San Antonio Spurs: Complete history of the ABA years

The history of the San Antonio Spurs starts in 1966 at a fine dining establishment in downtown Dallas. In the Chapperal Club on the 37th floor of the Sheraton Dallas Hotel, a group of businessmen decide to make one of the strangest investment choices ever. 

This group of men had an estimated net worth of six billion dollars, making them some of the richest men in Texas. Texas was, at the time, one of the wealthiest states in the union, and these men were at the center of it all. They decided a great way to spend their hard-earned money was by investing in the American Basketball Association, a jumpstart professional league that looked to rival the long-standing NBA. 

Most team owners make the team they own their top priority for appearance's sake. These men instead had a totally different approach, thinking, “what if we did the absolute bare minimum required to run this franchise?”

The result? The most successful professional sports team in American history. 

The Beginning of the Dallas Chaparrals

The Dallas Chaparrals did not start off in a conventional sense. Their name comes from a west coast shrubby ecosystem, and their first coach was Hall of Fame player Cliff Hagen, who, after a ten-season career with the St. Louis Hawks of the NBA, played and acted as head coach for the Chaparrals from 1967-1970.

That first Dallas team had five players who averaged 15 points a game and finished second in the Western Conference. Coach Hagen was an above-average player and was the first man to ever play in both the ABA and NBA All-Star games.

With a name, a star, and multiple home stadiums, it looked like the Chaps would be a fixture of American basketball for a long time. Sure, ownership was reluctant to sign anyone to a long-term contract of any sort, and sure, they never had a permanent home, but they started their existence with three winning seasons in a row. Despite no appearances in the ABA Championship, everything looked good for the haphazardly thrown-together franchise. 

The Chaparrals played in two coliseums, an auditorium, and a convention center. For a team with four homes, a combined capacity of 41,293 is rather pathetic. That’s twice the size of the Alamodome, but it took four stadiums to reach that number. 

The franchise starts making changes

After three seasons, Cliff Hagen, the best player in the team's history thus far, announced his retirement. With him left the team name. The owners, when they paid attention, discovered something everyone today already knows: Dallas does not care about basketball.

In hindsight, this seems obvious, but in a prehistoric time before fire, we were still figuring out the rules of the world. In an effort to adopt some Lone Star pride, the team rebranded as the Texas Chaparrals, which I personally find delightful. 

As soon as the team stopped claiming the 214, they plummeted, dropping to 30-54, their first losing season. Despite that, they managed to make it all the way to the Western Division Semifinals, which was the same result they had in the last two years. 

While the end result of the season was lousy, some lessons were learned. As the Texas Chaparrals, the team decided to look elsewhere to attract fans. They split time between Dallas, Lubbock, and Fort Worth. In Fort Worth, fans decided they cared less than the Dallas fans, as only 200 showed up for one game.

The lowest ever NBA attendance was 741, so getting only 200 people to show up is frankly amazing. Fort Worth was not given another chance, as the team opted to play all their remaining games in Dallas and re-rebranded the next season, returning to their original name. 

It worked. In the 1972 season, the Chaps turned it around, got back up to .500, and head coach Tom Nissalke was named ABA Coach of the Year. Things were looking up in Dallas, so ownership did the only thing that made sense: they opted not to renew Nissalke’s contract, so he took a job with the Supersonics of the NBA. 

Of course, without their coach or any type of generational talent, the Chaparrals finished their forgettable stint in Dallas with their worst record yet. They missed the playoffs, but no one really cared. They were leased to a group of less well-off businessmen, and the rest, well, becomes the story most of us know. 

The Chaparrals make the move to San Antonio

A team needs three things to be considered real: a place to play, a name, and a coach. Oh, players and competent ownership would be nice, but as we saw in 1967 with the Chaps, if you don’t have players, make the coach play! And if you don’t have competent ownership, 200 people will still show up. 

The team formerly known as the Chaps had everything they needed. HemisFair Arena was a great stadium for an emerging team, and it sat more than any of the previous stadiums. The team averaged over 6,000 fans in their first year, which was a massive crowd after the Fort Worth debacle. 

A team also needs a name, and new “ownership” settled on the San Antonio Gunslingers. For unknown reasons, they then had a team naming contest, and “Spurs” prevailed. The ownership group of Angelo Drossos, Red McCombs, and John Schaefer needed to find a coach. They ultimately decided on a proven ABA coach named Tom Nissalke. Welcome back, Tom!

The new ownership did not own the Spurs outright. They opted to lease the team from the Chaps' owners with an option to buy the team outright after three years. Obviously, this didn’t happen, although it would have been one of the funnier things the franchise could have done. 

Drossos and company opted to buy the team after the first season. After getting crowds in the hundreds in Dallas, the players were just happy to have sizable crowds, prompting point guard Joe Hamilton to say, "It's just great to play for these people. They're rooting for us all the time. Last year at Dallas we'd have 600 or 700 people at our games, and if we got something going, maybe a dozen of them would start yelling. The rest of them just sat there."

The first year, the Spurs finished barely above .500 but were one of the most beloved teams in the ABA. The ABA Spurs drew larger crowds than the NBA Rockets, and it was clear that the Spurs would soon be the premier team in the state of Texas. 

The final two seasons of the Chaparral/Spurs in the ABA consisted of above-average basketball that involved some of the best defense on any court. While it was the on-court play that resulted in getting merged into the NBA, it was the off-court drama that paved the way. 

The San Antonio Spurs' original "Big Three"

In the early 1970s, the Virginia Squires were strapped for cash. They sold the rights to George Gervin and Swen Nater to San Antonio, although the Gervin deal wound up in district court because the ABA office determined it was detrimental to the league.

In addition to that, Squires owner Earl Foreman had a case of sellers’ remorse and wanted to refund the deal. Drosses had already written the check and argued that the deal was done and fair. Luckily, Judge Adrian Spears was an avid Spurs fan and approved the deal, giving the Spurs, for the first time, three legitimate stars.

Despite having a “big three,” the San Antonio Spurs never made it to the ABA Finals. That’s not to say they weren’t winners, though. With low expectations for the season, televangelist Bob Harrington rented the stadium for April 10th. The Spurs ended up making a playoff run, and Game 6 was scheduled for HemisFair Arena on the 10th.

Harrington had the rights to the stadium but graciously allowed the Spurs to use it instead under the condition he could provide the halftime performance. The Spurs blew the Pacers out but went on to lose Game 7, also at home. For the final game, they did not bring Harrington back to the arena, so maybe that's why they lost? George Gervin scored 24 and Rich Jones dropped a career-high 28, but Silas and Swen were non-factors. 

In the 1974-75 season, the Spurs got off to an 18-10 start and ended with their best record so far. Despite that, ownership wanted a run-and-gun team, so after 28 games, they fired Tom Nissalke, again. The move worked, as the new coach, Bob Bass, had an 88-57 record across the season and a half he spent at the helm. Parting ways with Nissalke worked, as Gervin emerged as a superstar. 

In 1976, the Spurs broke a 26-game Denver Nuggets winning streak for the second season in a row, prompting Nugget’s head coach Larry Brown to get into a screaming match with Gervin and Bass. The parties were separated, and Brown later stated that he never wanted anything to do with the Spurs organization for as long as he was alive.

Larry Brown did not keep his promise. Brown also suggested that the only thing good about San Antonio is the guacamole salad. Upon hearing those remarks, Spurs fans pelted the court with avocados when the Nuggets came to town later that season. 

With God, Mexican food, and rowdy fans all on their side, it was no wonder the Spurs joined the Nets, Nuggets, and Pacers as the only ABA teams to survive the merge into the NBA. In their first NBA season, the Spurs made the playoffs and established themselves as a legitimate NBA team under new head coach Doug Moe. 

The Spurs went on to be one of the most successful sports teams ever. The team was built by poor business decisions, almost saved in federal court, and became known as one of the rowdiest teams in the ABA. They never won a championship, but they were never called boring.

Eventually, those would be flipped, but San Antonio basketball was always worth watching.