theLeftAhead

House of the Rising Sun – It must’ve been a funny feeling for the players on our Western Conference Champion San Antonio Spurs to walk off of the Madison Square Garden basketball court in New York City on the short end of the score board after Game 3 of the 1999 NBA Finals. After all, the 89-81 loss to the New York Knicks was the first defeat in our past…

Welcome to New York City – Welcome to the Empire State. Home of the World Trade. Birthplace of Michael Jordan. Home of Biggie Smalls.. How fitting a setting. The San Antonio Spurs first NBA Finals road game in franchise history was scheduled to be played in the Mecca, Madison Square Garden, the most famous and arguably most historic basketball arena on the planet. The New York Knicks, our opponents faced…

Learn to Fly – Sixth months prior to the turn of the century (and the millennium depending on your counting), the future looked pretty bright for the New York Knickerbockers and their fans. Their longtime finals-preventing-nemesis Michael Jordan was retired and the stranglehold on the Eastern Conference he and his Chicago Bulls had maintained during all of the non-baseball-interrupted nineties was no more. With an adoring fan-base, vast resources, and…

Get Ready for This – Throughout my childhood growing up in Central Texas, I had regularly dreamed about this moment. As far as moments go for a city and its fans, this one was huge and luckily, the city of San Antonio had a building huge enough in its own right to handle it. 39,514 success-starved, exuberant Spurs fans packed themselves into the Alamodome on June 16th, 1999 to be…

Lose Yourself – Damon Stoudamire, Arvydas Sabonis, Rasheed Wallace, Brian Grant, Isaiah Rider, Stacey Augmon, Jim Jackson, Walt Williams, Jermaine O’Neal, and Greg Anthony came to play that day. As we knew they would. After all, every higher-seeded playoff team understands that stealing one of the first two games on the road as the underdog increases your chances of winning the series astronomically. Having lost 80-76 in the grind fest…

Friends S5:E23 & Friends S5:E24 – This hand is your hand! This hand is my hand! Oh wait, that’s your hand! No wait, it’s my hand! Hey there, preFrienders. I’m so pleased that you’ve all chosen to gather here today to be a part of a post that’s five years in the making. (Well, four years, nine months, and four days, to be exact.) On September 22nd, 2014, we started…

Friends S5:E22 – Howdy, Friendsters. Welcome, welcome, welcome, to the last stop before the halfway point of this wacky train ride we call Friends 20/20. That’s right, travel enthusiasts. The countdown clock to Summer Vacation 2019 has hit the one week mark and we have successful rounded first and are now sliding into second on the base path for this entire damn project! I can’t lie. Being as how this…

Friends S5:E21 – Yo, yo, ma Friends. How’s everyone doing on this, the first Monday in May? Hopefully no one in the class is fighting off any repercussions from an overly festive Cinco De Mayo yesterday. (Since everyone else is sharp and focused, that probably means I’m speaking to you, Johnny. Take off those shades in my classroom. Never mind, put them back on. You look absolutely wrecked. Haven’t you…

Friends S5:E20 – Hey there, FRIEND-watching galaxy! I hope you had another excellent week in the vortex. Speaking of such, while we all know there’s nothing better than living that vortex life, we also all know that writing (or in your case reading) weekly blog posts on the 20th anniversary of the initial airing of each episode can sometimes be tedious, tiring, soul-crushing work. (Especially when I assign homework. Right,…

Things Done Changed – Gregg Popovich is 3-3 coaching in Game 7s. He won his first at home on basketball’s biggest stage in an 81-74 defensive masterpiece against the Detroit Pistons to closeout the bloodbath that was also known as the 2005 NBA Finals and capture our third NBA title. Manu Ginobili, the most beloved Spur that Pop has ever coached, was magnificent in the championship-clinching victory tallying 23 points…

Break On Through – “It’s over. We just beat you by 20. You’re done.” Those words have echoed in my head since the moment they were spoken to me last night outside of the Pepsi Center as my wife and I were waiting for our Lyft. Dressed for a fun night out on the town in a black long-sleeved t-shirt that proudly displayed “San Antonio Basketball” across my chest, they…