Pond Officials May Be Courting Spurs

Never mind the Clippers. How about the San Antonio Spurs?

Officials from the Arrowhead Pond are believed to have contacted the Spurs recently and invited the team to consider moving to Anaheim. The Spurs want out of the cavernous Alamodome, and they appear to have nowhere in town to go after a recent proposal for a new arena collapsed.

Pond General Manager Tim Ryan declined to confirm or deny talks with any specific NBA franchise, including the Spurs, champions of the Western Conference. Ryan did say the Ogden Corp., operator of the Pond, is “aggressively pursuing options” for NBA tenants and that he has “spoken to a number of NBA entities,” including current and potential team owners, since the Clippers canceled their annual Anaheim series last month.

“Orange County and the Pond is a combination we feel can’t be beat for an NBA franchise,” Ryan said.

The Spurs and Sacramento Kings are the NBA teams most easily able to leave their current homes, with the Clippers, Charlotte Hornets and Houston Rockets all playing under leases that expire from 2001 through 2005. The Spurs’ lease expires in 2003, but they have a 90-day window at the end of each season to provide one year’s notice of their intention to leave.

The Spurs did not return a call Wednesday seeking comment. However, Spur Chairman Peter Holt told the San Antonio Express-News the team is not yet willing to abandon its hometown.

“When the [arena] proposal fell through, we received multiple calls from cities and ownership groups interested in the team,” Holt said. “Since then, we have continued to receive calls. That hasn’t changed. They’re all pushing.

“What we tell them is we want to stay in San Antonio. And we’re going to do everything we can to make that happen.”

Charles Graves, planning director for the city of Baltimore, said Tuesday he had talked with the Spurs and Kings about their interest in moving to a proposed new arena there. In St. Louis, like Anaheim, a new arena houses an NHL team but not an NBA team, and officials from St. Louis also are believed to have contacted the Spurs. Other cities with new or prospective arenas interested in NBA tenants include San Diego, New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis and Oklahoma City.

The city of Anaheim is obligated to pay Ogden $7.5 million if the Pond does not land an NBA team before 2002. Those payments took effect in 1997, at a rate of $1.5 million per year, and the city already has made the first two payments.

Nonetheless, without the NBA tenant the arena was designed to attract, the Pond still loses money. In documents filed with the city, Ogden reported losses of $6.2 million in the last fiscal year and $24.7 million in the first five years of arena operation.

The Clippers played as many as nine games at the Pond each season from 1994 to 1999, but they canceled the series so they could play their entire home schedule at the Staples Center upon moving into the new arena this fall.