American Basketball Association (1967-1977)
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The American Basketball Association Overview
The American Basketball Association (ABA) was founded on February 1, 1967, by sports promoter Dennis Murphy and a group of investors, as a competitor of the NBA. It spanned nine seasons and a countless number of franchises before merging with the NBA in 1976.
The ABA distinguished itself from the NBA with what was considered at the time to be a more wide-open style of offensive play as well as a number of other differences--a 30-second shot clock (as opposed to the NBA's 24-second clock), use of a three-point basket, and an All-Star Game which also featured a Slam Dunk contest. Additionally, the ABA’s first commissioner, NBA Hall of Famer George Mikan, introduced the league’s colorful red, white and blue ball instead of the NBA's brown ball. Despite the league’s freewheeling style of play and exciting players, a lack of a national television contract and continued financial losses ensured the league could not survive.
In 1976, the NBA absorbed four teams: the New York (later renamed the New Jersey) Nets, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, and San Antonio Spurs. The Virginia Squires had folded less than a month earlier, missing out on the opportunities a merger might provide. Two other clubs, the Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis were disbanded upon the merger. Just a week before the first season after the merger was about to begin, the Nets sold Julius Erving, the ABA’s biggest name, to the Philadelphia 76ers because of their financial constraints. Strapped for cash, the Nets faced a $3.2 million fee to enter the NBA, plus $480,000 in annual indemnity payments to the New York Knicks. They agreed to sell Erving to the 76ers for $3 million, along with George McGinnis. The two led the Sixers to the NBA Finals in their first year in the NBA.
Other ABA players who had esteemed NBA careers including Mel Daniels (Indiana Pacers), Billy Cunningham (Carolina Cougars), Rick Barry (Oakland Oaks), Connie Hawkins (Pittsburgh Pipers), David Thompson (Denver Nuggets), George Gervin (San Antonio Spurs), Spencer Haywood (Denver Rockets), Artis Gilmore (Kentucky Colonels), Dan Issel (Kentucky Colonels), and Moses Malone (Drafted in 1974 by the Utah Stars from Petersburg High School in Petersburg, Virginia, Malone exclusively played in the NBA, from 1976 to 1995).
The ABA
When the American Basketball Association began play with a painted basketball in 1967, the NBA took one look at the tri-colored ball and the three-point shot and couldn’t decide whether to laugh or yawn. Yes, the ABA did play basketball – or at least a form of it – in several cities that were worthy of NBA teams, but for the most part, NBA officials didn’t take the new league seriously.
That changed, however. By the time the ABA folded in 1976 with four of its teams joining the NBA and the rest of its star players taken in a dispersal draft, the NBA knew the league with the red, white and blue ball was dead serious. The first All-Star Game held after the four-team absorption made that evident. Of the 24 All-Stars, 10 were ABA graduates. Julius Erving, whose incredibly exciting talents probably were the most important reason that the NBA added the ABA teams, was named the Most Valuable Player in the game. And when the championship was decided at the end of season, the Portland Trail Blazers had their first title in no small part because their starting power forward was Maurice Lucas, an ABA alum who was the Blazers’ leading scorer.
More than two decades later, Erving said the ABA continued to live –- in the form of every dunk, every buzzer-beating three-pointer, all that wide-open, above-the-rim play that occurs in NBA games.
“Every night I watch an NBA game I see the ABA,” said Erving, now the Executive Vice President of the Orlando Magic. “When you watch the up-tempo game and the three-point shot and much of what the strategy employed is, it is definitely an ABA game. There is no question about it. You see the flair. You see the innovation. You see the accent on the entertainment.”
And Julius Erving is the nexus that links the two leagues. “Dr. J is the single most important figure for making the league something that people wanted to see,” said Jim O’Brien, a reporter who covered the ABA for the New York Post and The Sporting News. The 6'7" Erving signed with the Virginia Squires in 1971 after his junior year at UMass. He averaged 27.3 points and 15.7 rebounds a game as a rookie, and the league finally had its cleanup hitter. In his five-year ABA career, Dr. J averaged 28.7 points per game, utilizing into-the-stratosphere moves that shouldn’t be attempted without a parachute. He won three scoring titles, three Most Valuable Player awards and two league championships.
Erving had played college basketball in an era when the dunk was not allowed, so when he entered the ABA it was like freeing a caged bird.
“I went from doing it by the book in college to having the chains taken off and having the freedom to explore, experiment, dare to be great.” said Erving.
Erving played two seasons with the Squires, where he teamed with George Gervin for half a season. But the Squires, like most ABA teams, struggled financially, and the ABA did not benefit from having its biggest star play in a small market. Before the 1973-74 season, Virginia traded Erving to the New York Nets, and midway through the season, they sold Gervin’s contract to the San Antonio Spurs. Coached by Kevin Loughery and led by Erving, the Nets won titles in 1974 and 1976.
Sports promoter Dennis Murphy and a group of investors founded the ABA with the idea of forcing a merger with the NBA. But basketball was a distant third to baseball and football in popularity, so the NBA didn’t have to worry about the new league stealing any of its fan base since it was still in the process of building it.
“The NBA wasn’t the NBA in those days,” O’Brien said. “It was farming out games. The year before the ABA started, the Philadelphia 76ers, one of the greatest teams in basketball, had six games in Pittsburgh.”
The league was born February 1, 1967, with Houston (Mavericks), Pittsburgh (Pipers), Minnesota (Muskies), Indiana (Pacers), New Jersey (Americans), New Orleans (Buccaneers), Dallas (Chaparrals), Anaheim (Amigos), Oakland (Oaks) and Kansas City. Within a month, the league awarded Kentucky (Colonels) a franchise. A month later, the Kansas City franchise moved to Denver (Rockets). With credibility an issue, the league hired 43-year-old former NBA great George Mikan as its first commissioner. Mikan came up with the red, white and blue ball idea because the orange ball was hard to pick up on TV.
The NBA stopped laughing when it realized the ABA considered NBA players fair game. Besides welcoming players such as Connie Hawkins, Doug Moe and Roger Brown, who had been banned from the NBA when their names were linked to college basketball scandals in the early 1960s, the new league also went after players the NBA deemed its own.
When the Oakland Oaks hired Bruce Hale as coach, his son-in-law, Rick Barry, who was playing for the San Francisco Warriors, was lured across the Bay. The Warriors filed suit -— the first of many filed by both sides -— and won, forcing Barry to either play for them or sit out the 1967-68 season (he chose the latter). But Barry was cleared to play in the 1968-69 season and with him, Larry Brown at the point and Doug Moe at forward, Oakland won the 1969 title.
“When they started signing people like Charlie Scott, Artis Gilmore, Jim McDaniels, Rick Mount, Dan Issel, then they [the NBA] started paying attention,” said O’Brien. “That’s when the NBA started getting a little nervous about it.”
The NBA became enraged in 1969, when agent Steve Arnold, who the ABA had hired to approach underclassmen about turning pro early, convinced college superstar Spencer Haywood to forego his junior and senior years of college. The Denver Rockets signed Haywood to a three-year deal worth $450,000 (actually the contract called for $50,000 a year, with $300,000 deferred until after Haywood’s 40th birthday; many ABA teams utilized this deferred compensation plan, know as a Dolgoff Plan). The Indiana Pacers followed, signing George McGinnis after his sophomore year at Indiana. The New Jersey Nets tapped Jim Chones out of Marquette after his junior year. And the Virginia Squires signed Gervin and Erving. In 1974, Utah selected Moses Malone right out of high school.
With a merger between the ABA and NBA seemingly imminent, the leagues agreed to inter-league exhibition games in 1971. Although merger talks eventually collapsed, the NBA and ABA teams continued to play each other. The younger league didn’t do that well against the NBA early, winning only eight of 22 contests in 1971 and eight of 35 the following year. But as better players entered the league, the tide turned. In 1973, ABA teams won 15 of 24 games, and a year later they posted a 16-7 record. In 1975, ABA teams posted a 30-18 mark against NBA opponents.
“I think the best players in the ABA were every bit as talented as the best players in the NBA,” said Erving. “Down the line you probably had more depth on NBA teams, but I’m not so sure. When I got to Philadelphia it happened to be a pretty deep team, and, I think, one through 12, that team was stronger than most ABA teams. But Philadelphia was a team destined to go to the Finals of the NBA. All those NBA teams that didn’t make the playoffs, I’m sure my Nets team, the Denver Nuggets or the Kentucky Colonels would have wiped them out.”
It was during the 1976 ABA All-Star Weekend in Denver that the high-flying Erving did something on a basketball court that had never been seen before and may have hastened the merger with the NBA. The league was desperate. There were seven teams left by the All-Star break. It needed a big-time attraction to spark some interest. The idea was a dunk contest. The contestants were 7-2 Artis Gilmore of the Kentucky Colonels, 6-7 George Gervin of the San Antonio Spurs, 6-9 Larry Kenon of the Spurs, 6-4 David Thompson of the host Nuggets and Erving.
Everyone knew the real contest was between Thompson and Erving. Thompson’s performance included the first recorded 360-degree dunk. But Erving’s best dunk of the evening was the kind of athletic feat that is seared into the public consciousness like Babe Ruth’s called home run and Lynn Swann’s fabulous catches. For his first dunk, Erving simply stood under the basket and dunked two balls during the same jump. For his second dunk, Erving walked up to the foul line and started measuring his steps back to the other end of the court. People knew what was coming and they were frenzied. He started running and picked up speed at half-court. He hit the free throw line and took off . . . into basketball legend. The grainy tape of that dunk is still a favorite of every basketball connoisseur.
By the end of that season, the ABA’s ninth, Virginia shut down its operations, leaving six teams – Indiana, Denver, New York, San Antonio, Kentucky and St. Louis. The NBA agreed to admit Indiana, Denver, San Antonio and New York, raising the total teams to 22. It adopted the ABA’s three-point shot in 1979. It incorporated the Slam Dunk contest into its All-Star festivities in 1984.
The Nets, faced with a $3.2 million fee to enter the NBA plus $480,000 a year in indemnity payments to the New York Knicks, had a cash crisis, so they sold sold Erving’s contract to the Philadelphia 76ers for $3 million. The Sixers advanced to the Finals that season led by Erving and George McGinnis, another former ABA player
“I think some of the NBA brain trust said, ‘We don’t want all of it, but we want the best of what the ABA has to offer,’” Erving said. “‘We’ll take the players and we’ll take a few franchises and we’ll leave the Maverick aspect of the league.’ Little did they know those things were coming along too. The spirit of the ABA actually made the transition, too. And it’s still there.”
FACTOIDS
Only two players—Byron Beck of the Denver Rockets/Nuggets and Louie Dampier of the Kentucky Colonels—lasted all nine seasons of the ABA’s existence. Beck, a 6-9 center, averaged 12.0 ppg during his ABA career. Dampier, a 6-0 guard, finished as the ABA’s all-time leader in total points (13,726 for an average of 18.9 per game), assists (4,084), and minutes (27,770). Dampier also was the ABA’s top three-point shooter, making 794 treys in 2,217 attempts for a .358 percentage.
NBC’s Bob Costas got his start as a radio announcer for the ABA’s Spirits of St. Louis. In 1974, at the age of 22, the Spirits hired Costas for the princely sum of $11,000 per year.
When the ABA folded in 1976, four of its teams (Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New York Nets, and San Antonio Spurs) joined the NBA. In 1999, the Spurs became the first former ABA team to win an NBA title.
The Pacers won three titles (1970, 1972, and 1973) during the ABA’s nine-year existence, the most of any team.
The ABA’s final season featured 84 players, 63 of whom went on to play in the NBA.
“In the beginning, we didn’t want a basketball league. We wanted a second football league, but somebody beat us to it and started the American Football League.” —ABA founder Dennis Murphy
“[The ABA’s red, white, and blue ball] looks like something that belongs on the nose of a seal.” —NBA coach Alex Hannum, in 1967. Ironically, Hannum would coach the Oakland Oaks in 1968-69 and lead them to the ABA title.
“The world’s tallest coach in the league’s smallest arena.” —advertising slogan of San Diego Conquistadors after they hired Wilt Chamberlain as their coach. Chamberlain lasted one season, a year in which he commuted to San Diego from his Los Angeles home by airplane or helicopter.
Americans have bought at least 30 million red, white, and blue basketballs, but the ABA earned nothing because it had failed to patent the unique design of its basketballs.
“We went by the seat of our pants and made it up as we went along. If a rule didn’t fit with something we wanted to do, we just changed it or ignored it. If someone had an idea, no matter how lame-brained, usually someone tried it.” —Dick Tinkham, part-owner of the ABA’s Indiana Pacers
The ABA’s early years featured so much physical play and so many fights that Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray wrote, “You almost had to present your X-rays to get a free throw.”
The ABA made its debut October 13, 1967 (Friday the 13th) when the Oakland Oaks defeated the Anaheim Amigos 132-129 at Oakland Coliseum. The Oaks’ ownership included singer Pat Boone.
After winning the first ABA title in 1968, the Pittsburgh Pipers moved to Minnesota for the 1968-69 season, then returned to Pittsburgh for the 1969-70 season.
Julius Erving became “Dr. J” during his first pro training camp because every new move displayed by the rookie prompted Willie Sojourner, one of Erving’s teammates, to say, “There’s the doctor digging into his bag again.”
“[Julius] Erving is a nice kid, but I don’t know how well he’d do in our league.” —Boston General Manager Red Auerbach
The ABA posted a 79-76 record in exhibition games against NBA teams. The ABA’s ball, three-point shot, and 30-second shot clock were used for one half, and NBA rules were followed for the other half.
In 1973, Julius Erving signed with the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks. He played in two exhibition games for Atlanta against ABA teams before a court ruled that he had to honor his ABA contract and return to the Virginia Squires.
Rick Barry is the only player who led both the ABA and NBA in scoring.
The settlement that brought four ABA teams into the NBA in 1976 included payments to the two ABA teams (Kentucky and St. Louis) that were excluded. Kentucky owner John Y. Brown received $3 million for folding his franchise. Brown later bought the NBA’s Buffalo Braves, then traded that franchise for the Boston Celtics. The three owners of the Spirits received $2.2 million, plus a seventh of the television revenue from each of the four ABA teams entering the NBA—in perpetuity. Thus, they still receive the equivalent of four-sevenths of one share of the NBA’s television contract, which amounts to millions of dollars annually.
Only three ABA franchises—Denver, Indiana, and Kentucky—finished where they started.
