His­pan­ic bas­ket­ball fans.  In one of my less self-cen­tered moments I realized—if I, who only watch the games on TV, can expe­ri­ence this much hap­pi­ness over our cham­pi­onship, how unfath­omably joy­ous must it be for our more com­mit­ted fans?  It’s a won­der San Anto­nio hasn’t float­ed away.

How do the Spurs do it?  I remem­ber after the 2007 cham­pi­onship I came up with the fol­low­ing body anal­o­gy for the Spurs core:  Pop is the Brain, Tim­mie is the Soul, Manu is the Heart, and Tony is the Penis.  (I know that makes Tony sound like a dick, but, c’mon guys, where would you be with­out your penis?)  Now I have to add to the anal­o­gy.  Kawhi, quite obvi­ous­ly, is the Hand, and R.C.—well, R.C. must be God, who knows and sees all things, and under­stands how it all fits togeth­er.  Many Spurs fans already know this, but there is a won­der­ful YouTube video called “The Beau­ti­ful Game”—which is a six minute trib­ute to how the Spurs play the game of bas­ket­ball.  If you haven’t seen it yet, it will prob­a­bly bring tears to your eyes.

Every loy­al Spur fan prob­a­bly has his/her favorite moment from the play­off run.  I’ve heard about Manu’s thun­der dunk on Bosh, Boris’s behind-the-back pass to Tia­go for a lay-up, Patty’s div­ing tip pass to Manu, Tiago’s revenge block, and many oth­ers.  My per­son­al favorite came ear­ly against the Mavs—Manu’s cross­court base­line pass, all the way from one side to Dan­ny Green open for a three on the oth­er side.  Dan­ny said that Manu threw a curve­ball, so that the ball swung out of bounds and hooked back in at his cor­ner.  I’ve been watch­ing bas­ket­ball for more than fifty years and have nev­er seen that pass before!

Can we repeat?  I feel cau­tious­ly opti­mistic.  We were clear­ly the best team in bas­ket­ball this year, and the biggest thing we’re los­ing is anoth­er year.  The core is even stronger, since you have to include Kawhi in there now.  We have to have Boris back, and Pat­ty owes it to us to come back since we allowed him to do the worst emcee job in the his­to­ry of cham­pi­onship cel­e­bra­tions.  I think the key is Manu.  It con­cerns the hell out of me that he is play­ing in the World Cham­pi­onships for Argenti­na this summer—though I admire him for it.  Here’s what’s got to hap­pen:  Manu must nev­er play more min­utes than his uni­form num­ber dur­ing the reg­u­lar season—and the Spurs should give him the month of March off.   Go to the beach, hang out with your wife, take care of the twins and Luca.  Be fresh April 1.  Are you lis­ten­ing, Pop?

Go Spurs go, for­ev­er and ever.

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