20 Surprising Facts About the San Antonio Spurs

Before moving to South Texas in 1973, the franchise was founded in 1967 as the Dallas Chaparrals of the American Basketball Association (ABA)—named after the swift Texas roadrunner because the founders were meeting inside the Chaparral Club at the Dallas Marriott.

When the Chaparrals relocated to San Antonio and rebranded as the Spurs in 1973, they moved into HemisFair Arena—originally built for the 1968 World's Fair alongside the Tower of the Americas, where visiting teams dressed in cramped exhibition rooms.

On April 9, 1978, after Denver's David Thompson scored 73 points earlier that afternoon to take the NBA scoring lead, Spurs guard George 'The Iceman' Gervin answered hours later with 63 points—including a then-record 33 points in the second quarter—to win the scoring title by 0.07 points.

Moving into the 65,000-seat Alamodome in 1993 with a giant curtain dividing the floor, the Spurs set the NBA Finals single-game attendance record with 39,554 fans in 1999—and later drew an all-time NBA regular-season record 68,303 fans there for their 50th anniversary in 2023.

Before joining Chicago, Dennis Rodman played two seasons in San Antonio (1993–1995), where he first unveiled his signature bleached and neon-dyed hair inspired by Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man—averaging an astonishing 17.1 rebounds per game as a Spur.

Throughout the Spurs' 1999 championship run—including his iconic tiptoe corner three-pointer in the Western Conference Finals—forward Sean Elliott kept a progressive kidney disease secret. He received his brother Noel's kidney that August and became the first NBA player to return after a transplant.

Standing just 5-foot-10 and overlooked in the 1988 NBA Draft out of Southern University, point guard Avery Johnson was waived multiple times—including twice by San Antonio—before returning to sink the championship-clinching baseline jumper in Game 5 of the 1999 NBA Finals.

Acquired from Chicago in a January 1999 sign-and-trade, sharpshooter Steve Kerr won the 1999 title with San Antonio right after winning 1996, 1997, and 1998 with the Bulls—and later buried four crucial fourth-quarter three-pointers in Game 6 of the 2003 West Finals to win another Spur ring.

During San Antonio's 2002–03 championship season, defensive specialist Bruce Bowen pulled off one of the rarest statistical anomalies in basketball history—leading the entire NBA in three-point shooting at 44.1% while shooting just 40.4% from the closer free-throw line.

Signed after being waived by the 7–59 Charlotte Bobcats in 2012, versatile French playmaker Boris Diaw famously installed a working Nespresso machine inside his Spurs locker—drinking pregame espressos before unlocking the historic ball movement of the 2014 NBA Finals.

Born to a Torres Strait Islander father and Aboriginal mother, guard Patty Mills spent a decade in San Antonio—erupting for 14 third-quarter points in the 2014 Finals clincher—before becoming the first Indigenous Australian flag bearer at the Tokyo Olympics.

Acquired on draft night 2011 at pick #15, Kawhi Leonard captured the 2014 NBA Finals MVP at just 22 years and 351 days old—joining Tim Duncan (1999, age 23) and Magic Johnson (1980, age 20; 1982, age 22) as the youngest Finals MVPs in league history.

Hired by Gregg Popovich in 2014 as the NBA's first full-time female assistant coach, former San Antonio Silver Stars icon Becky Hammon coached the Spurs to the 2015 Las Vegas Summer League title and became the first woman to act as head coach in an NBA regular-season game in 2020.

Drafted fourth overall out of UConn in 2024 after winning an NCAA title, guard Stephon Castle captured the 2024–25 NBA Rookie of the Year award—making the Spurs the first franchise since the 2015–16 Minnesota Timberwolves to produce consecutive Rookie of the Year winners.

Selected #1 overall in 2023, Victor Wembanyama recorded a rare '5x5' game (27 points, 10 rebounds, 8 assists, 5 steals, 5 blocks against the Lakers), led the NBA in blocks (3.6 per game), won unanimous Rookie of the Year, and became the first rookie ever named First-Team All-Defense.

Selected with the second-to-last pick (#57) of the 1999 NBA Draft, four-time champion Manu Ginóbili stunned a Halloween 2009 crowd against Sacramento when a Mexican free-tailed bat delayed the game—catching the swooping creature barehanded on the court (and needing rabies shots after).

After an unconvincing first pre-draft workout nearly cost him his spot, 19-year-old Frenchman Tony Parker won the starting job five games into his rookie year, became the first European-born NBA Finals MVP in 2007, and made the playoffs in all 17 of his Spurs seasons.

The Spurs gambled their 1987 #1 pick on Naval Academy center David Robinson despite his two-year active-duty commitment at Kings Bay Submarine Base. He rewarded their patience by engineering the biggest single-season turnaround in NBA history (+35 wins) and scoring 71 points on the final day of 1994.

Growing up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Tim Duncan was a nationally ranked 400-metre freestyle swimmer training for the 1992 Olympics until Hurricane Hugo destroyed St. Croix's only Olympic-sized pool in 1989. Afraid of sharks in the ocean, he switched to basketball at age 14 and won five NBA titles.

A 1970 U.S. Air Force Academy graduate who specialized in Soviet studies and considered a career in intelligence, Gregg Popovich served as Spurs GM in December 1996 when he dismissed coach Bob Hill and named himself head coach—going on to win an NBA-record 1,390+ regular-season games and five rings.