NEW YORK — As if spending Christmas here, with snow covering 7th Avenue, holly and ribbon creating the traditional, festive Macy’s facade a block away from Madison Square Garden, and a Yule Tide game against the New York Knicks on national TV wasn’t special enough, the San Antonio Spurs cranked up the holiday sentimentality a few notches for their talented rookie and his family.
Stephon Castle, 20, a 6-foot-6 guard out of UConn who is averaging 11.6 points per game in his first year with the Spurs, thought he was being hazed at the end of San Antonio’s Christmas Eve workout at the Garden.
His mother, Quannette, celebrates her 50th birthday on Christmas, and she along with the rest of Castle’s immediate family were guests of the Spurs at practice. When it was over, Quannette was brought onto the court to be serenaded with Stephon’s best version of “Happy Birthday,” and he was to have no help. Just him, singing to his mom, at the Garden.
Except, near the end of the song (by this point, the rest of the Spurs had joined in), Quannette interrupted her son to tell him she had an early Christmas present.
In front of the rest of the team, she handed him his 2024 NCAA championship ring he won last April with the Huskies.
“It was crazy, I had no idea that was coming,” Castle said. “They kind of flipped the switch on me.”
The gift was a surprise to Quannette, too. The Huskies had sent the ring to the Spurs a while back, and San Antonio decided to use the Christmas trip to New York as an opportunity to make his ring presentation more special. When they learned that the Castle family would be in the city — the Castles attended the Spurs’ game Monday in Philadelphia and are staying in New York for the week — the Spurs planned for Quannette to be the one to give her son the ring.
Quannette’s husband and Stephon’s father, Stacey, is a New York City basketball legend, one of the city’s best high school players of the 1990s. He was in on it with the Spurs’ support staff, but Quannette said she didn’t know she was giving Steph the championship ring until five minutes before it happened.
“I was actually doing 50 things until (turning) 50, and this is probably number one that the Spurs would think of me to be involved with this,” Quannette said. “Providing him the ring was so very exciting. … I’ve had a special lunch with my daughter, I had a party, but this is one of those special things even though I didn’t plan it, didn’t know about it.”
Quannette and Stacey were joined at the Garden by their daughter Staci and other son, Quenton. The family lives in Atlanta now, but both of the parents are from New York. Quannette said this week was to be the family’s first trip together to the city.
The Spurs rode a train to New York from Philadelphia after Monday’s close loss to the Sixers, arriving at Penn Station with a dusting of snow on the streets and the team’s lavish hotel just a few blocks away.
They will play the Knicks at noon Wednesday in the first of the NBA’s five games as part of the league’s annual Christmas extravaganza, and for many of them it will be their first game on Christmas (Chris Paul and Harrison Barnes are exceptions, of course).
The Spurs landed on the league’s most important day of the regular season of course through the star power of second-year sensation Victor Wembanyama, the reigning Rookie of the Year who is adding to his menacing defensive skills at 7-foot-4 with an improved 3-point game.
San Antonio had one of the worst records in the NBA last season, which doesn’t normally earn a franchise a Christmas game the following year. But these Spurs have been winning; if the season ended today, they would be in the Play-In Tournament as a No. 9 seed.
Which makes playing on Christmas, in New York, special for many reasons beyond just Wemby’s rise.
The Spurs added another reason with their celebration for the Castle family.
“It’s really a dream come true,” the Spurs rookie said.
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(Photos: Darren Carroll / NBAE via Getty Images)
