In some ways Phoenix is like San Antonio
Web Posted: 05/07/2007 11:07 PM CDT
Richard Oliver
Express-News
PHOENIX — Compared with San Antonio’s rich and celebrated history, Phoenix has risen from the floor of Arizona’s Salt River Valley, at the foot of the White Tank Mountains, with evolutionary haste.
As the centerpiece of a state not even a century old, the capital has exploded by more than 1 million people inside its city limits over the past 60 years. Still a dusty Western crossroads in 1950, Phoenix today is an industrial and cultural giant, boasting roughly 4.1 million residents over a sprawling metropolitan area covering more than 475 square miles.
“Everything is new there,” said Bexar County consultant Michael Sculley, who joined his wife, Sheryl, San Antonio’s city manager, in leaving Phoenix for Texas last year. “There are so many transplants. Nothing was born and raised in that town.”
Nevertheless, today Maricopa County boasts a bustling corporate base, one of the country’s strongest tourism economies, a vibrant Division I college and franchises in all four major sports leagues.
But Phoenix covets something that San Antonio regards these days as a possession every bit as valuable as the Alamo or River Walk.
An NBA championship trophy, and the identity it brings.
“San Antonio fans have a quiet confidence about them, just like the way the Spurs play,” Tempe resident Jeffrey Gregorec noted in an Arizona Republic blog over the weekend. “In my opinion, the Suns-Spurs matchup is not only a matchup of the two best teams in basketball, but of the two most different styles of play with the two most different types of fans.”
In Phoenix, that represents a torturous chasm.
The 40-year-old Suns ball club, the city’s oldest major sports franchise, has reached the Western Conference finals five times since 1988, but never captured a title. San Antonio, meanwhile, has earned three NBA crowns in the past seven seasons.
“We have come so close,” said Jackie Berry, whose family owns a commercial real estate company near the Suns’ U.S. Airways Center downtown. “We’ve had the best record in the league four or five times, reached the (NBA) Finals, had Charles Barkley and other great players. People here can taste it, but they’ve had their hearts broken a few more times than most.”
It happened again on Sunday. The Spurs’ 111-106 victory in the opener of the Western Conference semifinals was San Antonio’s 15th win in the past 18 games between the teams.
Afterward, Suns star Steve Nash, who finished the contest with a bloody gash on his nose after a collision on the court, spoke wearily of “these invisible barriers that seem to pop up sometimes” around his team.
San Antonio fans haven’t felt that in a while.
“It’s different,” said Charles Hood, named head of the San Antonio Fire Department late last year after a lengthy stint in Phoenix. “The fever is there, the passion is there, but I don’t think the culture is the same as it is here (in South Texas).”
Added Sculley, the past executive director of the Maricopa County Sports Commission, “The optimism (for the Suns) is reined. It’s a controlled emotion until you’ve been there. San Antonio has been there.”
Still, San Antonio’s legendary support for the Spurs is based on more than success. The 35-year-old franchise, South Texas’ only major sports entity, is buoyed by a native fan base literally raised to support the team.
“San Antonio is unique in that way,” said former Spurs headliner Sean Elliott, a one-time University of Arizona standout. “Being in several different NBA cities, knowing guys on different teams, they all talk about the way people embrace the Spurs. It’s fanatical.”
Berry, a lifelong Suns fan, hopes to someday feel that same unique passion. Perhaps, he insists, it will come this year — by bulling past the Spurs, at last, en route to a title.
“I can’t imagine a professional team that wants a championship more than the Suns,” he said. “It’s not that been there, done that, like the Spurs. We want to be there.”