Back in 1974, the San Antonio Spurs were a part of the American Basketball Association, a less successful competitor to the NBA that eventually folded and combined its teams with the greater power of the league we know today. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for teams to buy contracts from each other, which was the case with the Spurs, who bought George Gervin‘s deal from the Virginia Squires.
This story resurfaced recently because of the bizarre nature of the deal that forced Gervin to quarantine in a hotel in San Antonio while he waited for the deal to go through.