hen James Silas moved south to San Antonio with the rest of the ABA’s Dallas Chapparals in 1973, he did not know quite what to expect.“When we left Dallas to come here, it was because we didn’t have fans to support the team,” Silas said. “If the fans didn’t come out in San Antonio, we couldn’t have stayed here either.”
“This organization cares about its history,” said George Gervin, the club’s first Hall of Fame player. “They remember what they grew from, and that’s a good foundation.” A cadre of 35 San Antonio businessmen, led by Angelo Drossos, Red McCombs and John Shafer, put together a lend-lease deal to move the Chaparrals from Dallas.
At the end of the Spurs’ maiden season in San Antonio, McCombs, Drossos and Shafer exercised their option to buy the team.The near-instant embrace of San Antonio came as a surprise to players, who had become accustomed to playing for crickets in Dallas. “I can remember walking into Incarnate Word and seeing this big dude come in, in his big cowboy boots and this fur coat and his big Texan hat,” Popovich said. “I wondered, ‘Where the hell have I landed?’”“We wouldn’t be having this,” Popovich said of the 50th anniversary season, “without Red McCombs.”The Spurs were perilously close to leaving town in 1992, when McCombs decided to sell the team.
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