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AND ITS GOIN 2 Stay in our hands VATO
For now, NBA prize is in local hands
Web Posted: 06/06/2007 11:19 PM CDT
Cindy Tumiel
Express-News The trophy is here. Well, not for good. Not yet, anyway.
But the Larry O'Brien Trophy's arrival Wednesday morning in San Antonio resembled a championship homecoming, with a gaggle of media on the tarmac and deliriously happy Spurs fans lining up for photo ops and autographs inside the terminal at San Antonio International Airport.
The National Basketball Association sent the sterling silver and gold vermeil trophy here in advance of tonight's opening game of the championship series between the Spurs and the Cleveland Cavaliers and staged a grand entrance that stoked further frenzy in a city already in the throes of championship fever.
Former Spur George Gervin met the airplane, a Southwest Airlines 737 passenger jet renamed the Slam Dunk One, which flew the trophy to San Antonio inside the cabin.
More coverage Former Spur George Gervin greets the arrival of the Larry O'Brien trophy in San Antonio. Watch the Express-News video: Slam Dunk delivery. More information
• The NBA championship trophy is named in honor of the late Larry O'Brien, commissioner of the NBA from 1975 to 1984. One of his accomplishments was the merger with the old American Basketball Association, which brought the Spurs into the NBA.
• Before his NBA tenure, O'Brien was an aide to President John F. Kennedy and later became chairman of the Democratic National Committee. His office was the target of the Watergate burglars in 1972.
• The trophy is made by famed New York jewelers Tiffany & Co. and is handcrafted of sterling silver with an overlay of 24-karat gold vermeil. The 15-pound trophy is 24½ inches tall and depicts a basketball in motion over a segment of hoop and basket.
• It flew to San Antonio on Wednesday inside the cabin of Southwest Airlines' designated Slam Dunk One 737 aircraft. It travels wrapped in a blue felt Tiffany's bag and secured inside a molded plastic case with three locks. On Monday, it will fly to Cleveland when the NBA championship series moves there.
• After the deciding game, the trophy is presented to the winners, then is returned to Tiffany's for engraving with the winner's name.
Sources: National Basketball Association, JFKLibrary.org
Cameras clicked as the former ABA and NBA great climbed the stairs to the aircraft and took the gleaming gold trophy from a member of the flight crew. Across the tarmac, the pilot and crew of a second Southwest jet opened the door of their aircraft and used their cell phone cameras to quickly snap shots of "The Iceman" as he carried the trophy into the terminal.
Gervin was jovial as he commended the Cavaliers on their NBA Eastern Conference championship. But he predicted the Tiffany-designed basketball and hoop eventually would join three others in the Spurs' trophy case.
"Cleveland obviously deserves to be where they are at in the finals, and you really can't count anybody out," Gervin said a few minutes later as he posed for pictures and signed autographs inside the airport terminal. "It seems like we always like to win one in the odd years, so it is 2007. We've got a lot of things going for us."
He professed confusion though, at the national media's rap that the Spurs are a boring team.
"How can success be boring?" Gervin said with a laugh. "Maybe people can just watch us bore our way to another championship."
Passengers on the commercial flight from Baltimore were jovial after flight attendants announced that the trophy was on board, passenger Steve Kobar said. But Kobar got a surprise at the end of the flight, when the crew called his name over the intercom and then announced the airline was giving him two tickets to tonight's game.
"I was in shock; I'm still in shock," said Kobar, a sales manager who was returning to his San Antonio home after a business trip to Chicago. "They called my name and I thought something bad had happened. And then they announced that I won two tickets."
Don't expect to see too much of the trophy during this visit, though. It will stay in the custody of NBA security at an undisclosed location until early next week, when it will be whisked away to Cleveland for a repeat grand arrival before fans there.
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AND ITS GOIN 2 Stay in our hands VATO
Why does the Vipers' president have the trophy?
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