Ready to ‘Rock’ and roll
Team’s new $500M facility is part gym, part day spa and part country club
After nine of years of dreaming and scheming — and construction, construction, construction — the Rock is at last ready to roll.
When the Spurs open training camp next week, they will do so in a gleaming new $500-million practice facility that is so much more than that.
Team officials threw open the doors Wednesday to the Victory Capital Performance Center, the centerpiece of the club’s new complex on the city’s northwest side.
The campus itself is called “The Rock and La Cantera” — suiting for a team famous for its “pounding the rock” motto.
“We looked at 12 sites around San Antonio,” Spurs chief executive officer R.C. Buford said. “This one fits who we are. They moved a lot of rock.”
Buford and Phil Cullen, the Spurs’ senior director of basketball operations, led media members on a walkthrough of the new facility Wednesday, looking alternately like both tour guides and proud papas.
Buford and other Spurs executives began envisioning a new practice space for the team after spending time around the Miami Heat facilities during the 2014 NBA Finals. The project has been Cullen’s chief focus since he joined the team in 2016.
The gym off Huebner Road that had been the Spurs’ practice locale since 2002 served the team well. It was also on its way to becoming outdated.
“We knew we couldn’t just add bricks on that building and meet the needs of a future NBA team,” Cullen said.
The Rock, by contrast, could meet the basic needs of any NBA team — and perhaps also an entire set of Real Housewives.
The Spurs new “practice site” is part workout facility, part day spa and part country club.
The cavernous gym itself acts as a grand hall, its ceiling constructed from 130-foot timber beams shipped in from Oregon and hovering above a pair of fullsize NBA courts nestled side-byside.
Elsewhere in the building, there is a dining hall and a coffee bar. There is a medical office on site. There are solar panels on the roof and a rainwater capture system throughout the facility.
The hydrotherapy room — with multiple pools and an underwater treadmill — is bathed in natural sunlight.
Players relaxing or recovering in the indoor pool can glimpse the tops of roller coasters at Six Flags Fiesta Texas next door.
“It gives it more of a spa quality than a locker room quality,” Cullen said.
At the Rock, the attention to detail is stunning.
Even the sinks and toilets in the various players’ areas are built to be height-proportional for tall people.
The televisions in the training room are set high almost to the
ceiling, in hopes of forcing players to at least look up from their cell phones while getting ankles taped.
When Buford, Cullen and their staff sat down to begin planning the new practice facility, they started with a blank piece of paper.
On it they listed — not the various bells and whistles they hoped the new place to possess — but team culture values they hoped to sustain from their days at the older facility.
One of those values was a spirit of top-to-bottom collaboration.
At the Rock, players, coaches and front office personnel each occupy their own wing surrounding the practice court.
The Performance Center, however, was created with a feng shui that practically forces members of each group to bump into each other for what Cullen called “casual connections.”
“Multiple places in sports we saw separated the coaches and front office,” Buford said. “That created a thought disconnect. We wanted to bring people together.”
Meanwhile, the Spurs view the Rock complex itself as a place to bring the community together.
The acre-and-a-half Frost Plaza outside includes a splash pad, a dog park and a giant LED screen that could be used for hosting summertime movie nights or in-season game-watching events.
Though players are set to hit the floor at the Victory Capital Performance Center for their first practice Tuesday, the place is still a work in progress.
Wednesday afternoon, construction crews in orange vests and hard hats scurried about making last-minute touch-ups.
One of those included the installation of a stairwell inside the building.
The project was on schedule until the COVID-19 pandemic forced a pause in 2020.
“Then the priority became to get this building ready for the 2023 season,” Cullen said.
Completely ready or not, the Rock will host its new tenants beginning next week. Players have been working out during the summer at the old place on 1 Spurs Lane.
Earlier this week, however, team officials were able to lead them on a tour of the new place at 1 Spurs Way.
The early returns were positive, Cullen said.
“It was fun watching the body language,” Cullen said. “The smiles, the body language, the sense of awe. We designed this space to have a sense of awe.”