 by Julian Spivey
I am a San Antonio Spurs fan. Well, not really. Well, I guess you could say I’m sort of a Spurs fan. But, really I’m an Orlando Magic fan and always have been and because I believe you have to be loyal to be a true sports fan I probably always will be. The Spurs are my playoff team. The team I always find myself rooting for when my favorite team is eliminated from playoff contention – which for the Magic recently has been an annual thing. I’ve always enjoyed the Spurs come playoff time for three big reasons: 1) Tim Duncan 2) Gregg Popovich 3) Team style basketball. Some folks might say that I’m a bandwagon Spurs fan, but I don’t believe that to be the case. If the Spurs ever played the Magic I would root for the Magic to win. I just think that sports are more fun when you can root for a team to win a championship and once your team has either missed the playoffs or have been eliminated from them it’s more entertaining to root for a secondary team than it is to either watch games without a rooting interest or ignore them altogether. To me a real bandwagon sports fan is one who switches teams depending on who’s hottest in any given year or following one athlete *cough* LeBron James *cough* from one team to another. Most people who root for other teams in the playoffs once their favorite team has been eliminated have to change teams from year-to-year and that’s something I’ve had to do for most sports in the past – for instance the last two seasons in the NFL playoffs I’ve become a temporary Seattle Seahawks fan, despite actually being a Dallas Cowboys fan. But, for the last decade and a half in the NBA I’ve had the luxury of pretty much solely rooting for one team once my Magic were out of contention – the Spurs. I fell in love with the Spurs way of playing basketball almost immediately when they found their success early on in the Popovich/Duncan era in 1999. They have played a complete team style of basketball where every single member from MVP Duncan to the last guy on the bench has been truly important to their title runs. This is the reason why many basketball fans find them boring. Many fans would rather see a star like LeBron James, Kevin Durant or Kobe Bryant single-handedly take over a team and lead them to victory. But, there’s something so beautiful, in my opinion, in the way the Spurs selflessly play the game and I’d rather watch them throw the ball around the court to find the open man over seeing a superstar breakaway and dunk every time. When you have one team playing the game almost the way it was meant to be and have success doing so when every other team isn’t doing it that way it actually makes watching the game the way it was intended feel like something new and out of the ordinary. The Kansas City Royals have been doing that for the last two seasons in baseball and that’s why they have become my San Antonio Spurs of Major League Baseball. The Atlanta Braves were my first sports love and they always will be my biggest sports love, but for the last few seasons they just haven’t been any good. That doesn’t mean I don’t root for them – in the regular season I want to see them improve and win as many games as they can, but come the playoffs I find myself needing to root for another team. The Royals filled that gap rather easily and quickly last season. It wasn’t just because they were the underdogs who hadn’t gone to the playoffs in almost three decades, but because they played an old school style of baseball that harkened back to a style played in the game before the steroid era led to every team swinging for downs on every pitch. The Royals were a complete team without any superstars, playing the game strategically and soundly to win baseball games. They played ABC baseball – get ‘em on, get ‘em over, get ‘em in. It was actually the style of game I grew up loving watching the Braves who had the greatest pitching in the game and scrapped for runs because they knew they’d only need two or three to win most games. Royals manager Ned Yost was actually a mentee of former Braves skipper Bobby Cox for many years and no doubt adopted at least part of his managerial style from the Hall of Famer. Not only did the Royals win by playing get ‘em on, get ‘em over, get ‘em in baseball, but the way they managed a shutdown bullpen led by Greg Holland, Wade Davis and Kelvin Herrera was masterful come the end of ballgames. It was fun to watch and because of this small ball style that some view as over-managed (yet incredibly successful), especially for an American League team, it felt both old school and somewhat new and exciting all at the same time. The Royals would’ve won the World Series too last year were it not for the greatest pitching postseason ever by San Francisco Giants ace Madison Bumgarner. The Royals are even better this year and have reached the World Series once again to face the New York Mets. I won’t go ahead and give them the title because the Mets have a stellar pitching staff and some bats that are really hot at the moment, but I’ll be rooting for them the entire way. The way they play the game is so infectious that I can’t help but feel completely into every aspect of watching them, much like I have for so many years with the Spurs in the NBA. I feel like the Royals will be America’s team for the second straight World Series because of this. The fact that the Royals and Spurs are similar in a team style of the way they play has captured my attention and led me to have some really exciting times during their runs toward potential titles. The only main difference will be that the Royals will have a short term run compared to the Spurs’ that has lasted more than 15 years. This is mostly due to the fact of the Royals being a small market team that won’t be able to afford many of its best players once their contracts are up – as fan favorite Alex Gordon’s is this offseason. What the Spurs have done over the last decade and a half can only be compared to what my Braves did from 1991-2005, by winning a division title every single season and making the playoffs. The one key difference being my Braves only actually won one title over that span, where the Spurs have basically taken one out of every three titles during their historic run. It would be nice if the Royals could sustain the type of elongated success that the Spurs have, but the fact that they have completely won me over and have given me something to passionately root for over two seasons is truly remarkable and honestly important to me.
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