Empty Promises, Unfulfilled Dreams - basketball league management

Basketball Digest, May, 2001 by Chuck Miller

The CBA is six feet under, and despite their best intentions, the two remaining "major" minors--the IBL and ABA 2000--are in trouble

THE ANNOUNCEMENT MAY NOT have had the same effect on the basketball world as Michael Jordan's retirement, but on February 6, 2001, after more than 50 years as an autonomous and successful basketball league and a proving ground for NBA superstars and championship coaches, the Continental Basketball Association folded. One week later, five former CBA teams joined another minor league hoop circuit, the International Basketball League (which had shrunk to six teams and saw one of those six; the New Mexico Slam, nearly fold before the league took over its day-to-day operations). A second surviving minor league, ABA 2000, is struggling through its first season in near anonymity.

Now more than ever, minor league basketball teams and leagues are having difficulty surviving in a crowded sports marketplace. And the NBA's new creation, a minor league basketball circuit for players age 20 and older--the National Basketball Developmental League--promises to crowd the field further.

For more than 100 years, minor league basketball teams thrived in mid-to-small market cities. The CBA, for example, had its origins in a small rough-and-tumble Pennsylvania-New Jersey-New York minor league circuit, the Eastern League. When in 1978 the Eastern League spread its wings to become the CBA, its reach extended from Rochester, N.Y., to Anchorage.

CBA team travel in the 1980s meant riding buses and vans and taking airplane flights only when absolutely necessary. "I rode from Bangor, Maine to Oshkosh, Wis. in a van with no heat in January, with ten players in it," says Sioux Falls Skyforce coach Jim Sleeper, whose team is one that jumped from the CBA to the IBL. "Players won't do that today. Players are softer. They've been treated better. You wouldn't see guys agreeing to a whole season of bus travel anymore."

Although the CBA Was known for giving deserving, hardworking minor league players a second chance to be discovered by NBA scouts, it was also known for unstable franchises that moved or folded nearly every year. In 1992, the league boasted 17 franchises, with teams in Albany, Columbus, Oklahoma City, and San Jose. But just six years later the league had shrunk to 10 teams and was fighting for survival.

In 1999, a beacon of hope arrived for the CBA in the form of former Detroit Pistons star Isiah Thomas. Thomas agreed to purchase and run the CBA, helping ensure its financial survival. But attendance slowly dwindled, even in long-established CBA cities like Rockford, Ill. and Yakima, Wash. Before Thomas purchased the CBA, the league averaged 3,809 fans during the 1998-99 season; the year that Thomas owned the CBA (1999-2000), the average dropped to 3,307 fans per game. And during the 2000-01 season, fewer than 2,800 fans attended an average CBA game.

Thomas' purchase of the CBA may have been well intentioned, but when took the Indiana Pacers' head-coaching job last summer, the NBA mandated that he sell the CBA because of a conflict of interest "Zeke came in with a lot Of good intentions," Sleeper says, "but then he changed his course in midstream by going into coaching. He had to sell the league, and from that point on, there was nobody who had a vested interest in the league or its day-to-day affairs. A lot of people are blaming Isiah, but not being able to sell the league presented a problem for everyone involved."

Unable to find a buyer for the CBA, Thomas placed the the league in a blind trust upon joining the Pacers. Within months, eight of the 10 CBA teams were so cash-strapped they couldn't afford plane tickets for road games. After the league folded, five CBA teams--the Skyforce, Gary Steelheads, Connecticut Pride, Grand Rapids Hoops, and Rockford Lightning--joined the IBL.

The first few CBA games played under the IBL banner were successful, as more than 6,900 fans watched the Lightning's IBL debut. "It has taken a lot of intense work from some very dedicated people in the five CBA cities to get this done in just four days," Ralph Rossi, Jr., the IBL's chief executive officer, said at the time of the speedy "merger" of the two leagues. "I'm confident that the infusion of the five new teams will help our original IBL teams in their respective cities as well. The future of the IBL has never been brighter."

While the IBL plays their games by international basketball rules--a trapezoidal lane, a shorter three-point line, allowing zone defenses--ABA 2000 has made rules changes that have altered the landscape of the game. A steal in the backcourt, followed by a basket, is a "3-D" play, earning an extra point. Players can't foul out, and to encourage scoring, teams only have eight seconds to move the ball to hallcourt. ABA 2000 also was the first league to broadcast an entire game on the Web. "It's a very cost-effective way to put a two-hour show about your team and your league out there for people," ABA 2000 commissioner Gary Elbogen says.