have either crashed on the launching pad or are just getting under way. The WBL, ANBL, and the new Universal Basketball League (UBL) all have to work hard to find viable markets in the crowded, often burned, North American landscape for professional hoops.
Plethora of Players?
What fuels the massive expansion of these basketball leagues is a plentiful and inexpensive supply of players who still want to prove that they’ve got game. There are those looking to extend their careers, and those whose academic grades, temperament, physical size, or level of ability shuttered the doors to NBA careers.
Most experts in the game say that there are enough post-educational athletes to go around.
“There are a lot of very good basketball players and I think the number of leagues and number of teams give them the opportunities to showcase themselves,” said Chris Alpert, Vice President of Basketball Operations & Player Personnel for the NBA Development League. “There is a lot of good basketball and a lot of good leagues because there are a lot of good players.”
“We don't suffer in finding talented players,” agrees the IBL’s Dulio. “It's ridiculous how large the talent pool is. You've got people in the big cities that are phenomenal that simply just didn't get the opportunity or didn't want to play in the NBA."
How many players turn down the NBA?
Talent levels in all other sports are stratified by the class of the league in which they play. The AHL in hockey is Triple-A, the top level, supported by the NHL. The ECHL signs agreements with the NHL and the AHL to feed players from the AA.
There is good, and there is good. The pool for exceptional, eye-catching basketball players may be a little thinner than leagues like to let on.
Dayshawn Wright (See: Do the Wright Thing, SZ. 10.17.06) generated a loud and very public spat between the ABA and the CBA, or more correctly, between Wright’s agent, Alex Yam, who wanted him in the CBA, and the ABA’s Newman, who pointed out that league contracts can’t be superseded by whether a club participates in the USA Basketball arbitration system.
Yam feels that the CBA is a far superior league to the ABA.
“After numerous conversations with NBA scouts and personnel [I believe that] the CBA has much more credibility than the ABA,” said Yam, who also helped former Syracuse guard Billy Edelin land a job playing overseas. “Keep in mind the ABA canceled over 400 games last year alone. Why would a player with Dayshawn’s potential and skill level want to go to such an unstable league?”
Hogwash, Newman says.
“The CBA has the same salary cap as us, $120,000,” he said. “Fifty percent of the league has folded. Teams in the ABA do not fold. I kick them out if they don’t pay their bills or don’t show up for games.”
Top talent collisions appear inevitable, not only between the log-jam of leagues here, but with the international leagues that also draw heavily upon US talent not drafted by the NBA. Internation leagues pay better, but domestic leagues offer both play closer to home and the opportunity for scouts to catch them in action more frequently than then might in, say, Turkey.
The Roadmap Ahead
There are two roadmaps to the future of minor league basketball. The ABA is the leader in the sport in North America in the fall/winter season, both by its sheer size, and its ability to attract continued investors. They are working on a highly regional, ‘pro-NCAA’ model of the game.
They are able to dominate the landscape because the NBA league office has had to move slowly to coax the owners and GMs into the wisdom of developmental basketball. Pat Riley is not alone in his guarded view of the D-League. The major league does not take a leadership role in building and preserving the game at the pro regional level because it has spent decades leaving regional hoops to the NCAA.
Yet there is a definite call for pro basketball in suburban, medium, and small markets.
“There are towns that have it They like it. They embrace it,” says Daleo who has seen small town pro basketball at its best. “They enjoy being close to the action.”
There is a pace, perhaps a power, driven by the desire to get another shot to shine, that makes the professional regional basketball club a bit more interesting than more uneven amateur college clubs that play in many markets in North America. A night in the ABA or IBL may not compare to a game at Duke or Indiana, but it surpasses many college experiences.
There are those who think Newman is nuts for expanding as rapidly as he has pushed the ABA this season. It is a high-risk gamble that the league can dominate so much territory in North America that it will tower over its competitors.
The CBA, which has been bankrupted once in the young 21st century, and battered many times in less than half a decade, finds itself increasingly playing the club development game on the ABA’s level, hastily pulling together teams to retain market share. Ricardo Richardson, the former EVP for Operations of the ABA, was even called in this season as a consultant, suggesting that you need to join ‘em if you can’t beat ‘em.
If the ABA stablizes at 25-30 clubs, down from its pre-season 52, and can hold on to at least 30 into the next few years, the CBA and the other leagues will be playing the game from a tough position to catch-up. If the NBA moves past the D-League to put its player development pool into motion at the lower levels, the ABA, at NBA-equivalent size, would be able to develop players on the 1-to-1 club ratio that the NBA would require.
NCAA Threat
The explosion of independent pro basketball is really no threat to the dominance of amateur college athletics, but, in some markets, it has been perceived that way.
The University of Miami (FLA) nixed Hardaway's Miami Majesty at the 11th hour this season. The University of New Mexico starved out the IBL New Mexico Slam in 2001 by making exclusive deals with the limited market of sports-focused advertisers and sponsors.
Many of the pro clubs play in division II markets, or markets with lesser college followings.
Still, as their drawing power grows overall, the multi-billion dollar machine that is NCAA basketball is not about to go gently into the night.
Some in basketball argue their organizations may not need to catch up. The IBL and USBL share the spring/summer, staying out of the main fray, and continue to develop in ways that might help the survivors of the fall/winter leagues build players and keep them in North America.
At some point though, scale, stability and peaceful evolution will have to emerge out of the current chaos to sustain the sport. The leagues will have to stop sniping at each other and pull together both financially and politically, or they will consume each other and kill off basketball at this level, perhaps permanently.
Overall, the expansion of pro basketball’s live venues from Canada to Mexico may be showing severe growing pains, but it is a positive, as Joe Newman summarizes best:
“The objective of these leagues, other than the NBA, is to bring exciting, high-quality professional basketball to fans at affordable prices, and pro basketball leagues do that. Another objective is to give good players a place to play and extend their careers. It also provides coaching opportunities, referee opportunities, and of course, many staff and management employment opportunities. How can that not be good?”
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