Finger:

It’s the end of the innocence for Spurs fans.

Three decades ago, a tall, slender midshipman landed in South Texas and, using his sturdy back and naval knowhow, set forth on building a bubble.

This was no haphazard, flyby-night project. David Robinson was a serious young man, strong of mind and of moral fiber, and he built his bubble to last.

Indeed it did.

For almost 30 years, ever since the day he announced he would not reenter the NBA Draft (as was his right) but instead would join the struggling franchise that already selected him, the bubble stood.

Maybe all of us who lived inside did not always notice the walls, but they were there. They sheltered this city from the cold realities of professional basketball, the painful, uncompromising truths that existed everywhere but here.

In our bubble, we were allowed to believe this wasn’t really a business. In our bubble, we went on thinking that Hall of Famers committed to a town every bit as much as a town committed to them. This might have made us naïve, but one star after another reinforced the bubble’s walls and allowed its inhabitants to watch the games in childlike wonder, oblivious to how the NBA really works.

But now, at long last, the bubble is collapsing.

This, dear Spurs fans, is the end of the innocence.

Perhaps you thought you were ready for this. You no doubt noticed the cracks in the bubble forming during the past six months, and maybe you tried to rationalize them. The damage was only cosmetic, you thought. Surely the media was making too much of this, right?

You trusted Gregg Popovich to come up with a solution, because he always had before.

You trusted Kawhi Leonard to return your loyalty, because that is how Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Tim Duncan and Robinson trained you to think.

Sure, other NBA fans lived in constant fear of seeing their favorite players walk away. But that wasn’t your problem. After all, you had the bubble protecting you.

Inside the bubble, you liked imagining that a guy like Leonard, who established himself as one of the five best players in the sport while embracing everything about the Spurs’ “pound the rock” ethos, really did shop at H-E-B. You liked imagining that he used the fabric softener and bought the salsa and dressed up in togas with Ginobili and Parker, just like in the commercials.

And when you asked yourself if he would stay forever, just like Robinson and Duncan and all of those other guys did, the answer was, of course, “Indubitably.”

So what, then, is everyone who spent 30 years living inside the bubble supposed to do with the news of this week? How are people never exposed to the harshness of the outside NBA world supposed to process the fact that a relationship appears broken, that Leonard not only wants a trade, but that his first choice of a new team is – gasp – the Lakers?

To this city, that news is only slightly less rattling than hearing Davy Crockett dreamed of suiting up for Santa Anna.

The first reaction probably is denial, but the direness of the current situation between Leonard and the Spurs is irrefutably real. It is within the realm of possibility that the relationship can be salvaged, but Leonard playing here next season certainly seems to be the least likely outcome now.

Once everyone moves on to acceptance, people will want someone to blame, but that will be complicated, too.

Can you blame Popovich, or R.C. Buford, or the Spurs’ medical team for mishandling the entire last year, beginning with their diagnosis of Leonard’s leg injury as quadriceps tendinopathy? Some will, but this is an organization notorious for being abundantly protective of its players’ health and conservative when it comes to rehab. The Spurs led the way when it came to the value of rest, and almost certainly prolonged the careers of Duncan and Ginobili in the process.

They are fallible, sure, but would they really have risked the future of a player they wanted to build around for the next decade?

Meanwhile, can you blame Leonard for looking out for himself, for worrying about his own body, or for asking to play where he feels more comfortable. Superstars have been doing all of this for decades, and will still be doing it decades from now. It’s just never happened inside the bubble.

Life will go on here, of course. Even if Leonard is traded, the Spurs will add what should be an impressive influx of talent to a group that was three games away from the No. 3 seed without Leonard last season. That might not make them a leading Finals contender, it will make them quite good.

But even if this leads to another 30 years of prosperity, or to another championship, the fans who celebrate it will do so with different eyes than before.

For a long, long time, those in the bubble had no idea what lurked outside. Now, with their innocence lost, they see.

MIKE FINGER