You may have heard a little about how the Golden State Warriors have not won a game in San Antonio since Feb. 4, 1997, which is quite some time ago. I, for example, was in eighth grade on that date, probably in my parents room watching Bill Nye the Science Guy on a little 19-inch color TV that got its fuzzy reception through an antenna. I turn 30 next month.
So this demanded a little research to contextualize just how long ago Feb. 14, 1997 really was.
Here is a list of things that have happened in the world since the Golden State Warriors last won a game in San Antonio (non-exhaustive):
• Facebook is founded in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, reaches a billion
users, has a major Hollywood film made about its creation (starring
Justin Timberlake) and becomes a publicly traded company.
• Tom Brady attends Michigan, gets drafted in the sixth round, replaces
Drew Bledsoe, leads the New England Patriots to three Super Bowl wins
and enters the twilight of his career.
• You do remember what Justin Timberlake was doing in 1997, don’t you? While the Warriors were beating the Spurs, Timberlake and his bandmates in N*Sync were recording their self-titled debut album, which would go on to sell more than 10 million copies in the United States alone.
• Yeah, since then Timberlake has dated Britney Spears and Cameron Diaz, become one of the most universally respected pop/R&B artists of his generation, and become a frequent guest on Saturday Night Live.
• The Boston Red Sox ended an 86-year World Series drought in 2004, then won it again in 2007.
• The No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 the day the Warriors won in San Antonio? Toni Braxton's "Unbreak my Heart."
• The iPod was conceived, created, released to the public (2001), re-released in five more generations and four other versions and eventually, for all practical purposes, replaced by the iPhone in 2007. A share of Apple stock went for $4.08 on Feb. 4, 1997. It is worth more than 100 times that today.
• The Notorious B.I.G. was shot dead in Los Angeles (March 9, 1997).
• In 1997, you could still smoke on the airplane. Smoking was banned on all domestic flights in 1998.
• Twitter was nine years away from its creation. Twitter users now send 400 million tweets per day.
• Current Warriors coach Mark Jackson was playing for the Denver Nuggets.
• You know them as the Wizards now, but in 1997 the NBA team in Washington, D.C. was called the Bullets and, led by Chris Webber and Juwan Howard, they were in the playoffs, losing to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the first round.
• Barack Obama was beginning his second month on the job in the Illinois State Senate, Bill Clinton had not yet been impeached and George W. Bush was in Year 2 as the 46th governor of Texas.
• And, finally, the old reliable time capsule: The week of Feb. 4, 1997, a gallon of gas averaged $1.24 in the United States.
