Reggie Thomas has what many would consider a dream job: team photographer for the San Antonio Spurs.
On a typical home game day, Thomas arrives at the Frost Bank Center hours before tipoff and photographs the players as they arrive and prepare in the locker room. He travels with the team, following the same routine as the players of boarding the team plane, checking into hotels and attending shootarounds before game time.
Since joining the Spurs organization in 2019, he has brought a unique perspective to his photography, one displayed on his 11,000-plus-follower Instagram account and formed from his background growing up in Baltimore.
With worldwide attention focused on the Spurs and their No. 1 draft pick Victor Wembanyama, despite their early-season slump, Thomas is finding a wider audience for his work.
“[There’s] definitely some more excitement around the team … and I’m excited for everybody here,” Thomas said. “I think about just having a lot more nationally televised games and how that platform shines a light on all of our guys.”
Learning from YouTube videos
When Reginald “Reggie” Thomas II first picked up his college roommate’s camera, his palms started sweating. To him, it was a sign: “That’s something I needed to explore,” he said.
For his 19th birthday, he asked for a camera. He knew it was a big ask, but his parents took notice of his newfound interest and after months presented him with a beginner digital SLR camera setup with a price tag of $500. It was an investment that opened doors for him in so many ways.
Thomas explored the medium by spending hours on YouTube watching how-to videos and absorbing the history of photography through the lens of Black photographers and artists, people who looked like him. He discovered the work of Roy DeCarava, Jamel Shabazz and Robert Houston.
With inspiration at hand, Thomas began to experiment with the camera.
Growing up in Baltimore
Like his father, Thomas grew up playing basketball in and around Baltimore. He played basketball for his high school, Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, where he made lasting friendships through the game. To this day, some of Thomas’ best friends are people he met on his hometown courts.
In 2015, after graduating from Norfolk State University in Virginia with a sociology degree, Thomas went back home to Baltimore and walked into the offices of the Baltimore City Paper, photography portfolio in hand. He was hired as a reporter and photographer at the alternative weekly just days after Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man, died of injuries sustained during his arrest and transport by Baltimore police in a police van. Gray’s death prompted widespread protests in Baltimore, some of which turned violent, and Maryland’s governor eventually declared a state of emergency in the city.
In the year following Gray’s death, Thomas turned more toward photographing sports as a way to document the good in the community he knew so well, the city that many across the country were painting in a different light.
“I didn’t want my work to be based on the trauma of Black people,” Thomas said. “There’s a lot of joy [in Baltimore]. … Pain and suffering and dealing with all of these perils is not the central part of our experience.”
Thomas always knew he wanted to be involved in athletics, preferably basketball in some way. Thomas took that momentum and his experience from the Baltimore City Paper and took a shot at a high-profile internship.
He worked first as an intern and then as a staff photographer for one of the most historic sports franchises in professional sports, the Boston Red Sox. In nearly two seasons with the team, Thomas documented the 2018 season that culminated in the Red Sox winning the World Series in five games over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Landing a competitive job
There are 30 NBA teams, which means there are at most 30 positions that provide the kind of access Thomas gets with the Spurs. Some teams don’t have photographers and depend on freelance workers. When the position with the Spurs opened up, Thomas seized his opportunity to get into pro basketball.
Since 2019, Thomas has been documenting the Spurs both on and off the court. Shared on both the Spurs’ social media accounts and Thomas’ own accounts, his photographs stand out and break the norm.
Thomas builds relationships with the team, and that familiarity shows in his photographs. Some show players at home with their children. Others capture details like Spurs guard Devin Vassell tying his hair up before a game or Head Coach Gregg Popovich lightly touching the hand of one of his players while drawing up a play.
Not only is Thomas documenting them as a photojournalist and a member of the Spurs family, but also as someone with a background in basketball and — in a league where the majority of players are Black — a fellow Black man.
Thomas forged an especially close bond with DeMar DeRozan, a forward who spent three seasons with the Spurs until being traded to the Chicago Bulls in 2021. During DeRozan’s offseason training that year, Thomas documented the player’s one-on-one scrimmages with Zach LaVine and family meals with his mother. Thomas and DeRozan challenged themselves by running up a mountain in Vail, Colorado. Thomas put together vignettes in a YouTube video series called COMP10 Summer.
“I’m very honored that he [DeRozan] let me be around him like that, because, you know, he’s a private person, so I don’t take that for granted,” Thomas said. “DeMar is a future Hall of Famer.”
Mind and body
During the pandemic, when the NBA moved its operations to Walt Disney World in Florida to finish out the 2019-20 season and playoffs in a COVID-secure “bubble,” Thomas elected to stay home and work on himself. His days were filled with exploring art outside photography through creating oil paintings and sculptures. He turned the balcony of his small one-bedroom apartment into a makeshift art studio.
During that time, a comment from a friend on Thomas’ lack of fitness spurred him to work as hard as some of the players he photographs to get into shape. “Looking back on it, that’s all I needed,” he said.
Thomas has been part of a dedicated gym group ever since, often waking up at 4 a.m. for a workout the same night or the morning after a game at the Frost Bank Center.
Since he has started, Thomas has lost 55 pounds and remains disciplined while traveling with the team.
“It’s not just the weight, it’s not just pulling myself out of a darker spot,” he said. “You know … a lot of people don’t like you to be proud of yourself, but I’m not done. I’m very proud of who I am.”
