Each October for the past several years, when I prepare to fork over too much money to stream every single San Antonio Spurs game, it has been with an eye to the past.

I rationalize the expense: Gregg Popovich is the greatest basketball coach of all time; over the course of 27 years leading the Spurs, he has won five championships and more than 1,300 games, and given San Antonians a lifetime of memories. And although in the past few seasons the Spurs have won … less, to put it mildly, they’ve played with the same passion and reverence for the game of basketball that Pop demands. There’s no way I can stop supporting him and the team just because they are in a slump. When Keldon Johnson dives for a loose ball in a meaningless-but-close game in April of a 20-win season, I think of the way Manu Ginóbili used to throw his body around for the team and smile. Or, when Sandro Mamukelashvili comes out of nowhere to steal the show against the two-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić in a surprise March win, I’m reminded of leaping out of my seat in the Alamodome, cheering for another gritty Malik Rose performance.

I hold on to the hope that with Pop still in control, things might turn around. He might still be able to squeeze a bit of greatness out of players who don’t know how good they could be. Luckily for the franchise, there’s reason to believe that a player is on the way who has the chance to be an all-timer.

[Prashant Rao: Why it’s good that Americans don’t dominate basketball]

Last month, the Spurs won the first pick in the NBA-draft lottery—where teams who missed the playoffs find out the year’s draft order; the worse your team was, the better odds you have of getting an early pick. If all goes as expected tonight, they will select Victor Wembanyama, the 19-year-old French generational prospect who, at 7 foot 2, has the frame of a center with the ball-handling ability and finesse of a guard. NBA scouts have salivated over “Wemby” for years, calling him the best prospect since LeBron James (no pressure), and soon, he will likely call San Antonio home.

“The Spurs are part of the lifeblood of the city, and almost instantaneously you saw the mood shift and the hopes of the city just shoot through the roof,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who watched the draft lottery in his car, told me. “The Spurs have been through some tough times over the last several years, and fortune seems to have shifted in an instant.” If you need a gauge for the excitement in the city, roughly 3,000 fans made deposits for season tickets in the two days after the lottery, and the first three rows of courtside seats sold out, as did the suites. One NBA scout estimated that Wembanyama could add $500 million to the value of the franchise thanks to his name recognition, international celebrity, and talent. And Spurs fans know what a No. 1 pick means for the city—we’ve seen it before.

On May 18, 1997, the day of that year’s lottery, the Spurs had just come off a surprisingly terrible season. David Robinson, the star big man whom they had taken with the No. 1 draft pick a decade prior, had been sidelined the entire year with a back injury. With Robinson, the Spurs had been a 60-win playoff team over the previous two seasons; without him, they struggled to cobble together 20 victories all year. But that night, the Spurs were putting the season behind them, because their struggles meant they were again well positioned to land the first pick.

That year’s drawing was the Tim Duncan sweepstakes. Duncan, who’d shone as a power forward at Wake Forest University, snagging rebounds in games like he was the only man on the court, was no doubt going to be selected first. The Spurs didn’t have the best odds of getting the first choice—that honor went to the Boston Celtics, who’d lost 34 of their final 38 games of the season—but they had hope. And as the lottery went along, that hope turned into belief. “I was nervous,” Spurs chair Peter Holt told reporters at the time. “But when we started getting down to 3-2-1, I got excited.” When the envelope was opened—revealing the fiesta-colored Spurs logo—Holt could do nothing but pump his fists.

On June 25, a little over a month later, during the draft itself, the Spurs made their selection official. Two first-overall picks—Duncan and Robinson—would be teaming up, and the league was terrified. As Stu Jackson, then general manager of the Vancouver Grizzlies, put it at the time: “I don’t mind getting the fourth pick … What I mind is having to face Robinson and Duncan in the West four times next season.”

I turned 6 the next day; Duncan became the birthday gift that kept on giving.

Two seasons after the Spurs selected Duncan, their luck began to pay off.

It’s Memorial Day, May 31, 1999, and the Spurs are in the Western Conference finals—one series away from the big dance. There are 12 seconds left in the fourth quarter. The Spurs, down 18 points in the third, have clawed their way back to within two. Sean Elliott, the Spurs forward, doesn’t so much as pirouette as look like someone just bumped into his shoulder on the street. His pinkie toe is practically hugging the sideline as he catches the ball. Somehow—divine intervention, maybe—Elliott composes himself with a hop and one dribble while orienting his body toward the hoop. His heels hang out-of-bounds, the balls of his feet planted firmly inside the line. Rasheed Wallace, the Portland Trail Blazers power forward, uses every bit of his 7-foot-4-inch wingspan to try to get a hand on the ball. It is no use. Elliott’s eyes lock on to what he can see of the rim as he rises with the picturesque form of basketball-shooting manuals.

“He fires the three,” Bob Costas, the NBC announcer, says. “And he hits it!” The Alamodome erupts—logically, some Trail Blazers fans must be there, but it seems like all 35,000 people in the arena have joined in an ebullient chorus. About 20 miles away, at our home on Randolph Air Force Base, my living room erupts in screams as well.

Some say that shot set the Spurs dynasty in motion. Neither Robinson nor Duncan took it, but it showed that this team was going to fight until the end for a victory, that the basketball gods were smiling on San Antonio. The win led the Spurs to sweep the Trail Blazers and catapulted them into the NBA Finals.

[From the January/February 2019 issue: Tibet is going crazy for hoops]

It’s nearly a month later—June 25, the fifth game of the Finals—and the Spurs are leading the series 3–1—one victory away from winning the whole thing. My family is huddled around the television. There are 2.1 seconds left on the clock. The New York Knicks guard Charlie Ward is trying to inbound the ball at half-court; the Spurs guard Avery Johnson—the “Little General”—is jumping around in front of him. Ward lobs the ball to Latrell Sprewell, who is immediately met by Duncan and Robinson. They don’t swat at the ball, just hold their arms erect—the “Twin Towers,” they called them—and make Sprewell’s shot near-impossible. He barely gets it over them; it’s an air ball straight into the hands of Elliott, who slams the ball into the ground as the buzzer sounds. Duncan, who averaged 27 points and 14 rebounds in the series, is named Finals MVP.

We put our Spurs flags on our Ford Windstar and drive downtown. It’s mayhem. Horns blare. My dad rolls down the windows and we join in the celebration.

I wake up the next morning as an 8-year-old. What a gift.

The finals never came that close to my birthday again, but each June that the Spurs hoisted the Larry O’Brien Championship trophy—1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2014—was a gift to the city of San Antonio. The Spurs became a model of consistency, and even as the roster changed, the core held—Tim, David, Avery, and Sean became Tim, Tony, and Manu, which became Tim, Tony, Manu, and Kawhi—and Pop remained their leader. Even when the Spurs did not win, or (sigh) even make, the Finals, they won a lot. For 18 consecutive seasons, from 1999 to 2017, the Spurs won at least 50 games.

No one expects Wemby to come in and return the franchise to its status as a perennial finals contender overnight. (Okay, maybe some people do, and he might, but that’s beside the point.) What Wembanyama will bring back to San Antonio—what we pray he’ll bring back—is a foundation to build on. “It’s almost as if the success of the Spurs is the cool wind that comes in for the spring,” Nirenberg told me. “When we’ve been through the losing seasons over the last several years, it’s almost been in anticipation of when the ice would thaw; and when you see that pick come in … it’s just, it’s just like everything starts to bloom again. That’s really the outlook.”

Basketball fans everywhere—regardless of whom they support—should be glad that this potentially generational player isn’t going to be thrown into a team that’s expected to win right away. No one else in the NBA has the sort of job security that Gregg Popovich does—a security that allows him to let players develop instead of overworking them early. Wemby will be mentored by two of the best big men—in Duncan and Robinson—to ever play the game; both first-overall picks who know the pressure that comes with that designation.

Two decades from now, I hope I’ll be writing about how June 22, 2023, four days before my 32nd birthday, was the day that the dynasty was renewed. And even if that’s not meant to be, I’m going to fork over my money and enjoy the ride with a team that’s given me and my hometown so much.