The Spurs' Annual Rodeo Road Trip, as always, will [begin in February this season](https://airalamo.com/schedule), and it's slightly less terrible than last year's. After a tough month in January—their hardest month of the season, based on their opponents—the struggling team followed it up with an extended road trip that lasted 13 games, spanning an entire month. I don't know about you, but I don't like being away from my bed that long.
That number has been lowered to nine this time, but it still makes it the longest road trip in the NBA. Somebody will try to tell you that the two games in Austin don't count as road games, but I'd argue that they aren't home games, either, so where does that leave us? If they aren't playing at the Frost Bank Center, they aren't at home.
Even so, there's mostly good to counter the bad in this year's RRT.
The Spurs can take advantage of the little things
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The Silver and Black will play their first two out-of-state games right before the All-Star Break. After some well-deserved days off, they'll head North to Austin to meet up with a couple of Western Conference foes before making their way East to play out the rest of the road trip.
Cutting down the grind of that particular journey away from San Antonio because of Spring Break always provides a breather that the players will be appreciative of. It's important to get going fairly quickly after that, as the final playoff push will be in full swing by then.
After leaving Austin, the guys play a bunch of Eastern Conference teams. Fortunately, most of them are in a similar region, so their traveling load is reduced substantially. Last year, they played all the way down in Orlando, all the way up the Eastern seaboard to New York.
The last five teams they'll visit are the Detroit Pistons, Toronto Raptors, Brooklyn Nets, New York Knicks, and Philadelphia 76ers. The longest time they'll spend in a vehicle will be on the planes they take from Texas to Michigan and from Pennsylvania back to Texas. Every other plane or bus won't see them for more than two hours at a time. That's as favorable as you can ask for.
Despite the team playing in four fewer games than they did last season, they'll still be away from the Frost Bank Center for quite a long time. The NBA just spaced them out more. So, the last game they'll play at FBC is on February 7, and they won't return until March 5.
The Rodeo Road Trip is infamous among Spurs fans because of the way it brings the team together. They go weeks with nobody to spend time with but each other. That forges their relationships into stronger bonds than what may happen under normal circumstances, but the Silver and Black aren't a normal team. This is a classy, top-tier organization from top to bottom, and that makes them special.
Normal is for average teams like the Houston Rockets.