The San Antonio Spurs started the 1990s with great optimism. The San Antonio Spurs basketball team became a perennial playoff presence although were never capable to advance further then the second round of the NBA basketball Playoffs under Brown's tutelage. Late in the 1991-1992 seasons, McCombs fired Brown and replaced him with Bob Bass who finished the NBA season as interim head coach. McCombs made national headlines during the summer of 1992 with the hiring of previous UNLV head coach Jerry Tarkanian. The Tarkanian experiment proved a flop, as the NBA coach was fired 20 games into the 1992-1993 season with the San Antonio Spurs record at 9-11. After Rex Hughes filled the coaching shoes for one game, NBA veteran John Lucas was called head coach. It was Lucas's first NBA coaching assignment although he had got acknowledgment in league circles for his success in helping NBA players rehab from drug abuse.
The Lucas era began out successfully. His coaching propelled the team to a 39-22 finish over the rest of the NBA regular season and the team reached the Western Conference semifinals, losing to the Phoenix Suns. The 1992-1993 season also marked the last that the San Antonio Spurs would play in Hemisfair Arena. In 1993 local businessman Peter M. Holt and a group of 22 investors bought the San Antonio Spurs from Red McCombs for $75 million.
The following season, the San Antonio Spurs first in the recently built Alamodome, Lucas led the San Antonio Spurs to a 55-27 record but the team suffered a loss in the first round of the playoffs to the Utah Jazz which led to the instant firing of Lucas as head coach. Prior to the season the San Antonio Spurs traded fan-favorite Elliott to the Detroit Pistons in return for rebounding star Dennis Rodman.
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