Everybody wants Spurs gear. Local sellers are cashing in. | San Antonio Express News

Nandini Ghosh-Choudhury watched the final five minutes of Game 7 in the Western Conference finals with tears in her eyes, as the San Antonio Spurs defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder.

As soon as the game ended Saturday night, the 69-year-old hopped into her car and drove to Academy Sports + Outdoors to secure an NBA Finals T-shirt to add to her collection of Spurs gear featuring legends like David Robinson and Tim Duncan.

There was no parking, so she tried again the next morning. By then, Academy was sold out.

So on Tuesday, she headed over to one of the pop-up sellers that have sprouted on Southwest Military Drive, determined to get a T–shirt before the Spurs’ first game against the New York Knicks.

At nearly every corner on this South Side street, there are tents displaying bootleg Spurs shirts, Fiesta-colored flags flapping in the wind and cardboard cutouts of Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle‘s faces hung up on clothing lines. For customers, the street-side vendors offer a quick way to secure merchandise. For the vendors, it’s a lucrative business prospect.

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“I’m supporting the local vendors,” Ghosh-Choudhury said. “They keep the prices low enough for working people to afford them and enjoy wearing the same Spurs (shirts).“

Spurs spending surges amid NBA Finals

The NBA Finals are expected to match the $440.6 million economic impact of last year’s NCAA Final Four tournament in San Antonio, according to Steve Nivin, who chairs the economics department at St. Mary’s University and calculated that number for a study he conducted.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani this week touted that the Knicks’ postseason run has generated around $202 million in economic activity, with the potential for that number to more than double during the NBA Finals.

“The impact in San Antonio will be pretty similar to what New York City put out,” Nivin said. “And that’s similar to what we had in the 2025 Final Four.”

The majority of the spending is on food and beverages, including alcohol; entertainment and shopping; and event production. For example, ESPN set up at the Alamo for the start of the series.

One difference from the Final Four tournament is that the NBA Finals will be hosted in Frost Bank Center, which seats fewer than 20,000 people, as opposed to the Alamodome, which had space for 65,000 during the two days of the NCAA event.

The study also didn’t account for local spending – it only measured the economic impact of visitors, he said. But the NBA Finals also has thousands of local residents pumping in dollars as they snatch up Spurs gear and attend watch parties.

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The past two weeks have been “crazy,” said Ethan Espinoza, a 21-year-old who helps run one of the bustling pop-up shops at the intersection of Southwest Military Drive and Pleasanton Road. On Tuesday, he was selling shirts to a crowd of Spurs fans who were lining up despite the 90-degree heat. His family and friends operate seven stands throughout the city, and the demand for Spurs gear has meant they’re “always running out” of merchandise.

Sales and orders have grown as the Spurs advanced through each round of the playoffs. Within just two minutes Tuesday afternoon, the pop-up had processed two sales: one for $103.50 and another for $289.90. In the Spurs off-season, his friends and family sell fireworks and shirts for graduation, too.

“We’ve made as much as $10,000 in one day back in April,” he said.

The burgeoning business is one reason why Megan Ramirez and her family decided last week to tap into the Spurs fever sweeping the city, setting up a pop-up across from Espinoza.

“Literally, I think this is our first day,” she said Tuesday.

The new endeavor is a family affair. Ramirez’s brother leads the graphic design, a family friend prints the shirts and Ramirez sells their creations, including tube tops inspired by the 2000s movie “Mean Girls” that reads: “Get in loser, we’re going honking.”

Rather than produce a regular T-shirt sold by every other tent on the block, they’re focused on curating different offerings that respond to what people want. That includes women-centered designs, Ramirez said, like tank tops or halter tops.

It’s a way to hustle and support their family, she said, while also supporting the community they’ve grown up in. The native San Antonian said she also has appreciated spending more time with her family in the process. The Spurs being on their redemption arc is an added bonus.

“They’ve been bringing the community together,” the 23-year-old said. “People wouldn’t be out here doing this, creating more money for people here, if it wasn’t for them coming back up like this.”

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Former Spurs designer turns independent artist

After four years of working as the Spurs senior designer, Garrett Huls now designs Spurs merchandise as a free agent. From 2018 through 2022, the Corpus Christi native designed the Spurs jerseys, the team’s court and all the Fiesta city edition assets.

As a fan of the team and an artist, it’s a natural evolution for Huls to continue designing Spurs merchandise for his brand, Huls Design. He has set out to create unique designs that avoid any trademark issues.

“I came from the ad agency world and the marketing world, so I definitely know the constraints in how much a brand can flex and how many ways you can use their logo,” he said.

He avoids using trademarked phrases like “Go Spurs, Go” or “Por Vida.” His latest shirt features the state of Texas, the Tower of Americas as a UFO and an alien balancing a ball on its finger with the words: “Believe This.” The design also is featured in a Southtown mural.

When designing with the Spurs, his designs would go through multiple rounds of revisions before being released to the public. Often, his original designs were never seen. Now, “the opportunities are just endless when you can create something new,” he said.

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“Everything from official merch to bootlegs, everyone wants to be involved,” Huls said. “That’s kind of the beauty too, of being able to create artwork. You can generate your own art, your own product. You don’t have to rely on others to do that.”

Secondhand Spurs merchandise

Even Goodwill, a nonprofit secondhand retail store, has seen demand spike for Spurs merchandise. Bernice Jones, the manager of the Goodwill on West Commerce Street, said customers have been coming in looking for any Spurs merchandise, especially caps or T-shirts.

During the team’s playoff run, whenever the store receives a Spurs-related donation, the staff puts it out immediately – sometimes in the glass display so customers can see it as soon as they walk in, she said.

“They are pricey at the Spurs store, and people really want to buy Spurs attire,” Jones said. “It doesn’t matter what it is, how old it is  – because if it’s Spurs, they want it.”

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For Jacob Rodriguez, the $10 to $20 price difference between buying licensed and bootleg Spurs merchandise isn’t the main consideration. The athletic stores’ merchandise oftentimes isn’t available because it’s sold out, but he also says their offerings are plain. He prefers the design of the pop-up vendors.

But it doesn’t really matter where he buys the merchandise – what matters is that he has it. He went honking after the Game 7 win but didn’t have anything to wave out his window while cruising down Southwest Military Drive.

“They’re (in) the finals,” he said. “I got to get a flag.”

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