Fredericksburg High School alumnus Dane Carter, Class of 2022, was invited to a recent San Antonio Spurs playoff game against the Oklahoma City Thunder at the Frost Bank Center last Friday in San Antonio.

That, in itself, is quite an exciting story anyone might be willing to share, but the route to the Frost Bank Center at a Spurs playoff game with the Coyote Friday night went through quite a process that began with graduation night at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma earlier this month.

“A few weeks before our graduation (at the University of Oklahoma), the NBA playoffs started,” Carter explained. “It was pretty evident to me that it was going to end up between the Spurs and the Thunder playing each other in the playoffs and a lot of my friends were Thunder fans in Oklahoma. A couple of moments before I left my apartment to go to Oklahoma’s graduation, I ran back to my room and saw the (Spurs) jersey that I had hanging on my wall and just thought that this is my one time I can kind of make a statement about it, being a Spurs fan in Oklahoma. I didn’t expect anything to blow up about it. I just wanted to show the Thunder fans at graduation that Spurs fans are everywhere and that we aren’t scared of a long, physical series.”

It didn’t take long for this story to advance to another level.

“It was fun waiting in the stadium to graduate because I was almost last in the lineup,” Carter said. “I was sitting there debating if I actually was going to do it (wear the Spurs jersey under the graduation gown) once I got on stage. My girlfriend turned to me and said, ‘You better do it and you can’t chicken out now,’ so thankfully I listened to her and it worked out pretty well.”

The moment of truth came a few minutes later for Carter.

“I had a Spurs jersey underneath my gown which was enclosed by a zipper,” Carter said. “As I shook the dean of my college’s hand, I turned to the camera so I could show my entire Spurs shirt and all I can remember is the shock and booing that was pretty funny to hear from the Thunder fans in the crowd.”

What happened next was completely unexpected by Carter.

“After I walked across the stage and I made my Spurs statement, a lot of my friends had already graduated and the event kept going on,” Carter said. “It was just a funny thing at the moment and we let it go, just trying to enjoy the last few nights of our undergrad career.”

Carter woke up to the news the next day on a Sunday.

“There was a post on a Thunder Facebook group and they were saying things about ‘how this kid had the nerve to do this in Oklahoma’ and then it hit a Spurs group shortly afterward and it started to blow up into something bigger,” Carter said. “That’s when I realized that this might get a little bigger than I had originally envisioned.”

Sports Illustrated picked up the story from there.

“Sports Illustrated reached out to my mom and asked if it was real and then asked her if she was the owner of a video that was taken at graduation that night,” Carter said. “From there, that’s when it really took off. I think my phone went off a thousand times that day. Everyone I knew said that they had seen me on social media and it was really crazy.”

Carter has always been a Spurs fan and what happened after that was something more special than he could have ever imagined.

“The Spurs reached out to me after seeing the post and people were campaigning for me to get tickets to a game,” Carter said. “I guess the Spurs had heard about that and they offered me some space for Game Three of the playoffs against the Thunder. I’m very excited about that. I have faith in this team.”

The San Antonio Spurs told Carter that they would try to incorporate him into the game last Friday and that happened during a break in the action during Game Three.

Carter came out of the tunnel in a graduation gown and flashed the San Antonio Spurs jersey in front of the home crowd in San Antonio with the Spurs’ mascot, The Coyote.

The Spurs crowd erupted in cheers when Carter unveiled the Spurs jersey under his Oklahoma graduation gown.

“This is the first time I’ve been able to do something like this to be really involved with the Spurs,” Carter said. “I was just thinking that in 20 years, I’ll always remember this playoff run and how cool that was.”