can be viable, even if the league isn’t, because a good draw that is well run is welcome to climb the professional basketball ladder of success.
This is what is fueling more than 140 professional minor league and independent basketball clubs that are claiming to be operating in North America in 2006-2007.
That, of course, is a qualified and very fragile number. Many clubs fall by the wayside because they are run by ‘tall hat, no cattle” owners who don’t have the deep pockets to sustain a franchise through the turbulence of its first five years of operation.
“You have to have deep pockets,” urged Chris Daleo, coach of the CBA Minot Skyrockets. “You have to be able to run it right…That strengthens your league. Intentions may be good on the part of some of these owners, but if you don’t have the money, it hurts minor league basketball. It hurts markets when they fold mid-season.
The Skyrockets are finding that the fans of Minot, North Dakota still have long memories of being burned by basketball.
There was the Snowbears, an IBA team which operated in the 1996-1997 season, and again in the 2000-2001 season. Then there was the Minot City Freeze, a short-lived ABA club in 2004.
‘Scorched earth’ markets develop, where frequent, often inept attempts at running a sports business have made it difficult, if not impossible, for even the best club to succeed behind them.
“[T]here may be an owner in Lexington and our league wants to start a minor league team there,” says Dulio. “But because an ABA was there prior to our team that hurts the integrity of another league that wants to do things legitimately.”
Newman says that the ABA never had a club in Lexington and that people in glass houses should not cast stones.
“His league doesn't know the meaning of ‘legitimately,’ and I am surprised he can even spell the word,” said Newman.
Such has been the tone and tenor of the freewheeling world of professional basketball outside of the NBA. The rancor comes from inter-league poaching, and sheer collision of very similar business models drawing on the limited market of potential independent basketball owners.
Dulio is not alone, though, in his observations of the wake left by some ABA owners.
These are businessmen who have been highly successful in whatever walk of life has given them the capital to start a basketball club.
The skills that brought them to success often don’t apply to the managerial skills and business forecasting ability needed in indy league professional sports, which is a vastly different world.
Failure to screen out potential failures that damage basketball’s reputation in a market poses the greatest danger to the healthy growth of the sport.
“If a league is legitimate in their intention to put owners in a situation where they can make money and if the product is entertaining, then great,” says Dulio, “but if they put owners in dangerous financial situations then they should not exist.”
Some leagues, like the IBL and the USBL, play summer ball, when the spring thaw releases talent from the frozen streams of the winter leagues, and the international hoops players trickle back to the United States.
Of all leagues, the USBL has been one of the more stable, and prosperous, because it knows what it does well, and sticks to it. With a summer season, the majority of its players are being groomed for international, CBA and D-league bids in the fall/winter.
There have been several other leagues that have announced operation but...
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