What do you do when you realize something you thought only belonged to you isn’t just yours?

I have had that feeling for the last two weeks. All June it seems, a central part of my identity – being a TEXAN – has been either under attack or misunderstood. Under attack is harsh wording, but if you’re a Spurs fan, you get it.

I am not good at basketball. I don’t even love to watch a basketball game in its entirety. But I am, always and forever, a big fan of the San Antonio Spurs.

I remember driving my dad’s caramel candy brown Dodge Dakota pickup truck out on I-35 to honk the horn for hours and celebrate their 2000’s-era championships during my college years. I remember going to a few of the celebrations at the Alamodome and all over the city, getting teary once or twice in the process. Not because I love sports or even really know how basketball works, but because I love everything the Spurs represent to me. Hometown pride, a baseline of decency and kindness – the Spurs are CONSISTENTLY the good guys of the NBA. They are, I am right, and do not question this! – and an earnest and loving connective energy that has brought a city of more than a million people together for decades.

And then the Spurs made the Finals and played against the New York Knicks, and my team was hated by at least half the country for a little bit. And New York – this city that already has everything – got to rub it in my face. I had to watch a bunch of New Yorkers celebrate defeating my team. My hometown. One of my Texan totems. The hell?!

Right after, Juneteenth comes around. I’ve never really loved this holiday. My parents barely even acknowledged it when I was a kid. My father, a Texas-born and bred cattle rancher, didn’t care at all. And I get it. Because Juneteenth is kind of a fucked up holiday.

It celebrates the date, post-Civil War, when formerly enslaved Black Texans found out they were finally free. This date when they got the news, the original Juneteenth, it came more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The powers that be made those slaves wait a few extra years for their freedom. I am not sure I will ever be excited in celebrating that, and I totally understand why my father, who lived through Jim Crow and both World Wars, wouldn’t either.

It all makes watching Juneteenth celebrations, in the aftermath of its declaration as a federal holiday, confusing. Do the people screaming the loudest about this holiday even really get it? Or know where it came from? Should anyone other than Black people even be allowed to celebrate it?

What do I do with all these questions and all these feelings? All this simmering anger over things I want to only belong to me, and to only exist in the world through the lens I see them through.

Here’s what I’ve concluded: Firstly, you share. Anyone is allowed to think whatever they want about the Spurs. That doesn’t negate what the Spurs mean to me. And then you take whatever lesson you can from these things that you realize don’t just belong to you. The lesson of the Spurs for me is that everyone deserves their own hometown heroes, even New Yorkers. But I still don’t have to say “Go Knicks,” and I never will. Never ask me to. Never. Please. DO NOT.

As for Juneteenth, the lesson is a bit more complicated. When I think of the story of the emancipation of Black Texans – some two years late – maybe the note isn’t to get mad about how people celebrate the holiday now, but to understand a central truth within the story of Juneteenth, one that I can hold onto no matter how and where Juneteenth as a collective idea ends up: Even when deferred, freedom always feels free. And you are always allowed to celebrate freedom, no matter how late it comes.

Happy Juneteenth. Go Spurs.

-Sam

P.S. If you are in or around LA on June 28th (or are looking for an excuse to come visit LA), please come see me and friends do a live show! We’ll be making the Ultimate ‘90s Nostalgia Bracket with help from the audience! It’s taking place at Dynasty Typewriter at 7 PM. You can get tickets HERE.

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