The Spurs would like to move into another more profitable facility as soon as possible. That could prevent the Spurs from leaving town, something team owners insist they don't plan to do but a reality in the big-money world of sports that can't be ignored. We're going to do everything we can to make that happen. Hardly a glamour team cheered on by celebrities, the San Antonio Spurs are an unconventional squad struggling to survive in a blue-collar city. They're a team searching for national identity and local respect.
Nothing underscores that more than the Spurs' arena predicament.
After playing in the old HemisFair Arena, built in the late 1960s, the Spurs of the former American Basketball Association moved into the new Alamodome in 1993 with the idea it would be a temporary arrangement. Moving out hasn't been easy. In the Alamodome, a giant indoor stadium that can seat up to 65,000 for football, the basketball court is located at one end of the facility with a massive blue curtain blocking off the rest of the building. Up to 40,000 can be seated for a basketball game if all the dome's upper decks are open. Team executives have floated ideas for using tax money to help build a smaller arena built for basketball and equipped with lucrative luxury suites, something the Spurs contend they need to profit in the NBA and to pay the big contract second-year star Tim Duncan will soon require.