I guess maybe because it wasn’t a sporting event I was at right then. I can’t remember a time I’d so clearly understood my feelings at a sporting event. I’d not begun the night expecting to get emotional watching millionaires talk about steak, and yet there I was. Each of the commercials was far funnier, more charming, and more heartfelt in that setting than it is when you’re watching it on your computer by yourself. Being from San Antonio, in San Antonio, watching San Antonio–famous commercials with 18,000-plus other people from San Antonio felt right. The best part of it was they went through several of the H-E-B commercials Duncan and many of the other Spurs have been in together. An on-court host introduced a few different video segments while everyone waited (fans thank Tim former teammates thank Tim short recaps of all of the championships he’d helped win things like that). It was the second-most excited I’d ever been to see anyone walk somewhere.įor what was probably 30 minutes (but felt like 30 years), he was back there, disappeared into the tunnel. My first-best guess: His phone was actually one of those fake phones filled with candy you get at a corner store, and he was just pretending to do something on it because he knew people were looking at him and he wanted to look normal.Īs the game was ending, Tim Duncan got up from his seat and walked toward the tunnel the players go into at halftime and at the end of the game. My second-best guess: He was looking at flight statuses to see what planes were on time and what planes were late (he didn’t have any flights booked, he was just curious). My third-best guess of what he was doing on his phone: typing a review of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in a notes app to read to himself later on. At that moment, it felt official: Tim Duncan is going to be fine in retirement, and so too will the rest of us. Was he sending a text message? (WHO DOES TIM DUNCAN TEXT WITH?) Was he playing some sort of game? (IS TIM DUNCAN ANY GOOD AT TEMPLE RUN?) Was he looking at a picture he’d taken earlier? If so, what does Tim Duncan take pictures of? (IS TIM DUNCAN A SKILLED PHOTOGRAPHER?) Has Tim Duncan ever taken a picture, been like, “This is fucking dope,” and then proudly shown it to someone? (DOES TIM DUNCAN HAVE AN INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT?) I just know I was watching him mess with it and I wanted so badly to know what he was looking at. Part of me assumed he didn’t own a cellphone, or wouldn’t own a cellphone.

It was right then that I realized that, despite his having been in my life for almost two decades now, I’d never seen Tim Duncan touch a cellphone. The exact point that it became mesmerizing: There was a timeout a few minutes after I’d started creep-staring at Tim, and, in a surprise plot twist, he picked up a cellphone and started tapping at it. After those minutes, it became normal, and then very quickly it became mesmerizing. I’d anticipated it was going to be strange to see him on the civilian side of things, but it was weird to see him where he was (about 20 rows behind the Spurs bench, rather than on it) wearing what he was wearing (regular clothes, rather than a Spurs uniform) for only a few minutes. I spent most of the remaining minutes of the game just watching him. Somewhere during the second quarter, a person sitting two seats down from me pointed out where Tim Duncan was sitting in the arena. (You can read this if you want that.) This is a thing about the way those things got mushed together during the jersey-retirement ceremony for Tim Duncan following Sunday night’s Spurs-Pelicans game, because that’s exactly what happened. (You can read this if you want that.) And this is not a thing about what Tim Duncan has meant to San Antonio, and means to San Antonio. This is not a thing about the nostalgic nuances of going to a Spurs game with my dad, or to any sports game with any parent.

Tim duncan jersey retirement game