San Antonio is not among the thirty main economic centers (you know, the eternal desire of the big markets) in American professional sports. Its metropolitan area does not reach two and a half million inhabitants, far from the six and a half million of Dallas-Fort Worth and the almost seven million of Houston. And that’s if we’re talking only about the three Texan franchises. But San Antonio, the home of the eternal Spurs, the venerable Spurs, has another thing: the pedigree, the DNA, the heartbeat.
San Antonio is a nba city, one where the Spurs are the only milestone of that professional sport that is quartered in so many others. It is a place that closes in a single fist, that raises a single voice, a roar: San Antonio Spurs. Yesterday, the night of January 13, 2023 and within the acts of the 50th anniversary of the current formulation of the franchise, 68,323 people returned to the ancient Alamodome, a place that smacks of basketball history, to see the San Antonio Spurs-Golden State Warriors. Spurs of proud Texas against rays of sunlight that stretch from the populous San Francisco Bay. Ways of living and ways of playing basketball. And a new, historical record, the highest ever attendance at a regular season game in the NBA. Something from other times.
On March 27, 1998, 62,046 people set the record so far. It was on a visit from Michael Jordan and his Bulls to the Hawks, at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The next two brands belong to the Pontiac Silverdome, that huge den of the Pistons almost 50 kilometers from Detroit. All of that has been left behind. Of course, the 108,713 attendees at the 2010 All Star, played at the endless Cowboys Stadium in Dallas, perhaps the most glittering jewel in the crown of USA sports. if we talk about competitive basketballthe record remains in the 78,129 who saw, the mystique of Collegea Kentucky-Michigan State at Ford Field in Detroit, on December 13, 2003. And, well, if we leave the United States, Nobody knows if 120,000 people really gathered in Athens to see AEK win the European Cup Winners’ Cup against Slavia Prague. But they say that it was.
“This is another story, is it something that… are they selling alcohol? I think people are going to be overturned. It’s something very special for everyone, it’s a very nostalgic moment, having so many people on this site to watch us play…”. These are the words of Gregg Popovich, who inherited the team and turned it into a dynasty in that Alamodome where David Robinson, because every detail was taken care of to the extreme, announced the record amid a thunderous ovation. Robinson, who signed the last quadruple-double the NBA has seen on that court, in 1994 (34 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists and 10 blocks), formed with Tim Duncan the Twin Towers upon which Popovich built an empire. That of the twenty-two consecutive years in the playoffs, the record of 18 in a row with at least 50 victories, the best winning percentage ever in the NBA (above 61%) and, of course, the five rings. The first in that Alamodome, which was later followed by the SBC Center, which is now AT&T. History of the League, history of basketball.
On the visiting bench was Steve Kerr, who won two of his five rings (after three with the Jordan Bulls) in San Antonio, the first in this Alamodome through which columns of memories danced, shadows of an eternal legacy: “During the presentations I had goosebumps. It has been very special, this place will always be special to me.”, he said visibly excited. The match gave him his 450 win as a manager. Disciple of a popovich (and of Phil Jackson: roots of greatness) who has now succeeded as US coach and at the head of another legendary team, these Warriors with whom he has won four rings and who they swept, by the way (113-144) in a game without a history in sports. the night of Return Home To The Dome. A bench fact, by the way: there have been 209 coach changes in the NBA since the last official game at the Alamodome. But Gregg Popovich continues to lead the Spurs.
The Spurs were Dallas Chaparrals already in 1967, in the crazy and unforgettable ABA, pure counterculture. They were Texas Chaparrals and in 1973 they became the San Antonio Spurs through the efforts of a group of thirty local investors led by Angelo Drossos. One of four franchises (the other Nuggets, Pacers, and Nets) to survive the ABA and join the NBA, and the only one to win a title after that merger that defined the modern NBA: cfive in fact, more than anyone other than the Lakers, Celtics, Warriors and Bulls. In 1993 he opened the Alamodome. The Coyote, a mascot with stripes, had already been animating the games of a franchise for a decade with which another investment group led, this time, by Peter Holt would soon be made, for 75 million. The golden years were about to begin. That first title from 1999, the one of the Alamogenerated the fervor that prompted the creation of a new pavilion, the AT&T inaugurated in 2002 and partly financed the rise in prices in the city: hotels, car rental…
Almost five kilometers separate AT&T from this iconic cricket cage, the Alamodome which, further north, represents good times that are now unseenunless the next draft give away Victor Wembanyama, of course. That is what the Spurs are at now: after their 22 years in the playoffs and their empire in which the sun did not set, they are going to sign the fourth year without playoffs and without touching 50% of victories.
But the reconstruction, the gloomy present, barely passed the Alamo in that flash that was a game without history: the Warriors, although they are the second worst away team in the NBA (4-16 now) and are in 50% of victories (21-21) surviving on the border with the play in of the West, they are a sleeping giant that can wake up at any moment: current champion and proven effectiveness when the battles come important really. They have just recovered Andrew Wiggins and Stephen Curry, the alpha and omega, who had been injured for an eternity. And they should start to get into a rhythm that allows them to defend their throne in the spring.
A totally different life from that of the Spurs, as was made clear in a game in which the advantages reached 39 points (103-142) and in which no starter for the Californians had to play more than 29 minutes. But that didn’t matter at all, not tonight. Because the story, this time, was in the atmosphere, in the stands, in the mysticismin those 68,323 people that made the Spurs jump in a handful of hours from 28th to 15th place in average attendance this season. In a voice that is a roar, the clenched fist of those San Antonio Spurs. A city of basketball, an essential cardinal point in the history of the NBA. For the victories and the rings but also, or perhaps especially for that reason, for nights like this.