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Spurs need to bookend this memorial day miracle next year with a championship clinching shot next memorial day...there's been 4 articles by Harvey and McDonald on this shot.
Elliott's shot still miraculous
Jeff McDonald
There is a monitor on the concourse of the AT&T Center, not far from where the Spurs' four NBA trophies are housed, that replays great moments in franchise history. At the touch of a button, Sean Elliott can relive the greatest day of his basketball life.
Or at the click of a mouse. Search the phrase “Memorial Day Miracle” on YouTube, and some three dozen videos come up.
Elliott, of course, requires no such memory aids.
Should he ever want to remember his walk-a-tightrope 3-pointer to beat Portland in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals, all he needs to do is head to the bank, or the post office or the hardware store.
“I was in line at the grocery store the other day, and a guy came up wanting to talk about that shot,” Elliott said. “That's happened at least once a week for the last 10 years.”
It has been a decade since Elliott produced the aforementioned miracle, sinking his improbable, career-defining 3-pointer over Rasheed Wallace.
The shot was the signature moment of the Spurs' inaugural championship run, etching for Elliott a permanent place in franchise lore. In the years since, the Spurs have laid claim to three more Larry O'Brien Trophies, transforming themselves from perpetual NBA also-ran to NBA royalty.
Without the Memorial Day Miracle, none of it might have been possible.
“We always talked about how we needed that one breakthrough,” said Avery Johnson, the point guard on the Spurs' 1999 team. “You've got to win one championship before you can win four.”
For the Spurs, the '99 season would be their long-awaited breakthrough. For his part in it, Elliott would eventually see his No. 32 raised to the rafters in the AT&T Center, the new arena the team's first championship helped build.
Of course, none of that was going through his mind as he tap-danced along the sideline at the Alamodome late on the afternoon of May 31, 1999.
“I was just trying to keep from falling out of bounds,” Elliott recalled.
A broken play
Had everything gone precisely to plan, Elliott never would have had a chance to shoot his way into Spurs lore.
The play coach Gregg Popovich designed was supposed to go to David Robinson. That is the consensus memory, even 10 years later.
The Spurs were behind 85-83 with 12 seconds to go, having furiously rallied from an 18-point deficit to draw that close. What happened next is readily available on YouTube.
Mario Elie, himself a renowned big-shot artist, inbounded to Elliott in the near corner. Portland's Stacey Augmon gambled for the interception and went tumbling into the bleachers.
In danger of following Augmon into the front row, Elliott allowed one dribble to steady himself, then whirled to face the basket.
“If he had put his heels down, he would have been out of bounds,” Johnson said.
Only a few seconds had elapsed. There was still time to find Robinson in the low block, to get an easy layup for a future Hall of Famer, to play for the tie. Elliott wasn't about to go there.
“David was wide open underneath,” Popovich said, chuckling at the memory. “Sean just looked at him, ignored him and threw that thing up. He was going to shoot, all the way.”
Maybe Elliott deserved this moment. He had been the one to shoot the Spurs back into the game that day. Before taking the floor for that final possession, he had already made 5 of 6 3-pointers and had scored 19 points.
Elliott was also playing with a secret. His kidneys were failing, so badly that he would require a transplant at season's end.
In a sense, he was a walking Memorial Day Miracle. Maybe he was due a shot at NBA immortality.
“It was one of those days, every time I looked at the rim, it looked huge,” said Elliott, now 41 and working as an analyst on Spurs' TV broadcasts. “I felt like everything I put up was going to go in.”
With Augmon now out of the play, and Wallace scrambling over too late to help, the time had come for Elliott to test his theory.
Last-minute switch
There comes a time in every man's life when fate taps him on the shoulder and points him toward his destiny. In the case of Sean Elliott, fate's fickle finger was attached to Steve Kerr.
Just before Elie inbounded, his defender, Damon Stoudamire, stepped across the out of bounds line to draw an intentional delay-of-game warning. That allowed the Blazers a sneak peek at the Spurs' alignment.
Elliott and Kerr, both essentially decoys, had already run through their patterns when referees stopped play. Instead of returning to their original starting positions, Kerr suggested the two just switch places.
“We weren't the main options, so we didn't think it would matter,” Elliott said. “Either way, we were passers into Dave.”
That last-second change turned out to be the most significant audible in Spurs history. Because of it, Augmon whizzed by Elliott and not Kerr. Elliott, and not Kerr, spun to find 83 inches of Wallace uncoiled to thwart whatever came next.
It doesn't take much imagination for Kerr to envision what would have happened had he, and not Elliott, been the shooter.
“Rasheed Wallace would have blocked it about 10 rows back,” Kerr said. “And we would have lost the game.”
At 6-foot-8, Elliott was 5 inches taller than Kerr. He had just enough space to release a rainbow over Wallace's outstretched arms.
What happened next is something nobody in the building that day will ever forget. A sold-out crown of 35,000 went momentarily mute.
“You could have heard a pin drop,” said Peter Holt, Spurs chairman and CEO. “And then bedlam.”
With 9.9 seconds to go, the Spurs had their first and only lead of the game. The Alamodome erupted. A franchise that had seen too many playoff runs jack-knifed by similar moments going against it suddenly had one bounce in its favor.
“It was like a fog,” Popovich said. “Nobody believed he could even get that shot off. I can still see Sean running back to the huddle, and Mario running back — I can still see their faces.”
The look was unmistakable. Joyous disbelief.
A shot for the ages
What would have happened had Elliott's shot not gone down? Popovich has one idea.
“Without it,” Popovich said, “no championship.”
Maybe that's true, and maybe it isn't. The Spurs went on to sweep the Blazers in four games. They were dominant throughout their playoff run, losing only two times en route to crushing the New York Knicks in five games in the NBA Finals.
Maybe a loss in Game 2 only delays the inevitable river parade for a few more days.
Or maybe a Memorial Day miss changes everything. Maybe the ghosts of playoff failures past resurface. Maybe old doubts take over. Maybe the underachieving Spurs add another face-plant to their growing collection of playoff busts.
Maybe Popovich, who had been on the verge of being fired after the team started the strike-shortened 1999 season 6-8, is pink-slipped. Maybe a franchise's entire history is inexorably altered.
“Who knows what would have happened?” Elliott said. “We could have lost that ballgame. We could have lost our confidence. So many times, one break had kept us from playing for a championship. So many years of that had built up.
“If that shot hadn't gone down, that's a lot to think about.”
Spurs need to bookend this memorial day miracle next year with a championship clinching shot next memorial day...there's been 4 articles by Harvey and McDonald on this shot.
It never gets old.
I dont care what anybody says that is still the greatest shot in spurs history.Without it who knows we might not have had 99,03,05 or 07
The perfect shot
on NBC
Pop would have been fired,
Robinson would have retired,
Duncan would have signed with Orlando and raped an elderly woman.
To the reason TLong stays so angry at the Spurs franchise even though there's no bitter rivalry between them and Portland.
Thank you Sean, and I'm glad you've persevered health-wise as well.
Also in that video I gotta give love to brian grant who is sick right now,get healthy man
Yeah, I heard about that with Grant and the Parkinson's diagnosis. All the best to him and I hope he can still lead a full enough life. Always seemed like a cool guy.
Fixed.“Without it,” Popovich said, “no four championships.”
It will always be the biggest shot in Spurs history.
Was in 11th row baseline for that shot. Solidified my standing as a basketball fan. You can see me in the championship video... well my mouth mostly because I don't recall ever screamin so much in my life!
Final score in the mid-80s.. the Spurs had a bunch of great individual and team defenders in those days.
The most important shot in Spurs history, without that shot the Spurs may have never won a championship. Be always thankful to mr. Elliott.
like this makes me want #5 way more.
Section 207, and my freaking ears were bleeding. That's way up in the upperdeck, at the same end, but the opposite corner of the A-Dome. I also remember exiting the A-Dome. Going down those huge stair concourses from the upper deck people were already yelling "Sweep! sweep! sweep!"
Holy are they going to make this article every god damn year?
I think the tenth anniversary warrants a multiple article retrospective. The thread les are pretty clear. If you're sick of it, don't click on it, fool.
So you answered a rhetorical question. Awesome.
So you posted one in a thread on a message board designed for discussion and responses. Equally awesome.
best game I have ever been to, and I've been to the Finals. Everyone was so happy, random people giving high fives and hugs. Everybody knew right there and then that nothing was stopping the Spurs that season.
Indeed. "Fool".
Two things that really don't translate well into cyberspace: sarcasm and rhetorical questions. You should thrive here.
Two things that really don't translate well into cyberspace: sarcasm and rhetorical questions. You should thrive here.That better?
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