For San Antonio Spurs fans, the Olympics were a great opportunity to see what your team did on their 
summer “vacation.” With at least one Spur on four of the ten teams that qualified to go to London, if you turned on some Olympic basketball, there’s a good chance you were going to see a San Antonio player.
Most of all, it looks like San Antonio wanted to keep an eye on Manu Ginobili. Whether that was because they wanted to make sure he didn’t get injured or they just like watching their Argentinian superstar play in what could be his last time with Team Argentina, TV ratings went up when Manu was on.
“…Olympics viewership on NBC Sports Network averaged 9,000 households in the San Antonio market, but that number nearly doubled to 17,000 when Ginobili and the Argentina team were on the air.”
Considering all these games were on during either sleeping or working hours, the spike in numbers is quite impressive.
Luckily for the Spurs, all their players will be coming home with no major injuries. The Olympics were a chance for them to get in some great summer competition and even though none are coming back with a medal, I would say it was beneficial to the upcoming season to get in some real hard work during the off months.
