The San Antonio Spurs have waited seven years since their last home playoff game in 2019, and the franchise returned to the postseason with a splash on Sunday night. The team distributed shirts in its bright 1990s “Fiesta” shades to fans based on what section of the arena they were sitting. The crowd’s apparel matched the court and the team’s City Edition uniforms, creating a cohesive, color-blocking aesthetic that drew near-universal praise on social media.

“It’s great to see this many people wear the shirts,” Spurs’ All-Star center Victor Wembanyama said after the game. “It’s probably the most excited I’ve seen this arena.”

Despite the popularity of the tangerine, turquoise and fuchsia color scheme, Spurs fans won’t see it much throughout the rest of the postseason. The team won’t wear its City Edition jerseys at home during the remainder of the first round, although road games haven’t been ruled out yet depending on its opponent’s uniform choices.

“It’s a conversation that we have with the team and their reps as to what jerseys they want to wear,” Spurs associate director of game presentation Carter Snowden said. “Things get superstitious in the playoffs, regardless if you’re a fan or a player, in not wanting to commit to a particular jersey for every game.”

The Spurs plan to have another “Fiesta” night in the second round if San Antonio advances as expected. It became league policy starting with the 2025 playoffs, however, for teams to stick to their primary colors for the conference finals and Finals, so the Fiesta jerseys won’t be worn then.

The Spurs are content to wait another two weeks to showcase their Fiesta colors, given that they sat on the idea for years before attempting to pull it off. The Spurs brought back their 90s colors in the 2020-21 season, and the City Edition collection accounted for over 50% of retail revenue that year. The team knew it eventually wanted to wear the Fiesta jerseys in the postseason during Fiesta, an annual April festival held in San Antonio dating back over 100 years, but it never had the opportunity until now.

Once this year’s squad appeared playoff-bound several months ago, the organization began planning how many of each color shirt would be needed and which sections would wear which.

The setup was an undertaking, requiring around 75 part-time ushers to pitch in. Three game presentation assistants were appointed team leaders—one for each color. After unboxing 20,000 shirts, the rest of the staff paired up in different sections around the area, with one putting the shirts on the seats and the other following behind and straightening them out.

The next step was fan buy-in, but that generated organically. “We were just doing random crowd coverage before the game [on the jumbotron, and] people were booing the shots of the other Spurs fans that didn’t have their shirt on,” Snowden said. “We didn’t even really need to do anything on the game presentation side.”

It’s become common for teams to rotate in alternate jerseys during the playoffs. The Phoenix Suns memorably made a run to the 2021 NBA Finals wearing their “Valley” City Edition gradient uniforms for every home game, but given the league playoff uniform policy established in 2025, perhaps the NBA believed teams took their uniform freedom too far. In the 2024 Finals, for instance, the Dallas Mavericks wore black alternates for Game 1, followed by the Boston Celtics wearing their black alternates for Game 2, causing potential confusion for casual fans. Last year, the Indiana Pacers wore their City Edition jerseys with a light blue “INDY” on their chests for several games during the first two rounds, but had to stash them for the later rounds when they made a surprise run to the Finals.

The Spurs’ Fiesta shirts were paid for by the team’s jersey sponsor Ledger, a French cryptocurrency company, but different shirts for future games will have different sponsors. Tuesday’s Game 2 shirts will be sponsored by team partner H-E-B, and arena preparation was already underway early Monday afternoon.