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I’m not gonna lie, the past two weeks have been weird. Awkward. Icky, if you will. Because as the Western Conference Finals progressed, one thing became clear. I was rooting for the San Antonio Spurs to win.
Even typing those words feels awkward. The Spurs are a team I’ve “sports hated” for most of my life. They have left scars that will never heal over wounds that I will never forgive. They are a franchise that is responsible for creating some of the most depressing moments I’ve experienced as a fan.
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They’re a franchise I’ve always found unbelievably lucky, because every time they’ve tanked, they’ve somehow been rewarded with a generational pick. Go back to 1996-97. David Robinson got hurt, and San Antonio decided they were going to lose in an effort to land the number one pick and take Tim Duncan out of Wake Forest. The Boston Celtics should’ve gotten that pick. San Antonio did.
And as a result, they won five championships. Plenty of those came at the expense of the Phoenix Suns. That’s the relationship so many of us older Suns fans have with San Antonio. It’s rooted in disdain, frustration, and that lingering feeling that the basketball gods always seemed to lean against Phoenix.
The Suns of the early 2000s were revolutionary. Phoenix changed the way the game was played. They still couldn’t get past the fundamental force that was the Spurs. The NBA didn’t need to hand San Antonio any favors, and somehow they still did. Amar’e Stoudemire and Boris Diaw were suspended for stepping off the bench in Game 4 of the 2007 Western Conference Semifinals, even though Tim Duncan had allegedly come off the bench earlier in the game after James Jones fouled Francisco Elson.
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And those Spurs teams always seemed to toe the line of basketball ethics as they battered and bruised the Suns, kicking them in the balls and breaking their noses. So there will always be that feeling of sports hate when it comes to San Antonio, and it’s something I’ll never let go. They ruined countless moments during my 20s that should’ve been filled with elation.
All of that being said, in…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/spurs-thunder-series-created-weird-180000389.html
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Publish date : 2026-05-31 18:00:00
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