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Scott Davis has followed Gamecock sports for more than 30 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective.

It’s always a dangerous development when I get lost in thought.

I’ll give you an example: The other day, for unknown reasons, I spent a seriously frightening amount of time ruminating about South Carolina’s basketball tradition (or lack thereof). I thought about long-gone coaches, former players, the way the basement of the old Carolina Coliseum was referred to as the Elephant Room back in the day. By the end of my daydreaming, I’d touched on just about all of it – good, bad, ugly, indifferent, forgettable, comical and everything in between.

I was idling in Atlanta traffic, and daydreaming is the only weapon available to the victim of Atlanta traffic.

What I kept coming back to – again and again – was just how thin the legacy of achievement was for the school in basketball.

You know the drill: Just a handful of NCAA Tournament appearances in eight decades of competition. A couple of conference titles across the better part of a century. To someone of my age who has seen USC competing in March just a couple of times in my lifetime, the Gamecock tradition in basketball – if you can even call it that – seems almost nonexistent.

But that’s because I wasn’t there.

I wasn’t alive in 1969 and 1970 and 1971.

I wasn’t there, inside the Carolina Coliseum, when Frank McGuire’s basketball team was playing.

Growing up in South Carolina, I heard all about those teams. I heard about Bobby Cremins and Kevin Joyce and John Roche crossing himself before taking free throws. I heard about them, but I didn’t really understand why they meant so much to so many.

McGuire was still alive and attending games when I was a student at USC – an elder statesman and legend in the twilight years – but the reality is, those teams just hadn’t touched me in any real sense. By the time I was roaming the campus in the 1990s, the old black and white photos of the McGuire teams may as well have been silent film reels.

If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t understand what the fuss was all about. Didn’t those teams only win one ACC title? Weren’t there a lot of breathtaking disappointments in the ACC Tournament and a general inability to make anything happen in the NCAA’s? Was that really a tradition? Why did so many Carolina fans seem to think we had a proud legacy in basketball? It’s not like this was Chapel Hill or Durham or Bloomington, Indiana. Right?

When I’ve met older Gamecock fans throughout the years, I’ve often asked them about the McGuire years.

“Was that whole thing really that big a deal?” I remember asking a fan who lived in Columbia and attended games at the Coliseum in the glory days. “I mean, it’s not like we won the national title or something.”

Thirty minutes later, I’d heard all about why it was indeed that big a deal. I heard about the Columbia phone lines consistently being jammed when South Carolina played basketball. I heard about the unsettling, almost nasty, atmosphere at the Coliseum – described as quite literally the most hostile environment for an ACC opponent to play in any sport. I heard about a city and a state seized with an obsession.

It was something you had to be present for to really understand.

That was the message: You had to be there. To get it, you had to be there.

And I hadn’t been.

If you really think about it – like the kind of thinking you do when you’re stuck in Atlanta traffic – then you slowly come to the realization that moments like those are the ones we’re really seeking as sports fans.

Those “You Had to Be There” moments.

The moments that no one really understands except you and the people like you who were there to experience them. Only you get it. Only you know how special it all was when it was happening.

You are the only one who knows.

That’s why we put up with all the unfortunate things that sports bring to our lives – the losses, the frustrations, the Clemson fans in our midst, all of it. We do it in the hope that one day, without knowing why, we’ll find one of those moments we’ve been waiting for.

And we’ll be there to experience it when it happens.

I have one great “You Had to Be There” sports run in my life as a fan.

If you’re 30 or younger, you almost certainly believe that Atlanta sports fans are either vanishing or extinct as the city is increasingly overwhelmed by transplants. You almost certainly believe Atlanta fans to be apathetic, lacking in passion, and generally the opposite of whatever you consider a dedicated, “real” fan base to be.

And you wouldn’t be wrong.

Except for this: I was there.

I was there when the entire city of Atlanta and indeed the entire Southeastern United States seemed to be talking about, thinking about and obsessing over the Atlanta Braves.

It happened in 1991, when I was a freshman in college. To say it came out of nowhere doesn’t do justice to how unexpected and even unthinkable the entire episode was.

After floundering for decades as the laughingstock of the Majors, the Braves unexpectedly won their division in ’91, the season after they’d finished last for what seemed like the 100th year in a row. It was the perfect storm: For one thing, a lot of people still cared about Major League Baseball in 1991. For another, the Braves had a strong regional following due to their nightly appearances on the TBS Superstation. And finally, they’d been losing for so long that the newfound winning seemed almost God-given, like a rainstorm after a drought.

I ended up skipping much of the month of October during my first year of college to attend Braves playoff games.

When I tell you that it seemed like everyone in Atlanta was wearing a navy blue hat with a red bill and a white “A” on it, I genuinely mean that. The city was in a frenzy, almost like a virus had gripped the population. Office workers plastered encouragement to the team on their windows. The streets seemed constantly clogged with revelers, almost like an impromptu Mardi Gras had erupted.

This was in the very earliest days of the Tomahawk Chop – the team hadn’t yet started passing out foam tomahawks to fans who entered the stadium. So fans were bringing their own homemade tomahawks built from hammers and stones.

I promise this happened.

I know it did, because I was there.

So if I tell you that, yes, there was a time when sports mattered in Atlanta – really, really mattered – and that the 1991 Braves team (which did not win the World Series) is my favorite sports team of all time, you probably won’t get it.

But then, you weren’t there.

What were your favorite “You Had to Be There” sports teams? Which teams did you and a lot of other people care about that aren’t remembered the same way the championship teams and dynasties are remembered?

Who are the teams and what are the seasons that you remember in ways that average fans don’t understand?

Most Gamecock fans of my age wind up settling on the same starting point: 1984 and Joe Morrison’s Black Magic football team.

If you aren’t from the Palmetto State (and aren’t 10,000 years old like I am), then you’ll struggle to understand that team’s lasting appeal. But if you were there – like I was – then you know exactly why the 1984 team will always matter to us.

Which long-gone teams matter to you and why? Let me know at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com. And keep sending me all of your questions that I look forward to answering in a future mailbag – no matter the topic. I got some thought-provoking inquiries last week that we’ll tackle in an upcoming mega-Q&A.

Let’s keep talking.