It's like decades of frustration and pain being all of a sudden worth it and making it that much sweeter. Blowing the 3-1 lead to Washington in the 79 ECF, blowing a sure trip to the Finals in 81 losing to the Rockets in 7, Artis Gilmore not even getting the shot of to force Game 7 against the Lakers in the 83 WCF, Johnny Moore's desert fever in 86, Rod Strickland throwing that no look pass right to Jerome Kersey to blow Game 7 of the 1990 series, losing to the 7-seed Warriors in 91 (after Larry King told the world he was picking the Spurs to win the le in an episode of the Simpsons), Olajuwon ripping away what was supposed to be the Spurs le in 95, Karl Malone kicking Tim Duncan and David Robinson in the nuts and getting free throws for the three point play out of it to close Games 1 and 2 in 1998... all of that showing how hard it is to win a le, practically flashing before my eyes when with ten seconds or so David Robinson missed a shot off the backboard, barely grabbed the offensive board, and chunked it back out for Avery Johnson to throw up a desperation three to beat the shot clock while taking as much time off the clock as possible, getting the game clock down to 2 seconds with Spurs up 78-77. And it hit me, holy , the Spurs are clinching in the next two minutes and that was longest commercial break of my life. Went and grabbed and hugged my closest friend who also lived and died with the team (just lost him to COVID a couple of months ago, RIP) who I was watching the game with once David Robinson and Tim Duncan forced a Sprewell airball at the buzzer. Fans went and shut down IH-37 to party on the highway. Mario Elie went crazy when he saw me wearing his jersey at the parade. The city felt crazy, we had known nothing but playoff frustration and bitter losses and all of a sudden it was our guys making everyone else feel that way.
Hope you get the chance to experience similar in a couple of weeks when hopefully CP3, Monty, Booker, and Ayton are holding up the O'Brien.
EDIT: Here's the play, at about the 2:04:00 mark I was talking about where it first really hit me tjat holy ing , the Spurs were actually about to become champions: