I was standing in the shower when I realized Tim Duncan was my mortal enemy. I was 13 years old. He was 31. It was a relationship that could only end in one of us destroying the other.

The morning of April 19 was a typically sunny one in Arizona, but the atmosphere was shuddering. People sort of drifted along and smoldered, like the cigarette butts that stunk up the receptacles outside U.S. Airways Center downtown. No one seemed to know what to do. Tim Duncan had done it again. Done it to us again, and we were stupid to not see it coming. His dominance was as inevitable in Phoenix as a heat advisory in August.

The 2008 Suns were one of the Steve Nash-lead run-and-gun teams that, even in the fickle and cutthroat world of sports analysis, are considered to have deserved greatness. Since Nash re-joined the Suns in 2004, the team had built an offense around speed, flash and finesse. While the rest of the NBA was coveting monster-truck offenses, using giant bigs like Shaquille O’Neal, Rasheed Wallace and yes, Tim Duncan to bully teams inside, the Suns drove a Ferrari up and down the court, zipping long passes around the perimeter and splashing down moonshots from three-land. As a young kid, it was impossible not to be sucked into the hype. If we weren’t the best team in basketball (though we were good—55 wins in 2008), we were certainly the most entertaining. Nash and Co. were appointment viewing, and if I didn’t catch the live broadcast on TV, I’d always turn to 620 KTAR on the shower radio the next morning, to hear Suns broadcaster Al McCoy recap the game while I prepared for school.

Meanwhile, on the other side of New Mexico, the San Antonio Spurs were busy being everything the Suns were not: methodical, boring, traditional, quiet and consistent. While the Suns’ blistering pace had exploded into being upon the arrival of Nash, the Spurs, from my barely-teenage perspective, had always been good. They had never missed the playoffs. They had never been irrelevant or struggling. They had never been without Tim Duncan. (The first aspect of this viewpoint, remarkably, is not entirely wrong: Since the Spurs joined the NBA in 1976, they have missed the playoffs exactly four times, and only once has it happened in my lifetime—the 1996-97 season, when I was three years old.)

Duncan embodied everything a young basketball fan wanted to rebel against in organized sport. He was technically perfect to the point that a reel of his career highlights looks more like a how-to video than a celebration of an all-time great. His dunks were quick and emotionless—no rim-hanging or chest-thumping or flexing at the crowd. His mouth appeared to be sealed shut during games. He never talked trash. He never flaunted. He never once advertised that he was the greatest player to ever play his position. If you were 13 and your first impression of basketball was Steve Nash throwing passes behind his head to a skying Amar’e Stoudemire—“Wham! Bam! Slam!” shouted Al McCoy over the radio—you had no idea that Tim Duncan was a legend in the making. You just wanted him to leave your life in peace. Because, son of a bitch, did he ruin everything for a young Suns fan.

Entering the 2008 playoffs, the Suns and Spurs might have constituted the NBA’s best rivalry. The Spurs had bounced those circus-act Phoenix teams from the playoffs in two of the past three seasons, and the prospect of three times in four seasons felt like a potential killing blow to an all-time Arizona sports era. No one wanted these Suns teams to disappear, but Tim Duncan and his reptilian, monolithic Spurs had no such sentiment. In fact, the impression was they didn’t feel anything at all. They only knew how to win basketball games and destroy the dreams of Arizonan children. In 2008, the teams would meet in the opening round of the Western Conference playoffs. First blood. It was the night of April 18.

The game was an impossible classic, and that word is apt to describe how the game provided archetypal performances from all its key players. Nash scored 25 points and dialed up 13 assists. Stoudemire added 33 points and 7 rebounds. Leandro “The Brazilian Blur” Barbosa left some dust on the bench with a neat 12 points, 8 rebounds and 2 assists. The Suns hummed, but so did the Spurs. Tony Parker scored 26. Manu Ginobili had 24 with 3 steals. Everyone was out of their minds, and since a matchup this good required bonus material, the game stretched itself to double overtime. Duncan, of course, was brilliant and invisible. Except for one moment.