Spanish language broadcaster Paul Castro calls the game from his balcony level perch as the Spurs host the Phoenix Suns at the AT&T Center on October 20, 2015.
Tom Reel/San Antonio Express-News
When Paul Castro accepted a job offer from a radio station in Woodburn, Oregon, in the late 1980s, he had no idea it would be the first step in a journey toward becoming one of the longest-tenured Spanish-language radio broadcasters in NBA history.
“I see myself in the mirror and I ask myself, ‘How did I get here?’” he said.
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Now in his 32nd season calling Spurs games for KXTN, Castro, 64, has been thinking a lot lately about his improbable rise from a neophyte radio music and talk show host to an NBA fixture.
With the Spurs facing the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs, it’s no surprise Castro has been reminiscing lately about his start in the business. He grew up in Oregon and spent four seasons announcing games in Spanish for the Trail Blazers before joining the Spurs in 1994.
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“It’s been a great road, but I never dreamed I would be on it,” he said last weekend at the team hotel in Portland, where the Spurs won two games in the best-of-seven series to take a 3-1 lead entering Game 5 Tuesday night at the Frost Bank Center.
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As a student studying broadcast media at Oregon State, Castro wanted to direct music videos.
“I loved MTV back in the day,” he said. “It really inspired me. I loved music. I loved video. And I thought to myself, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”
But his plans changed one summer day while playing in a parks and recreation volleyball tournament with his brother Jose in their hometown of Woodburn, a city of about 30,000 about 30 miles south of Portland.
“My brother and I, we aren’t shy,” Castro told the San Antonio Express-News in a 2015 interview. “We would talk to everybody, always making friends, helping people out and stuff. So we were talking to these guys before our match and then all of a sudden, we hear this guy say, ‘You know what? You guys talk too much.’”
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“We turned around and we saw this tall guy and we were like, What’s up?” Castro said.
The “tall guy” was Cliff Zauner, owner of an AM-radio station in Woodburn that planned to adopt a Spanish format to accommodate the area’s growing Latino population.
Radio broadcaster Paul Castro goes on the air from his perch above the arena as the Spurs host the Phoenix Suns at the AT&T Center on October 20, 2015.
Tom Reel/San Antonio Express-News
Paul Castro, spanish language broadcaster, mans his station as the newly renovated AT&T Center opens on October 18, 2015.
Tom Reel/San Antonio Express-News
Spurs’ Spanish broadcaster Paul Castro prior to the game with the Mavericks Friday Jan. 14, 2005, at the SBC Center. The Spurs went on to win 98-95. PHOTO BY EDWARD A. ORNELAS/STAFF
EDWARD A. ORNELAS/SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
Radio broadcaster Paul Castro goes on the air from his perch above the arena as the Spurs host the Phoenix Suns at the AT&T Center on October 20, 2015.
Tom Reel/San Antonio Express-News
“I’d like to have you on the radio,” Zauner told the brothers, who were among 12 children, including nine sisters, born to migrant workers Jose and Sebastiana Castro in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, about a four-hour drive northwest of Mexico City.
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“I told him, ‘What? We’ve never done radio,’” Castro said. “And he told us, ‘Don’t worry about it. Call me in the morning.’ Out of the blue that happened, just like that.”
Zauner soon decided he wanted to air Trail Blazers games in Spanish with Castro doing the play-by-play.
“I told him, ‘Cliff, I just started in radio. I can’t do play-by-play,’” Castro recalled. “He said, ‘You can do it. I used to do play-by-play (hockey and baseball) and it isn’t that hard. Just watch some games, give me a tape and I’ll send it to the Blazers.’”
Castro recorded his audition on a cassette tape while calling a game off TV. It won him the job, and months later, he was working a playoff series that pitted Portland against the Spurs in the 1990 Western Conference semifinals.
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Coached by Larry Brown, with Gregg Popovich and R.C. Buford among his assistants, the Spurs boasted the rookie of the year in No. 1 overall pick David Robinson, another outstanding rookie in No. 3 overall pick Sean Elliott and a tough-minded two-time All-Star in Terry Cummings. But the Clyde Drexler-led Blazers won the seventh and deciding game 108-105 in overtime behind Terry Porter’s 36 points to cap a memorable series.
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“That was a special year,” Castro said. “It’s kind of crazy because that was almost 36 years ago.”
Castro’s stint with Portland ended after four years when the team halted its Spanish broadcasts. Thinking his time in the NBA was over, he considered moving to Los Angeles to attend film school.
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“I never thought about making this a career,” he said. “I was actually filling out my paperwork to go to directing school in L.A.”
That’s when the Spurs called.
“I thought it was my friends cranking me when I heard, ‘Hey, this is the Spurs. We’d be interested in talking to you,’” Castro said. “I go, ‘Yeah, right.’”
Radio broadcaster Paul Castro goes on the air from his perch above the arena as the Spurs host the Phoenix Suns at the AT&T Center on October 20, 2015.
Tom Reel/San Antonio Express-News
All these years later, Castro was back in Portland last weekend where his unlikely journey began. In between games, he visited family and thought back to all the good times they had growing up in Oregon.
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“I miss snow skiing. I miss water skiing. And, of course, I miss my family,” he said. “In the summers, we were on the river almost all day until the sun went down. And in the winter we would go to Mount Hood, do a lot of skiing. Once you’re in the mountains, you don’t want to come off. And Portland’s always been a great city.”
But now he’s all about the Spurs and San Antonio.
“I consider the people I work with as my second family,” Castro said. “We travel together, we stay together. As a matter of fact, I saw (Spurs managing partner) Peter J. Holt on the floor the other day sitting by himself during warmups, so I came down to talk to him. I told him, ‘When your dad (former Spurs managing partner Peter M. Holt) and you would come to the playoffs years ago you were this high, and now you are in charge.’ I would talk to his dad all the time, and now Peter is a grown man with his own family and in charge.”
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Castro is having fun this spring making new playoff memories.
“It’s like coming out of retirement again and starting all over again all fresh,” he said of working in the postseason after a seven-year absence. “It reminds me of the old days, but it’s all new people.”