The Spurs are two months away from inaugurating their new $500 million sport complex called “The Rock at La Cantera”

RC Buford is not only the the Spurs CEO, but is also the name of the man who has been the architect behind San Antonio’s newest sport complex called “The Rock at La Cantera”, which has been a project in the making for almost a decade and is now only two months away from opening. 

The Spurs new practice home will be among the most advanced facilities in the entire world, and will soon be fully functional just as the Texan club added the No. 1 overall draft pick Victor Wembanyama to their roster.

“We’re not trying to build this to be the best in the NBA,” said the club owner who has been part of all five of the franchise’s championship titles. “We’re going to build this for our needs and to have the best environment we can to help develop the Spurs’ culture. It’s not about being better or worse than anybody.”

The San Antonio Spurs are finishing a new $500 million campus — The Rock at La Cantera.

▪️ New practice facility
▪️ Performance research center
▪️ 22-acre park
▪️ Public plaza
▪️ Retail space

Phase I will be done when their #1 draft pick arrives for training camp in October. pic.twitter.com/gd4XLb917T

— Front Office Sports (@FOS) June 23, 2023

For Buford, no detail has been overlooked, as many of the best things about their current practice complex has been copied for this new version, with basically the same exact dimensions. However, for now it’s still a construction zone but should be ready before the NBA season stars.

“We really tried to have this idea and this concept of a sense of arrival,” said senior director of basketball operations Phil Cullen. “So the players ascend up the stairs, they’ll start seeing the sight lines on the court and then they’ll see the championship banners. And foundationally, what this space is built on, is the Pound the Rock quote.”

Cullen, who is also the facility’s project manager, talked about the Spurs credo which comes from a Danish social reformer.

“Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before,” it reads.

The creators of this project are well aware that “The Rock at La Cantera” is truly a sport complex for the San Antonio community

“The Holt family made the direct mandate that we had to develop this to have an impact for our community,” Buford said about the franchise owner’s wishes. “It could not just be the best practice facility in the world. We had to develop it so the community could interact with it.”

It is clear that the San Antonio squad outgrew their past practice facility as The Rock at La Cantera will be at least 90,000 square feet, in compared to their current 37,000 square-foot home.

Check out the Spurs latest presentation of what they now call their New Human Performance Center:

“It became clear that the cost of making what we need to happen here was really making this cost effective to build someplace else,” Buford added. “This is not for me. This is for our team,” Buford said. “This is for our community.”

Cullen, on the other hand, says that a lot of thought has gone into finding perfect excuses for families to come over and enjoy activities where both parents and their kids can find different sources of entertainment.

“You think about opportunities to engage in family nights,” he said. “The idea and the concept was that families could come here, have an experience that they did not have to pay a dollar for. If you want to come and just have your kids have a good time, that’s what this is about.”