How did you become a Spurs fan?

I became a fan of the sport 6 months ago. I always quite liked the idea of playing basketball, and when it was televised in the Olympics (In the UK that's the only time it's televised before 11pm!) I watched a bit and liked what I saw.

Then I was over in the States because my girlfriend lives over here (in Florida) and saw a bit on TV. I decided I'd try following it and watching it for a while, see if it stuck with me. It did.

So I knew to be a fan I'd need a team. The Spurs were obvious: 1)My favourite player was already Manu Ginobili from seeing him play for Argentina 2)I'm a massive Spurs - the football team - fan.

I didn't even know they'd ever won a championship! In my mind they were a pretty 'small-time' team! How wrong I was

Grew up watching Willis, Dave, Bill, Dick and Clyde[and Phil]. Moved to SA. Reminded me of them

Back in '01 or '02 I flipped on the television one Sunday and they had an NBA game on. Spurs-Mavs. I don't remember much about that game except that Timmy hit a fadeaway elbow jumper over Dirk at the buzzer. Spurs won their division with that shot. Next weekend they played the Lakers and lost a close one. Been a fan ever since. I made it down to San Antonio last summer and had a blast, someday I'll make it down for Spurs game.

Became a fan because of the Admiral back in 91. Watching him dominate and be so humble was breathe of fresh air form me. I always hated hearing commentators say that David Robinson didn't have the "passion" to bring a championship to SA. Never looked back since.

Grew up in Austin with the Ice Man's famous ice throne poster on my wall. Always been a big fan, but David was the the reason I became a fanatic. Been crazy ever since. Wife is a BB Widow 1/2 of the year...

I use to play NBA JAM when I was kid back in 98 and my favourite team to pick was the Spurs and I started watching them play on TV and I just became hooked.

when i was a kid i found a champions denis rodmen jersey at the court. my cusin told me not to put it on. when we got home i received an ass whoopin for wearing something i found on the street. etc

Watching DROB growing up. Airforce 1's as a teenager. Hometown is SA.

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Originally Posted by GSH

The score got really tight, and near the very end the refs made a terrible call against the Spurs. And by terrible, I mean "turrible Kinny". It seemed to me that the deck was just stacked too strongly against the Spurs. It was the first time I was ever really outraged about a basketball game.

The Spurs coach, Doug Moe, looked at the film and it was a truly horrible call. He raised hell about it in the press, and drew a big fine from the league. The Spurs fans came together and collected money to pay the fine, which I thought was great. Then Moe had the bank send the money to the league office... in pennies. That pretty much capped it for me. The underdog team, the loyal fans, and the coach that paid his fine and said "screw you" at the same time. I said, "Thats MY team."

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John Vanak -- ironically, he was one of the officials who came to the NBA from the ABA with the merger. Game 7, 1979 Eastern Conference Finals.

As for me, I became a Spurs fan listening to a game during the 1977-78 season and hearing Louie Dampier raining jumpers on someone. I remember having known nothing of an NBA team in my home town and talking with a neighbor's father, who was a basketball fanatic. He fueled my interest and a fan was born.

I was a Dallas Chaparrals fan as a kid living in the DFW area. I used to listen to Terry Stembridge on the radio. I remember hearing the call one night laying in bed listening to my transistor radio when the Chaps were playing the Indiana Pacers. The Chaps had just scored in the final seconds to go up by 2 when the Pacers inbounded to Jerry Harkness and he heaved the ball 92 feet and won the game.

I can still remember Stembridge saying (as memory serves) "folks, you're not going to believe this but Jerry Harkness just turned and heaved the ball and made it and we're going to over time...no wait a minute, that was a 3-pointer so the Pacers have just won the game." It was the first year of the Chaps and that shot became the longest shot in pro basketball history. I loved the ABA and it's new rules with the 3-point shot and the ball. I painted my basketball red, white and blue, which I thought would be cool but it wore off.

My dad took me to a couple of games that first year down at the Memorial Auditorium. We saw the Kentucky Colonels play the Chaps' Cliff Hagen, Cincy Powell, etc. The Chaps had a player named Maurice McHartley who played with a toothpick in his mouth. I started walking around with a toothpick in my mouth and hooping in the driveway with that toothpick (my coach wouldn't let me do it at practice or games, naturally).

In the 1970's, I ended up moving to SA and naturally followed the Spurs. Terry Stembridge was their radio voice, having moved with the Chaps to SA. The Spurs were always fairly competitive and played at a high pace. The Iceman would score with such ease, you would think Gervin had 20 or 25 points and you'd find out he actually had 40.

There is a lot more to the story, but that's how I became a Spurs' fan. The roots are deep.

Watching Manu play in 2003

blood in blood out lol

Military brat--family got stationed in SA 3 different times. Fell in love with the city and the Spurs. David Robinson was my idol (my mom still has his autograph when he came by Randolph AFB in '89), and I loved the humility of the team. Especially liked the good guy attitude they had, and Timmy.................how can you not like Timmy?

Plus, my dad is a hardcore laker fan. Had to defend the home turf, right?

Off topic:

Did I create some technical difficulties with the thread "Equality on Spurtalk"? I know the thread was getting a lot of post per view but damn I did not think it was that much. I did not expect Kori Ellis to be forced to take the thread off the site due to overload of activity. Or was this a deliberate act to silence the voice of the outcast, to further perpetuate the discrimination that the greys have worked long and hard to over come.

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Originally Posted by smeagol

Watching Manu play in 2003

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Ditto for me. When I saw that Argentine rookie with his unorthodox, original style of exciting play, I switched from a casual Spurs watcher to a dedicated fan.

I've been a spurs fan forever since I grew up in San Antonio but my earliest memory of the spurs was when I went to a game at the alamodome with my dad. The spurs were playing the magic when they had penny and shaq. The game went down to the last possiesion and the magic had the ball. Penny had the ball with Doc Rivers guarding him. He backed him down, turned for a fadeway jumper and Doc blocked his shot and the game ended with a Spurs win. The place went crazy.

I moved to San Antonio in 1997 just after Timmy was drafted. Although I was never an NBA fan, the hype around Timmy made me interested to see how he would do. My wife and I both became fans as a result.

I grew up in Austin and the season before David Robinson joined the Spurs my parents took me to a spurs game against Milwaukee. I got hooked at that game and have been a Spurs fan ever since. Even though I live in Minneapolis now, I still follow all of their games on league pass and still come back to Texas each year to watch a few Spurs games.

when I was born

i killed a dude and took his identity so i became a de facto fan

For me, It was Manu Ginobili. I am still quite young so my memory is a little blur. I saw him play in Singapore in an exhibition match for Argentina. If I remember correctly, it was in 2006, after the playoffs. Although Manu had a bad game, he only had 5 points, I believe, but I saw the flair in his game and liked him immediately.

P.S, I did see Pau Gasol, Spanoulis, and many others at the 6 team exhibition matches too. Manu just caught my eye.

Seriously, I became a fan in 85-86 after going to my first game. It was Alvin Robertson poster night, and was a game against the Bucks. Alvin stayed and signed posters after the game, and I told him he was my favorite player. I also became a huge Terry Cummings fan after seeing him light the Spurs up that night, so it was really weird when my favorite Spur (Alvin) was traded for TC in 89. I HATED losing Alvin, but I had always wanted TC on the Spurs. My family joined the bums for the 86-87 season, and back in the 80s the fans could really get to know the players. We used to go talk to Artis Gilmore, Alvin, Mike Mitchell, Cadillac Anderson, Walter Berry, and lots of other players before and after almost every game. I used to sneak into the teams practices at Incarnate Word sometime, and man, if you thought David was an athletic freak on TV or in the stands, you should have seen this guy practice while sitting 5 feet from the action. I got to meet David many times since my dad and I sold his biography at baseball card shows (we always bought them from his dad, Ambrose). I never knew it was Jake O'Donald who screwed the Spurs in that Washington series; he was by far the most hated ref in the league at Hemisfair when I went to the games (though Mike Mathis was considered dipshit #2 by our section).

born and raised in SA, been a Spurs fan since I was born, during the ABA days.

The earliest games I remember were the Spurs vs Denver or Dallas....Fat Lever, Alex English, Ro Blackman, Derek Harper.....

Here's a story a wrote when I first posted in this forum, it has some changes:

I am born and currently live in Monterrey,Mexico, a 5 hour drive from San Antonio, so I started going to SA since I was born, actually my great-grandfather is a San Antonian (and a WWII veteran) so in the year 1999 he gave me an audio cassette that had the commentary and the best moments from the Spurs vs Knicks finals in many languages and many songs related to the Spurs' first title, so I kept hearing that tape all the time, i then lost the cassette and forgot about the Spurs for 2 years, I wasn't a fan then, but 2 years later i got satellite TV and in a 2001 night I saw a team called "San Antonio Spurs" on the programming guide so i watched the game and became very excited with the Spurs and with basketball (i had never watch a basketball game before) so then I told my father if we could go watch a game live in the SBC Center, my dream to watch the Spurs live came true when we bought tickets for the last game of the season, Spurs vs Dallas on April 16, 2003 the game sucked cus the Spurs were already the leaders of the West, Tim Duncan got sidelined but I didn't care much, I got my first jersey, a David Robinson replica, which I still have, its nice to have watched one of the best Centers in the history of the league live, after that game we stayed in San Antonio some more days to watch the playoffs, i saw one of best games ever, it was Spurs vs Suns, remember the game winning 3 by Stephon Marbury?, after that i commited to going to a minimum of 1 game every season, I collect Spurs jerseys now, I think i have close to 10 swingman jerseys, I collect basketball DVDs and anything that has a Spurs logo, its hard to be an NBA fan here in Mexico since we dont get much games on TV (and i dont have Sat-tv now), i hope sometime i could go to 1 entire season sometime.

For now, I'm about to have another dream come true, I'm close to getting a press pass for a Spurs preseason game that will be played in October in México City, I feel blessed to have the oportunity to meet my favorite players; by the way, if you have any questions for any player, let me know and I'll try to ask them.