A s a student at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s, Stephen Lang immersed himself in Philadelphia’s fabled basketball culture.

When he wasn’t at the venerable Palestra watching college hoops, Lang was at the long-since demolished Philadelphia Arena, taking in NBA action. Once, as a freshman, he attended a high school game featuring a 7-foot-1 center from Overbrook High School named Wilt Chamberlain.

But it was the NBA Lang enjoyed most.

“I went to pro games more than Penn’s games,” recalled Lang, 80.

“I particularly remember the Boston Celtics and Bob Cousy. … Bob Cousy being the greatest point guard I’ve ever seen play the game.”

More than 15 years later, after graduating from Penn’s famed Wharton School with a degree in economics, after a stint as an officer in the Army, after finishing law school at the University of Texas and after nearly 10 years as a practicing trial attorney specializing in civil cases, Lang welcomed an opportunity to become a shareholder in a pro team.

The year was 1973. San Antonio, Lang’s hometown, had a chance to vault itself onto the national pro sports landscape via entry into the American Basketball Association. But for the landmark event to occur, business titan B.J. “Red” McCombs and stockbroker Angelo Drossos needed investors to help them relocate the struggling Dallas Chaparrals to the Alamo City and HemisFair Arena.

“Angelo wanted to select the partners, and I was happy to let him do it,” McCombs remembered. “I brought in four or five and he probably brought in around 20. He looked through his stock investment Rolodex and his social Rolodex, so we had a wide base of ownership.”

Drossos didn’t have to go far to make his pitch to Lang.

“I was in the same building as him,” Lang said.

Drossos began by appealing to Lang’s civic pride, saying the presence of an ABA team would raise the city’s profile and help attract Fortune 500 companies. Lang listened intently, partly because of his love for basketball but also because he enjoyed hearing Drossos talk.

“Angelo could sell ice to Eskimos,” Lang said.

Shortly thereafter, Lang agreed to fork over $35,000 in cash for about 3 percent of stock in a team that would become known as the Spurs. His brother-in-law and best friend Irving Matthews, chief executive officer of Frost Bros., made a similar investment.

“We did it as a civic venture,” Lang said. “I did not expect it to be profitable.”

And for many years, it wasn’t. But that didn’t bother Lang and Matthews, who died in 1994 at age 76.

“We never gave any thought to getting out,” Lang said. “We loved the sport, loved the game and loved being owners. And I sort of had a hunch we would start to make some money because everything Red touches turns to gold. He’s brilliant.”

Lang was right. Forty-two years after about 30 San Antonio investors bought the Spurs for $800,000 after initially leasing the team from its original owners, Forbes magazine placed the value of the franchise at an even $1 billion.

Today, Lang is the only original Spurs investor still holding a financial interest in the club. Although he conveyed his 2.77 percent of the franchise — about $27.7 million — into a family limited partnership of which his three children are the principal owners and he owns just a “tiny piece of it,” Lang calls the shots when it comes to the family’s dealings with the Spurs and attends the meetings of the investors.

“It was the best business decision I ever made — not even close,” Lang said. “Read Forbes … I’ve made a lot of business mistakes, but not with the Spurs.”

McCombs, who sold his majority share of the team to a group headed by the late Bob Coleman in 1993 for $75 million, marvels at Lang’s staying power while reveling in the fact his friend has made an “awful lot of money.”

“On two different occasions I bought everybody else out, but he would not get out and there was no way you wanted to try to force him out,” McCombs said. “It’s not a normal and generally accepted practice in business for someone to own such a small percentage of stock. (League) commissioners were like, ‘What do you mean you have a shareholder that has been there for 15 years and has such a small percentage?’”

Even in the leanest of years, Lang stayed the course. Other original investors sold out and, of course, came to regret it.

Not Lang. His love for the team kept him going year after year after year.

“It was like, ‘Hey, we may not even operate another year,’” McCombs said. “And he would say, ‘Well, that’s all right. I’ll take my chances. I’m not selling my shares.’”

Former Spurs radio voice Jay Howard, now a adviser for MHD Financial, said he knew Lang wasn’t in it for the money when he declined to sell his shares to McCombs.

“If he wanted to make money, he could have made money when Red bought everyone out,” Howard said. “So in retrospect it was a brilliant investment, but I think his motivation was always about being a part of the team.”

McCombs said he’s learned through his many years as a sports owner — a résumé that began with a minor-league baseball team in Corpus Christi and ended with the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings — that sometimes partners form an emotional attachment to the team that just can’t be broken.

“It’s different than having partners in other types of business,” McCombs said. “Usually shareholders will get out if they get paid a fair price for getting out. But with sports, it’s different. It’s intense.”

Spurs investor Charlie Amato, who bought into the team in 1993, said there is no greater fan among the ownership group than Lang.

“He lives and dies with the Spurs,” said Amato, chairman and co-founder of Southwest Business Corp. “He enjoys being a part of it. And when you have a winning franchise, it’s really gratifying. There’s nothing I can do here or Steve can do at his office that is as exciting as the Spurs winning a championship. Everyday business just can’t compare with that.”

Fortunately for McCombs and all the other majority owners of the Spurs, Lang has been a model partner.

“He was a total team player,” McCombs said. “And he was a helpful investor early on from the standpoint of patting you on the back and thanking you for what you were doing, which was investing with not too much of a chance of it being a great financial reward. He was always very gracious in that respect.”

Savvy adviser

Lang’s supportive nature continues to this day, his fellow investors say.

“He speaks his mind at the meetings, but he’s always constructive, never destructive,” Amato said.

Although by his choice he has never been a member of the club’s board of directors, the affable Lang has always had the ear of the team’s power brokers and usually his calm, reasoned counsel is right on the money.

Such was the case in 1996 when he supported USAA selling its substantial chunk of the team to Peter Holt rather than the Maloof family of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fearing the late Robert F. McDermott, who was then chairman of both the Spurs and USAA, would sell to the Maloofs, Lang lobbied vigorously for Holt.

“I knew Peter,” Lang said. “I considered him a friend for several years before the McDermott group decided to sell. I knew him to be an honorable person. Peter bid and the Maloofs bid. They both came and addressed the ownership group. I remember saying, ‘McD, this isn’t even close. Peter Holt is a man of honor. I know very little about the Maloofs, except what I’ve read, and we’d be crazy if we didn’t take the Holt offer.’”

Holt purchased USAA’s 13.37 percent share shortly thereafter and eventually succeeded McDermott as chairman. Under his watch, the Spurs have won five NBA titles, gained a new arena that was refurbished this year and are widely considered one of the top franchises in all of pro sports.

“We were right to go with Peter,” said Lang, pointing out that some tumultuous times marred the Maloofs’ unpopular stint as owners of the Sacramento Kings from 1998-2013.

Lang was also on the right side of history when he publicly supported Gregg Popovich continuing as coach even after the team finished the 1996-97 season with a franchise-worst 20-62 record. Popovich, who was also the team’s general manager at the time, angered many fans when he fired Bob Hill as coach after a 3-15 start that season and made himself coach.

But shortly after the season ended, Lang and the other investors gave Popovich a strong vote of confidence in the form of a three-year contract to continue to serve as GM and coach.

“I’ve been one of his supporters since he came here as an assistant under Larry Brown,” Lang told the San Antonio Express-News in April 1997. “I think he brings what a team needs, some discipline.”

In a recent interview at his Sunset Road office, where several items of Spurs memorabilia are on display, including framed front pages of the Express-News marking the Spurs championships, Lang elaborated on why he supported Popovich when so many others wanted him gone.

“I had observed him as an assistant coach to Larry Brown and to Don Nelson when he was at Golden State,” Lang said. “I also knew his military record and I liked military men because I went to a military high school (Texas Military Institute) and was in ROTC in college and then served in the Army. I also knew he coached at Pomona-Pitzer (in California), where one of my two boys, Nathan, had gone to school and he told me how good Pop was.

“I also just liked that he was a no B.S. artist. Pop can be stubborn. I don’t always agree with him. But he’s one of the three greatest coaches of all time, with the others being Red Auerbach and John Wooden.”

Popovich, likewise, holds Lang in high esteem, calling him a “dream owner.”

“He doesn’t interfere,” Popovich said. “He allows everybody to do their job. The whole group (of investors) is like that. Peter is the same way, obviously, as CEO.”

Although Lang isn’t hands on, he has been known to pepper Spurs general manager R.C. Buford with questions at shareholders meetings.

“I want to know who we have stashed away in Europe or how so and so is doing this year or what is the health of so and so,” Lang said.

Buford affectionately calls Lang a “very engaged owner.”

“He has got the historical time and the engagement and intent and interest,” Buford said. “So when Steve asks a question or provides counsel, you know it’s with a lot of thought and personal interest. That kind of support, especially when it’s a large group of owners, is great to have.”

Baseline chum

During games, Lang roots the team on from a baseline seat near the Spurs’ bench. Sometimes his support takes the form of tough love when he shouts at players.

One of his favorites lines: “You can do better than that!”

Popovich calls Lang an “avid, avid fan who lives and dies with us.”

“But he’s kind of like one of the players in the sense the wins don’t make him feel like Superman and the losses don’t make him feel like he wants to jump off a building,” Popovich said. “He understands you win some, you lose some, and you just play the right way, you play with class, have an organization you can be proud of, and he moves on.”

Said Buford: “Steve can get pretty emotional. He’s a passionate fan. That’s what makes him special. You love Steve’s passion.”

Through the years, Lang has developed a long list of favorite Spurs, a roster that includes the likes of James Silas, George Gervin, Vinny Del Negro, Sean Elliott, David Robinson, Bruce Bowen and, of course, The Big Three: Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker.

“I was very fond of James Silas,” Lang said. “He worked his fanny off and gave to the maximum of his abilities. He really put us on the map until we got Gervin.”

Lang also has great affection for another guard.

“When Tony Parker first got here, Pop was hard on him and he would sometimes get down on himself,” Lang said. “Pop really was his United States father and he loved Pop. I would tell Tony, ‘Hang in there. You are going to be a great one.’”

Two players he didn’t like: Rod Strickland and Dennis Rodman — Strickland for his costly turnover late in a playoff game against Portland in 1990 and Rodman for his bad-boy behavior.

“I lost all faith in Strickland after that pass in Portland,” Lang said.

Sports love affair

Sports have always been a big part of Sylvan Stephen Lang’s life. The San Antonio native, whose family has roots in Alsace-Lorraine and Germany, grew up in a neighborhood near Trinity University and played football at TMI before a knee injury forced him to switch to basketball.

“I was so clumsy, I couldn’t make the ‘A’ team in basketball even in a small school, so I played on the ‘B’ team,” said Lang, who finished second in his class at TMI. “But I also played golf, and we were state private school champions in golf.”

After his basketball-filled days at Penn, Lang had a short active-duty stint in the Army, which he loved.

“I could disassemble and assemble a rifle blindfolded,” said Lang, who retired as a captain after spending 7½ years in the reserves.

At age 38, Lang took up horse jumping and downhill skiing. But in his 40s, he suffered a serious accident while riding that left him in a cast for almost a year and required intensive physical therapy. Although he returned to skiing, he never got back on a horse again.

“They wouldn’t let me jump after the accident,” he said. “I’m competitive, and I didn’t want to ride if I couldn’t jump. And to this day, I haven’t been on a horse again.”

Lang enjoyed a thriving law practice, spending his first 15 years defending businesses or individuals in personal injury cases. But in the 1980s, he started to become disenchanted with his profession.

“I got so frustrated with the wasting of time in the trial end of law practice,” he said. “Every lawyer was trying to outdo the other lawyer and there were no ethics. You tried to out-paper the other lawyer, that sort of thing. I decided I wasn’t going to waste my time and my client’s money on any more docket calls for three hours, so I stopped it and went into strictly business and real estate law.”

Lang said “money changed everything” in the 1980s.

“The small law firms all combined and the job was to out-lawyer the other lawyer within your law firm, no more team play,” Lang said. “I was a defense lawyer, but I could shake hands with any plaintiff’s lawyer, with only a few exceptions, in San Antonio, and I didn’t have to put anything in writing. Now I would make them put into writing what you had for breakfast … It’s sad.”

What isn’t sad is the way Lang continues to enthusiastically embrace life even after he underwent quadruple bypass surgery about five years ago. Despite that scare and other surgeries to repair long-ago athletic injuries, he enjoys playing golf about seven times a year, traveling with his wife and, of course, going to Spurs games, including road playoff outings.

“My cardiologist, Dr. Fernando Triana, saved my life,” Lang said. “I had a routine heart checkup at his office and he came back in with the results after I had been on the treadmill and said, ‘Which phone call should I make, Steve?’ I said, ‘What are you talking about, Dr. Triana?’ And he said, ‘Well, one of us has to call the heart surgeon and one of us has to call your wife.’”

Lang said the worst thing about the surgery was it prevented him from attending Spurs games for a while.

“I got very angry at Dr. Triana and my heart surgeon,” he said.

Lang plans to spend plenty of time at the AT&T Center this season. Like all fans, he can’t wait to see how things unfold after the Spurs upgraded their roster for another title run with the addition of All-Star forward LaMarcus Aldridge and others.

“And the excitement just isn’t around town,” he said. “I’m lucky enough to be able to travel and I sense that excitement everywhere I go. And I’ll tell you something else, I don’t go anywhere where people don’t know about the Spurs. When I tell someone I’m from San Antonio, there is no other subject that is covered other than the San Antonio Spurs.”

And although the return on his initial investment is off the charts, that knowledge and the five titles is what really makes him feel good about his part in making the Spurs great.

torsborn@express-news.net

Twitter: @tom_orsborn