Why did they eliminate the ABA in basketball if it still exists in Basseball?
I’m not sure what you are asking, but are you wondering why there is no “farm” system in basketball? If so, it’s most likely because of NBA teams’ ability to draft players from college. Yes, I know there is baseball in college too, but the levels of play between college ball and the bigs in baseball is much different than in basketball.
I’m not sure of the comparison that you’re drawing is valid- are you comparing the ABA with the AL in baseball? They really have no similarities other than beginning with “American”.
I wish that the ABA had taken over the NBA instead of the other way around. Then we’d probably be watching teams of 'fro sporting players finger-rolling baskets on the way to a 110+ point game, instead of the miserable Knicks/Heat defensive brawls we have now.
The CBA (Continental Basketball Association) is the closest thing to a basketball farm system in the states. It is currently owned by ex-NBA player Isiah Thomas.
The European leagues also act as a development pool for the NBA these days.
I didn’t make it clear in my last post- The ABA was NOT a farm team. It was a competing league, like the USFL to the NFL.
The American Basketball league was started in the 1970’s as a league existing in competition to the NBA. It was a sort of basketball version of the AFL, and to make itself viable, introduced some innovations to give people a reason to watch it(the multi-colored ball and the three point line, which was later adopted by the NBA). No one did, and the first few years were tough. At the time, the NBA had a sort of honor system against drafting players who hadn’t completed college, and the ABA started drafting younger players, an interesting ploy (the USFL tried in the 1980’s but bad business decisions killed them not much later). Darryl Dawkins (AKA Chocolate Thunder) and Julius Erving (Doctor J.), both drafted before their college graduation (Dawkins straight from H.S.) brought some star potential to the rival league, but few established NBA players wanted to jump ship. One thing the league DID have going for it was to put franchises into cities where they wouldn’t compete with the NBA (Indianapolis, Richmond, Long Island, etc.). Still, the ABA was largely a small market league, and lacked the finances to compete with the NBA. The ABA folded after 6 seasons and four teams (Indiana Pacers, Denver Nuggets, Dallas Mavericks, and San Antonio Spurs) were absorbed into the NBA.
Now, the ABA was NOT an NBA farm system. It was a competing Major League. Basketball (like football) uses the NCAA as it’s development system, and so has little use for a farm system, unlike hockey and baseball, which don’t get much of their talent from colleges, and do have well developed farm systems. There ARE two solvent minor basketball leagues, the United States Basketball League(USBL) and the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) but neither of these leagues is attempting to compete on a major league level like did the ABA. In fact, since the NBA gets so much of its talent from the NCAA, you see very little players from the USBL or CBA who play in the NBA. Adrian Griffin from Boston being a notable exception.
As to any similarities that can be drawn to other sports leagues, baseball’s American League is not one. The AL became a viable second league at the turn of the century by showing it’s strength in the World Series. However, starting with the election of baseball’s first commisioner (Kennesaw Mountain Landis in 1920) the two leagues effectively became a single entity. Last year, the offices of AL president and NL president were abolished and their few remaining responsibilites absorbed by the Commisioner’s office, making in law what had existed in fact for 80 years anyways. Major League Baseball is a single “league” and you should think of the NL and AL as seperate conferences. Many predict that full interleague play and the end of the DH (the last vestiges of “seperate-leagueness” left) is soon to come.
The best analogy for the ABA would be the World Hockey Association (WHA) which began around the same time, lasted about as long, had many of the same characteristics and ended the same way (with 4 teams, Quebec, Edmonton, Hartford, and Winnipeg, entering the NHL). Or perhaps the 1940’s All-America Football Conference (AAFC)(the Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, and an earlier Baltimore Colts (not the same as the later team) joined the NFL when THAT league folded.) There are currently no leagues that attempt to compete with the “four bigs” (NHL, NBA, MLB, NFL). The last, the USFL, was working out pretty well until they tried to sue the NFL in a disaterous anti-trust suit. The USFL won, but the jury awarded them a settlement of $1.00 (tripled to $3.00 as a result of standard anti-trust legislation). They folded before the start of their 4th season. (for the record, the WLAF, now NFL-Europe, was built by the NFL to be a farm system, not as a competing league). However, another possible major football league looms on the horizon, with Vince McMahon (of WWF fame) anouncing the creation of the XFL, to begin play in 2001.
ABA squads haven’t been as successful in joining their NBA brethren as the WHA squads were in the NHL and the AFL teams in the NFL.
Only ABA team has ever won an NBA championship, San Antonio, and Indiana is the only other one to make it to the finals.
Edmonton has won several Stanley Cups and Colorado (originally Quebec, a WHA team) has won one Cup.
Of course, the AFL has been fairly successful and of the original eight AFL teams, all have been to the Super Bowl and four of them have won it (Denver, New York, Kansas City, and Oakland). Miami was an AFL expansion team.
The ABA mistimed pro basketball’s popularity, which was the late '80s and early '90s. In the late '60s and early '70s, there were neither the television options nor the fan base to support another pro league. The NBA was well below MLB and the NFL in popularity at the time of the ABA’s inception.
Now that the NBA has expanded to 29 teams, most markets that want pro basketball are satisfied. And some places like Los Angeles, get two teams whether or not the people there want that.
I apologize in advance to any Clipper fans on this board.
I’m still waiting.
jayron 32 you forgot another team: The New Jersey Nets.
It was a powerhouse in the ABA, with Dr J and all. But when it became an NBA team, it had to give up Dr J in order to pay for franchise fees. The team, although talented through the years, was never the same. You may diagnose the Nets’ and their fans’ plight “The Dr. J Curse”. I ought to know: I’m one of them.
I don’t believe that the Mavericks were ever an ABA team.
This is a pretty good page about the ABA. Gotta love the fro.
I’ve got a couple of comments, clarifications and corrections to make.
The ABA did not start in the 1970’s, it was started in the late 1960’s, having its first season in 1967-1968. Further, the ABA tried to succeed in big cities that already had NBA teams, particularly NY and LA, but the NY team wound up on Long Island and the LA team in Salt Lake City, after failing to make it in the big cities.
Specifically about the NY Nets, upon joining the NBA they were forced to pay a huge amount of money to the NBA’s NY Knicks team for violating the Knicks’ territorial rights to New York. The Nets were forced to sell the rights to Julius Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers in order to raise the cash to join the NBA.
I don’t think it is fair to say that the ABA was too early, because without the ABA the NBA might have died before its 1980’s rise. The influx of great players from the ABA, (ie Erving, Moses Malone, George Gervin, Artis Gilmore, Dan Issel, Maurice Lucas) helped the NBA survive. Check out the NBA AllStar game rosters from about 1977-1982 and see how many former ABA players joined the NBA and became instant all stars. Without that infusion of talented new blood the NBA might not have survived. Also, immediately upon joining the NBA, both the Denver Nuggets and San Antonio Spurs won NBA Division championships, so it isn’t fair to say that they the former ABA teams didn’t have success upon joining the NBA.
Finally, my favorite bit of ABA trivia concerns the owners of the former ABA St. Louis team. In the merger talks with the NBA, which were actually settlements talks concerning the ABA v. NBA antitrust lawsuit, the St. Louis owners decided that that didn’t want to pay up to join the NBA and would release their claim to St. Louis’s rights in exchange for a tiny percentage of the NBA’s future TV contract revenues, IN PERPETUITY! Talk about a wise manuever, as they are now multi-multi millionaires without having to lift a finger. Source: “Loose Balls” by Terry Pluto.