San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
When Spurs won, city really did party like it was 1999.
Recalling S.A.’s first title run through the eyes of those who lived it
Avery Johnson must have walked around his room 1,000 times.
He was sweaty. He gazed out the window. He tried watching TV.
In a hotel suite in the heart of the city that never sleeps, Johnson couldn’t either.
“My heart was just racing,” he said.
It was June 24, 1999, the night before everything changed for lifelong, sad-sack basketball fans in San Antonio. A stone’s throw from the lights of Broadway, Johnson — the twice-waived, oft-doubted journeyman turned Spurs starting point guard — was wide awake and wired.
The Spurs were up 3-1 over New York in their first NBA Finals. The next day, on the hardwood of Madison Square Garden, they had a chance to
claim a championship that for years had hovered just beyond their reach.
With Johnson providing the winning jumper, the Spurs defeated the Knicks 78-77, sending San Antonio into a state of rapture not experienced before and — despite the four titles that followed — possibly not since.
Twenty years ago this month, San Antonio became Titletown for the first time.
“Out of every sporting event I’ve ever seen or been a part of, the most fan love I’ve ever seen was during that run,” said backup guard Antonio Daniels, who still lives in San Antonio. “When it’s your first time going, you’re not only playing for you — you’re playing for an entire city.”
In the two decades that followed, with franchise titan Tim Duncan and coach Gregg Popovich as the common threads, the Spurs emerged as an unlikely center of gravity in the NBA. They won five championships between 1999 and 2014, and more games than any other NBA team over that span.
But for many who were there in 1999, nothing can top the first time.
“You can’t have a second or third or fourth without the first,” said Mike Budenholzer, an assistant coach on the 1999 team. “Any time you do something for the first time, it’s special. There’s certainly something pretty special about ’99.”
For David Robinson, the 1999 championship altered his reputation as a player bound for that purgatorylike wing of the Hall of Fame reserved for superstars unable to deliver a championship.
For Duncan, the breathtaking 23-year-old forward who in his second season already had burnished his credentials as one of the best players in the league, it was the first step in establishing a legacy that now ranks among the best of all time.
For Popovich, then 50 and still trying to find his footing in guiding an NBA team from the sidelines, the 1999 championship meant he got to keep his job for at least another year.
For a fan base that had known nothing but disappointment and “wait until next year,” there was the stunning realization that “next year” had finally arrived. ‘We weren’t sure what to expect’
The 1998-99 NBA season began amid uncertainty. Michael Jordan had retired (again) after winning his sixth championship with Chicago, opening the way for another team to fill the vacuum left by the end of the Bulls’ dynasty. Expectations were high in San Antonio, where Duncan — the reigning NBA Rookie of the Year — was entering his second season alongside Robinson, a perennial AllStar and former MVP. Spurs players were eager for the start of training camp, which was delayed by a dispute between the owners and the players’ union. An owner-imposed lockout limited the season to 50 games, giving teams less time to jell.
Gregg Popovich, head
coach: “We never started a year, or have been in the middle of a year, and said, ‘Hey, we think we can win a championship this year.’ We’ve always had the goal
of trying to be the best we could be by playoff time, and then whatever happened, happened.”
David Robinson, AllStar center: “There were a lot of questions, obviously, with the shortened season. We knew the Lakers were going to be tough. We knew there were some challenging teams there. But we figured both Tim and I were kind of at our peaks, so it was a good time for us.”
Sean Elliott, small
forward: “It was a short training camp, but we didn’t have as much work to do because we had a lot of our core guys together. I hadn’t played much the previous two years because of knee surgeries, so I was trying to get used to playing with these guys, especially Timmy.”
Tim Duncan, All-Star power forward: “Walking into that situation, I knew we had a great team and a chance to do something special.”
Hank Egan, assistant coach: “It was a veteran group, the kind of guys who didn’t have to be stars and just knew how to contribute.”
Elliott: “We knew we could be really good. We had some extra ingredients we thought would put us over the top. We just had to figure out how to put it all together.”
Steve Kerr, reserve guard: “It was an untested team in terms of winning a title, getting to the Finals. We weren’t sure what to expect.”
Elliott: “In the exhibition season, we had looked really good. Then the regular season started.”
‘I don’t think Pop’s going to make it.’
The Spurs opened the abbreviated season with victories over Sacramento and Minnesota, then lost eight of their next 12. By the time they arrived at The Summit in Houston on March 2, the Spurs’ record stood at 6-8 and Popovich — then in his second season — was in danger of being fired.
Kerr: “It was a weird vibe in the locker room the first couple of weeks. We knew we were supposed to be good, and we weren’t playing very well.”
Elliott: “We had trouble getting out of the gate. We couldn’t find our rhythm together.”
Antonio Daniels, re
serve guard: “The team meeting we had in Houston, that’s what still resonates with me.”
Elliott: “We had heard rumblings if we didn’t start winning soon, Doc Rivers was going to be our coach. We all loved Doc, but we also loved Pop. There was a lot of pressure on us, that we’d have a new coach if we didn’t win that game.”
Daniels: “We heard whispers, ‘Hey man, I don’t think Pop’s going to make it.’ ”
Mike Budenholzer, assistant coach: “We definitely felt that pressure.”
Robinson: “Early on in Pop’s coaching career, he got a lot of criticism from the outside. But I don’t think any of the players every really doubted or challenged him.”
Elliott: “Those of us who had been there, we were tired of having a new coach every season or having coaches replaced at midseason. We had been through a lot of coaches. We didn’t think that was the right way to go.”
Robinson: “In the locker room, you don’t really pay attention to that kind of stuff. I think we all have a lot of confidence in Pop.”
Daniels: “If this was 2019, Pop’s gone. Hank Egan is the head coach. If Peter Holt and that ownership group had not had patience, it would have changed the course of basketball history.”
Kerr: “Looking back, Pop handled it beautifully. He never mentioned anything other than, ‘Let’s just focus on the next practice, the next game.’ Typical Pop. Just put his head down and went to work.”
Elliott: “We went out and destroyed Houston.”
‘We could beat anybody.’
The Spurs defeated the Rockets 99-82 to ignite a run that saw the team lose only five more games before the end of the regular season. They finished 37-13, the best record in the NBA.
Twice in the final month, the Spurs faced a Utah team — led by future Hall of Famers Karl Malone and John Stockton — that had represented the Western Conference in the previous two NBA Finals. The Jazz had knocked the Spurs out of the playoffs the year before. This time, the Spurs won both meetings, offering players a sense of what was possible.
Daniels: “It wasn’t like there was a switch that flipped — ‘Let’s go win nine in a row.’ But even after that Houston game, on the bus, there was a feeling things were starting to come together.”
Budenholzer: “The last 30 or 35 games was a pretty phenomenal stretch of