BY DC CUEVA
In the past several months, the blogger in chief of DCBLOG has taken a break from this site as my family is approaching the one-year anniversary of the passing of our patriarch, my late father... and the role I've inherited of being the man of the house has caused me to focus more of my attention on those duties. But this site will go on with our MTV Reality coverage which resumes this summer, as do posts on matters outside of this site's primary beat... including our seasonal sports series. That includes this latest post that's taken years to put together and to post during both its biggest time of year and that day of the year where we celebrate the #1 sports fans in our lives of dads everywhere -- but this year is most meaningful for a far different reason than it has been in the life of yours truly.
Fourteen years later to the day of that graduation morning, that was joined by a very other special day that was celebrated by the broader part of the place we call home. Earlier on June 16, 2015, a tragedy took place where some Irish Americans died in a San Francisco balcony collapse, but later that would be bumped off the front page in this most dynamic of American metropolitan areas: on that Tuesday night in Northeast Ohio, the Golden State Warriors capped off one of the greatest seasons in NBA history with a six-game NBA Finals win over the Cleveland Cavaliers.
With one of the best records in league history, a dynamic MVP in Stephen Curry, a team of great players and a rookie head coach with championship pedigree, they outlasted the NBA's best player in a stirring series. And finally, those rabid Bay Area fans who put up with many years of futility but stayed faithfully loyal finally had a chance to release 40 years of frustration with their 2nd NBA title since that 1975 triumph... and it was part of a glorious decade in Bay Area sports that saw the Dubs and the Giants relish in championship glory, and the 49ers return to being a force in the NFL.
What we didn't know that summer of 2015 that it would be the start of a glorious era in the NBA's 75-year history: four titles in the span of seven years coming after both they and their opponents endured long droughts of being on the losing end. It was also the first of what would become five postseason battles between two of the preeminent players of this generation in Curry and LeBron James -- the first four between the Warriors and the Cavs in consecutive years for the title, and the fifth most recently that was won out by the Northeast Ohioan who, a year later, would fulfill his promise to a region who he scolded to win for the Heat and then returned to give them their deserved title.
For two months, one thing would be on our TV's in both our living room and my room every night and weekend afternoon from mid-April until mid-June: the NBA Playoffs kicking off in mid-spring, and culminating with an NBA Finals series at the footsteps of summertime that has always been a special time to be in the Cueva household. It represents just a chapter in a long and great relationship that my family has had with a sport that is, far and away, a religion to us... and it begins before I was around.
While I am one of has been a devoted sports fan with an interest in any and every sport and who also loyally watches the Olympics every other year, the NBA and basketball have always been my first love. It's a contrast from most of this country where football is the most popular sport, but while we've hosted a Super Bowl party in my house each year no sport has received the biggest attention and dominated the guy talk like the Association.
Hoops has been my family's preferred sport well before I was around, going all the way back to when my late dad Mariano lived in the Philippines before he and my mom immigrated here in the '70s (it's been the top sport there for a long time there too, even with Manny Pacquiao's dominance). Growing up in a nation about to be trapped by the Marcos dictatorship, he had discovered basketball when he watched games on television of the defunct Manila Industrial & Commercial Athletic Association and then the Philippine Basketball Association when it tipped off in 1975 - just before he met the love of his life of forty-five years, my mom.
Well after my parents immigrated to the U.S., that basketball love affair also made that trip across the Pacific where that trait passed down within our family. For years, much of the chatter that dad, my brother-in-law and I had when we are in the living room has been on the players, teams and everything going on in the league -- even if there isn't an NBA game on. This also translated into my summer wear where whenever I go out to the store or if I'm in Vegas, I'd usually put on an NBA jersey... there's a good deal of NBA-related clothing in my closet with jerseys, shirts and hats from Warrior title gear to some holy grail: an NBA on NBC hat from that glorious run they had in the '90s.
There's something to me about the NBA and basketball that always seems to grab our attention here in my house... maybe it's the game's fast-paced nature that goes hand in hand with the fast paced life we all take for granted: there's score lines that are well above what we'd find in the other major sports for example... and you can't go anywhere without seeing at least a few highlights.
The league has always understood both its youthful appeal and its great star power... and for many years the NBA has had the strongest and broadest appeal of all the major sports among younger fans who grew up with Magic and Jordan, then Kobe and LeBron and now with Curry and Giannis. It's by far the leader when it comes to having American sports' biggest social media following -- eight-digit readings for the league's official accounts on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the like... and its players are among the most-popular athletes on there too. There's even a Twitter list I created with official accounts, media and others associated with the league and hoops too.
Sometimes to keep myself active, I've brought the lone basketball in my room to a school, a park or an indoor gym and shoot around, often playing with my friends my own version of Twenty/20: two rounds of 10 shots each from the same spot at the free throw line... and I frequently won those sessions. But this fandom for basketball as a fan and an occasional player pale in comparison to getting to experience a game live -- and it's something I've experienced more than a few times in my lifetime.
This year of 2023 marks thirty years since the first live sporting event that I ever attended -- and it's something that I have done about a dozen times during that period. Among the ticket stubs I've collected includes a 49ers-Seahawks game on Thanksgiving Night in 2014 (their first encounter since the previous season's NFC Championship), an A's game a week before the strike twenty years earlier, and games spanning all of the four major sports and all but one of the local pro teams (the only one: the Raiders before they moved to that favorite happy place of mine known as Las Vegas).
But the one team who I have followed my life is also the one who I've watched more frequently: on Halloween Eve 1993, my first live game was a Warriors preseason game against the Supersonics at the old Coliseum Arena... and me, my dad, mom and sister all went to that game. There was plenty of buzz going in as it was Chris Webber's first home game... and it came four months after that draft day trade that sent him to the Dubs after being drafted first by the Orlando Magic -- I still remember getting the news of that Webber trade while eating some ice cream at the local Baskin-Robbins.
From that night, I remember my dad got to briefly interact with Sonics head coach George Karl during the pregame warmups, and at halftime we saw Jason Kidd walk by on that big night -- and also, Chris Mullin suffered a hand injury that sidelined him for the first month of the '93-94 season. Getting to watch games from home was something -- and my video library has a tape of that game as it also aired on local TV that night, but it was a whole new experience watching an NBA game live... and after a Warriors exhibition win win this was just the start.
Thirteen years later came the second Warriors game: this time with what turned out to be a precursor to what laid ahead a decade after. A Warriors team that had been in the doldrums for a time (but, as it turned out, was a year away from the "We Believe" '07 playoff team to be followed by Curry's arrival) was facing LeBron in what became his first stint with the Cavs -- and all before that infamous Decision mess where he went to Miami and scolded all of those in Cleveland. This game in January of 2006 also doubled as a guys night out for me and some of my other guy cousins, as we took BART to the Arena... but a delay on the tracks en route to Oakland caused us to miss the first quarter, and we came in during the 2nd period of what turned out to be a Cavs win.
But the real fun came after we had left the arena: when my parents asked me what I would do after the game, I told them that we would just go to a local karaoke place and sing our hearts out -- except for me who doesn't really like to sing in front of anyone else outside of the shower each morning. But in truth, me and the guys drove from that rail station to an adult entertainment place for post-game entertainment -- and there in reality, me and the cousins went to have some fun, if you know what I mean by that - even though I didn't go down that route to drunk town.
Fast forward almost a full decade... and after everything that led up to that summer of 2015, we were obviously elated to have the Warriors win that elusive NBA title -- and it came to be that, eventually, we would get to see the champions in action.
On the night after my birthday that fall (and a month before that, my sixth Vegas trip) came that opportunity... and by chance, the team was in the midst of that historic winning streak that would eventually reach unchartered territory during the course of that '15-16 title defense -- and on Saturday night November 14th they took on the Brooklyn Nets. But as this game took place, the rest of the sports world was focused on the Octagon down under: simultaneously to this was UFC 196, and a once-invincible Ronda Rousey was facing off with Mischa Tate in Melbourne, Australia... and I kept on refreshing my phone for updates right up to when Rowdy got knocked out.
In going with my dad, sister, brother-in-law, their kids and a couple cousins, our choice of going to this game was so unexpected of sorts that I didn't know that we'd be going to Oracle Arena until a few days before my birthday. And whenever you decide to go this late to any sporting event chances are that you may get the worst seats in the house: compared to our first two times going to a Dubs game where we got good seats, our positions were located in the highest spot in the entire arena. Yes, we got the cheap seats... and that meant having to climb the stairs all the way almost to the very top, and we even had to deal with a Nets fan who was sitting next to us.
But having the worst seats in the house (albeit one that had a better view of the court from above than most other places) that didn't deter us from enjoying what would become a thriller of a game. In fact, it became the only one of the many games that I've been to that went beyond its advertised distance: OT.
The Warriors won that night 107-99 to take their season-opening winning streak to 22 games and eventually to twenty-six. They would go on to that historic regular season with that 73-9 record and were up 3-1 on the Cavs when they met in June for the rematch... we know how it all ended once Draymond Green got tossed from Game 5. But the Dubs responded to that 2016 Finals collapse by acquiring Kevin Durant... and two years later the team became one of the handful that would go back-to-back -- and once again, they beat LeBron's Cavaliers in the fourth and last meeting in that quartet.
Something that I had wanted to be part of all my life was to experience being part of a victory parade for a local sports team: during my lifetime there has been those for the 49ers, the A's, the Giants, and then for the Warriors after that long wait for a second title in the Bay Area. Prior commitments had precluded me from getting to check off of the bucket list the item of going to a local sports team's celebration... but calling in-sick from my last work commitment in June of 2018 offered me the chance to do exactly that. And I tagged along with my sister, brother-in-law and cousins for their victory parade in downtown Oakland -- and I got to capture that for my YouTube channel.
As it turned out, the Warriors title win over the Celtics not only stamped their place in the NBA's 75-year -- it also turned out to be the very last sporting event that my dad would ever watch with us in his lifetime. My late dad Mariano watched the Finals both from the hospital and in our living room as he fought brain cancer, and just a month after that title triumph that courageous battle got the best of him. While he was fighting for his life, my cousin Jeff came by to our house to give him an autographed hat he got from one of those players who played in that first game we ever went to in Chris Mullin... and that hat still sits above the bed he spent the last months of his life resting in. And that game versus the Nets remains the most recent live sporting event I have attended to date.
It's a long lineage stretching back from across the Pacific in what my family calls the "Motherland" there of the Philippines to now as we go through this unprecedented time being one person short in our house, but it seems that this favorite sport of ours of basketball has been one part of our family life that's been here every step of the way. It was the first live sporting event we went to thirty years ago, it was the last sports event my dad ever watched on TV, and his love of that sport was passed down to me and the rest of our family since.
Had the Miami Heat came back to force a Game 7 on the Denver Nuggets, then this year's Finals would have concluded on Father's Day like many other NBA title series had before... but as I publish a post I've had in my blog drafts for years now but waited until today to post it, it would've been a perfect way to spend this day with all of us to enjoy watching a sport that he loved as a kid back then, and still ranks as our favorite sport of all.
- I AM DC
@DC408Dxtr
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