“You have the coolest job on earth.” Doug would say every time we crossed paths in the neighborhood. It wasn’t unique to him—I’d been hearing some version of that since 2016, when I stepped into my role at Ohio State.
At block parties and backyard gatherings, I was rarely just Justin. I was “Justin who works for Ohio State”… then “Justin who works for the Spurs.” You could almost see the shift in people’s expressions when they heard it—curiosity, excitement, maybe even a quiet calculation of what that connection might offer. Conversations opened easier. Invitations came quicker. My world, at least from the outside, seemed to carry a certain gravity.
And if I’m being honest, I leaned into it.
I wore the title like a badge, telling stories about players and coaches, about being on the sidelines, about moments most people only ever saw on TV. It felt good to be the guy with the stories. The guy with access. The guy people wanted to know.
Looking back, it’s easy to see how much of my identity I had quietly tethered to those titles.
Then, in July of 2020, it was gone.
Five minutes. A Teams call. Just like that.
Along with a quarter of the Spurs organization, I was laid off as the world unraveled under the weight of COVID-19. The title—Creative Director for one of the most respected franchises in sports—was stripped away in an instant. But what hurt more than losing the job was realizing how much of myself I had built around it.
Because when the title disappeared, so did a lot of everything else.
The calls and texts slowed—or stopped altogether. The “fast friendships” that once felt so effortless faded into silence. In the isolation of the pandemic, what had seemed like a growing circle of connection in San Antonio quietly dissolved. It’s a hard truth to sit with—the way some relationships change when you’re no longer in a position to offer something in return.
Over six humbling months of unemployment, I began to see something with a clarity I hadn’t had in years: those titles I was so proud of—they were never really mine. They were borrowed. Temporary. Rented.
And I had mistaken them for something permanent.
Sometimes it takes losing what you thought defined you to finally understand what actually does.
That season reshaped me. It stripped away the noise and left me with something far more grounded, far more enduring. I made a quiet promise to myself in that space:
Never again would I anchor my identity to a line in an email signature.
Because the most important titles I will ever carry aren’t given by an organization—and they can’t be taken away in a five-minute call.
Father.
Husband.
Son.
Brother.
Uncle.
Grandson.
Nephew.
Cousin.
Friend.
Those are mine. Always have been. Always will be.
