I’m not a big basketball fan, but I did watch a couple of Spurs games during the NBA Finals. They’re a young team, and they fought hard, and I know a lot of Texans were rooting for them to win. I was, too. But as I watched the final game, a creeping sense of unease came over me. I tried to shake it, but I couldn’t.
The San Antonio Spurs had a great team, one mostly composed of young Black men whom the state of Texas has actively worked against to limit their political representation. And their fabulous young star — Victor Wembanyama — is obviously an immigrant, and everybody knows how scary Texans seem to be about immigrants these days.
Had the Spurs been able to play more consistently and keep it together, their players and their team obviously deserved to win — but we didn’t. Texas didn’t.
I kept thinking of the 1936 Olympics 90 years back. Adolf Hitler was demonizing immigrants in the early stages of killing millions he considered members of an inferior people, promoting a “master” race — and a young Black man named Jesse Owens upset the Fuhrer’s strudel cart.
At the time, Owens couldn’t serve on a jury, much less vote in his own country. And there he was, crushing silly German homogeneity, exposing the myth of Aryan supremacy, and — at least for a week or three — making the average American appreciate their nation’s diversity.
Athletes rarely make real history, but Owens did it in the 1936 Olympics, winning four gold medals and setting Olympic records in each event. On August 3, he won the 100-meter dash. On August 4, he won the long jump. On August 5, he won the 200-meter sprint. And on August 9, Owens won his fourth gold medal in the 4-x-100-meter sprint relay. He practically single-handedly served Nazi Germany a brilliant comeuppance, real history, good history — the right kind of history.
The state of Texas doesn’t encourage real history, diverse history, good history, or the right kind of history. It’s not Nazi Germany, but the Texas legislature is pert near authoritarian, and the current conservative leadership is inarguably flirting with outright fascism.
It would have sucked if Jesse Owens had lost in 1936 and the notion of Aryan supremacy prevailed. So, that stated, I apologize to my friends and fellow Texans who are Spurs fans, but the right team won.
Yes, the majority of San Antonio is Democratic, and the current mayor is a Democratic lesbian. The Alamo City represents Texas very well. But so does New York. New York is electing dynamic, progressive leaders like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Texas is mostly ruled by asinine, regressive shit stains like Gov. Greg Abbott, John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, and other spineless borderline criminals. Most of our state’s leadership is blatantly sexist, racist, xenophobic, bigoted, small-minded, and corrupt. New York is looking forward. Texas is slinking backward. As a whole, Texas is currently championing almost everything wrong with America.
Let me repeat that.
Texas is currently championing almost everything wrong with America.
So, Texas teams don’t deserve to be champions.
I didn’t like seeing the San Antonio Spurs lose, but my state — like Hitler and the white supremacist Nazis — does not deserve victories. We don’t deserve San Antonio. We don’t deserve Wemby. We don’t deserve Black athletes competing for us at any level. We didn’t deserve the University of Texas’ 2026 Division I Women’s College World Series Championship softball team. And we wouldn’t have deserved a victory by their finals opponents, Texas Tech.
A victory for Hitler in the 1936 Olympics would have been a historical travesty — any victories in or for Texas are no different. We’re a bad actor on the planet. We’re a bad actor in the world. We’re a bad actor in the United States. And until the majority of the leadership changes, we’re losers and should be treated and remembered as such.
Texas doesn’t deserve its Spurs. Texas deserves to be spurned. — E.R. Bills
Fort Worth native E.R. Bills is the author of the upcoming Devils of Devils: Unspeakable Crimes in Southwest Texas (September 2026) and several other Lone Star titles.
This column reflects the opinions and fact-gathering of the author(s) and only the author(s) and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.
