June 25, 1999: San Antonio's 1st Title

June 25, 1999, 25 years ago: The San Antonio Spurs win their 1st league championship, after 3 years in the ABA and 23 years in the NBA. They defeat the New York Knicks, 78-77 at Madison Square Garden, to win Game 5 and the NBA Championship.

For the only major sports team in a city now with over 1.14 million people, this is a huge moment. It begins a stretch where, in 16 seasons, coach Gregg Popovich and forward Tim Duncan will lead them into 6 NBA Finals, winning 5 of them, the 1st 2 with center David Robinson.

For the Knicks, it is their 8th trip to the NBA Finals, and it remains their last. They managed to get there despite an injury to their star player, center Patrick Ewing. Forward Larry Johnson put the team on his back, and was 3 wins away from becoming a New York sports legend.

Coach Jeff Van Gundy -- short, bald, scrawny, looking nothing like a basketball player -- had built a team that played scrappy ball. Bill Gallo, sports cartoonist for the New York Daily News, drew him as a boxer, calling him "Rocky Van Gutsy."

But "Coach Pop" had as much guts, more brains, and more talent, and there was little the Knicks could do. In 1997, the Knicks had been bought by Cablevision, and James Dolan has run them ever since. And competitiveness has been a rarity.

Founded in 1967, in the American Basketball Association, as the Dallas Chaparrals, the team moved in 1973, becoming the San Antonio Spurs. They were 1 of the 4 ABA teams invited to join the NBA in 1976. By 1978, they had won a Division title, followed by trips to the Western Conference Finals in 1979, '82 and '83.

After a few down years, the arrival of coach Larry Brown in 1988 and Robinson in 1989 made them a Playoff team again. They got back to the Conference Finals in 1995, Popovich's 1st year as general manager. In 1996, after a bad start, he named himself head coach, and the arrival of Duncan the following season made them a title team in just 2 more seasons.

The Spurs would win the title again in 2003, Robinson's last year; 2005, 2007 and 2014, losing in the Finals in 2013, as Duncan straddled the NBA's Shaquille O'Neal era and the first half of the LeBron James era, as it was LeBron's Heat that beat the Spurs in the 2013 Finals, before the Spurs turned the tables in 2014.

By 2022, the population of San Antonio was believed to be 1.47 million people, and its metropolitan area 2.6 million. Yet the Spurs remain its only major league team: They lost the WNBA's Silver Stars after the 2017 season; the Missions are in baseball's Class AA Texas League; despite several minor professional football teams, including the Gunslingers of the 1980s USFL and the Brahmas of the current UFL, they've only hosted 3 NFL regular-season games, all as an emergency home for the 2005 New Orleans Saints after Hurricane Katrina; San Antonio F.C. are in the USL Championship, the 2nd tier of American soccer; and they have no pro hockey team at all.