AUSTIN, Texas — Few NBA clubs have pushed harder beyond their home city limits, let alone tried tackling another market in the past couple of years, than the San Antonio Spurs.
Since the first "I-35 Series" games at Moody Center in 2023, the Spurs have been aggressive in furthering their ties to the once-untapped market in the state’s capital. They've done this by building community courts, running multiple in-town activations during their stays and building relationships with Texas men’s basketball and the rest of the athletic department.
The Spurs have quickly become Austin’s team as much as San Antonio’s.
“It's great when you're partnering (with) local, regional programs slash sports that are doing well,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said on Thursday. “I am a big fan and supporter.”
For most, the NBA and the NCAA’s relationship has been largely transactional. The Spurs-Longhorns partnership is a little different — a true collaboration.
In November, the Longhorns will pick up some Spurs favors, playing a neutral-site game at the Frost Bank Center against Baylor. It’s the first time Texas will play in the Alamo City since 2003, when it beat Michigan State in the 2003 South Regional Final at the Alamodome.
“I would call it a unique relationship,” Texas men's basketball coach Sean Miller said Monday afternoon. “The connection to them, their greatness, not only who they've become with (Victor Wembanyama), but the history and tradition. They've been really good to me, to our staff in a brief time that we've been here at Texas.”
Miller's connection with the Spurs runs deeper than the surface level, following San Antonio's hiring of Billy Donovan in the offseason. The Spurs' current lead assistant coach hosted Miller during his official visit to Providence in the late eighties.
The connection is not a one-way street. Johnson, a former guard for Stanford in the mid-2000s and self-proclaimed “West Coast guy," knows Miller well from his days at Arizona.
“Sean is a heckuva coach. He's done a great job,” Johnson said. “I think he's got the University Texas program in a great place. It's continued to kind of take off and head in the right direction.”
Although the Spurs' relationship has grown, the first of the three games in Austin this season will draw a strange mix of cheers and boos for one particular player: Longhorn legend-turned-NBA journeyman and current Houston Rocket Kevin Durant.
Durant's relationship with the program he spent just one season with remains strong, after going No. 2 to the Seattle SuperSonics in 2007. Despite the multiple regime changes on the Forty Acres, he’s a Longhorn through and through.
“Even though I stayed for one year, I would come back every summer," Durant said. "I even tried going to class one summer. I was working out with the guys at 6 or 7 in the morning. I felt like I was a part of the team for two or three years even though I was in the NBA.”
Durant works out at the Texas basketball facility in the offseason, runs a major NIL program for both the men's and women’s basketball programs, and was among the investors who backed bringing a WNBA franchise to Austin during the league's recent expansion talks.
Durant received a hero's reception at the Moody Center in 2025 as a member of the Phoenix Suns. Now with Houston, he expects the same reaction regardless of whether he's playing for one of the Spurs' in-state rivals.
“Cheers,” Durant said. “What else are they going to do?”
Homecoming or not, Austin has firmly become Spurs country in the years since he left for the pros almost 20 years ago. And there is going to be some extra spice, beyond the obvious, in this “home” game for San Antonio. The Spurs are welcoming that, too.
“When you play your rival," Spurs guard Dylan Harper began, "you're kind of playing for bragging rights. You're playing just to have say, 'Look, we're the best team in Texas.’ I feel like we're going to prove that.”
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