If you didn’t know, this season Spurs.com is doing a series of one-on-one interviews with former San Antonio Spurs players, coaches and front office staff to celebrate the team’s 40-year anniversary. They’re quite interesting and a good way to reminisce about Spurs’ history if you’re into that sort of thing.
This week they talked with Chicago Bulls assistant coach Ron Adams, who was an assistant with the Spurs back from 1992-94. Obviously, a lot has changed about the team since then. They were playing in a different venue and they hadn’t yet experienced the success that the Spurs are now known for in the NBA.
“It was a very different time in the NBA from now,” Adams said. “The Spurs at that time were more of mom-and-pop team. The program was bare bones as far as the amenities, not like today. We did move in the second year to the Alamodome, which was better. Nice big stadium. The growth of the team is like the growth of the river in town. I was walking out on the Riverwalk and they’ve done a really nice job of the adding a natural habitat back there for the birds and so on. It’s well done. I think the spurs steadily upward climb as a basketball organization can kind of be seen in the way of the development of the river, even in the obscure parts of the river.”
Adams also talks about what a great guy David Robinson is and how much The Admiral meant to the team at that time.
“David was good already,” said Adams.” Tom, (Thibodeau) our head coach and I were both on the staff in San Antonio. I think he (Robinson) got into a good routine offensively and defensively. He was so much more than just a basketball player. He was kind of the foundation stone. The hallmark of the Spurs from that time to now is having good people on the team. You had David, Sean (Elliott), a wonderful guy, and Avery (Johnson). Then this was carried out by Tim (Duncan), he’s a heck of guy. So now you had David and Tim together. Now, having Tim gives you that kind of stability, probably a different kind of leadership than David. We were a very close knit-team.”
Adams clearly has a lot of fond memories of his time in San Antonio. Check out the rest of the interview and the other Spurs.com interviews if you haven’t already.