Look for more Russians in minor league sports. No, not on the court or the ice or the field, but in the front office. After all, who knows Stalinism better than the Russians? The minor leagues of basketball, of course.

Right now, there is a burning need for the highly secretive bureaucrats of KGB days gone by in the league offices of the IBL, CBA and the ABA-2000. Applications can be sent via their P.R. people.

When MLN goes poking its nose around the merger rumors swirling around the basketball leagues, the bureaucracies running these organizations clam up tighter than Brezhnev's press agent after a long weekend with Miss Moscow at the dacha on the coast.

Champions of your right to know, we here at MLN have gone toe-to-toe with the guys in the league offices, trying to get the low-down on basketball this fall. Here is what we know.

From the Guy in the Trenchcoat Behind
the Third Potted Plant to the Left...

Unnamed sources will confirm that there are continuing negotiations with the NBA, the IBL, the CBA. There are unconfirmed reports that the ABA-2000 has also seen the writing on the wall and is in some peripheral discussion of their future.

All of the leagues have a need to talk merger. The CBA waits for the rest of its funds from Isiah Thomas, the almost-savior of the league who kept it out of the receiver's hands last season. It has a few self-reliant teams, but not enough to go the distance if the cash tide does not come in.

The IBL could not sustain its league-owned San Diego franchise. Like the Spanish dictator General Franco, who remained officially "alive" months after his death, the IBL's official line is that the StingRays may come back. Unless they pull the office out of mothballs this week in San Diego, don't hold your breath.

Cal Ripken, Jr. pulled the plug on full-ownership of the Baltimore Bayrunners at the end of the summer, throwing that team's future into question, and bringing the IBL's league down to a meager six teams.

Word is that Baltimore will be fine, somehow, most likely through support of the IBL league office which is also in Baltimore, until owners can be found. There is a rumor that an owner for Baltimore is waiting in the wings as well. We can't confirm that of course because, according to the IBL, none of this is really happening.

The ABA 2000? Well, hey, they don't even think they're a minor league. Of course, someone might tell them that grabbing up players " that notch below" the NBA makes you a minor league. But Clay, the ABA-2000 press agent (for the whole league) is a good guy, albeit pretty new to the minor league sports world. We'll cut him some slack.

He has his work cut out for him. With teams like the ill-fated "Stars" of L.A. (How many times has that franchise name graced organizations in L.A. which have failed miserably?) who have to skim off the dregs of basketball fan leftovers from the lowly NBA Clippers, the ABA-2000 is going to be in need of viable franchises to augment the three to four that will evolve out of their current arrangement of eight teams.

"Can't We All Just Get Along?"

All of the leagues will need to work on a more unified strategy and division of the second and third tier talent that is available today. The drafts these teams have held are a smoke show. Without a meaningful minor league system, you can say that you've drafted whomever you like. Their agent isn't calling you unless you've got the jack and the market to make their man look promising to the teams in the Bigs.

No News Is Not The Only News

The leagues' official sites are mum on the subject because, well, of course they CONTROL them. They don't control us, though.

One of the hallmarks of sports is that it functions under the same scrutiny of the press as do other important avenues of society and culture.

Without a free press to keep the owners, players and front-office people honest, sports would probably look like the WWF. Entertaining, but the outcomes hardly a surprise to anyone.

The difficult thing about pioneering a traditional level of journalism in a sector of the sports market more accustomed to being relegated to the sidelines of sports news coverage is that they don't take kindly to having their foibles exposed.

They don't like to discuss future plans until everything is wrapped up in a pretty pink bow and lobbed to the media that shows up like a slow-pitch softball.

The truth is out there. It's just locked behind closed doors of some very nervous men who aren't talking.

Welcome to the New Era.

We'll we're talking. Minor league sports has changed. It is no longer a way station for fallen major league management handling broken-down stadiums sporting the talents of underpaid bums.

It is a business, with market growth far greater and faster than the current growth levels of major league sports.

With that growth of interest, and money, comes some accountability.

The fans of the IBL teams which are flourishing, for example, have a right to know why they do not have a firm season start date, and why their schedule is in perpetual limbo.

The front offices of these teams would also love to get out of the mushroom school of management. They have posters and schedules to print, tickets to sell, and marketing which is dying on the vine because the league office and the junta of owners that are in control of the negotiation process for the IBL are forgetting about the public face in which they have invested so much political capital.

Likewise the CBA, which can stand behind its 50 year reputation all it wants to, has to come up with cash to keep some of its teams viable. They also have to figure out how to exist in a world where the additional salary, better travel and hotels, and bigger markets of the IBL and ABA-2000 keep several of their smaller market teams on the prowl for players.

Yoohoo! David! It's Your Legacy Calling...

Of course, all of this could be ended with a press conference from Commissioner Stern and the NBA.

Stern tried to make a deal for the CBA last year, but Mr. Thomas held out for more money, and got burned.

The NBDL too?

The Commish has suggested starting his own league. That is smoke, pure and simple. It is far, far cheaper and smarter for the NBA to work with the existing structures and bring them into a forged whole.

The problem is that these leagues, which have sprouted up over the last few years (CBA excluded), are all listening to the NBA line, and believing that they can cash in. If Stern can wrangle them all in to his system, he truly will have created a legacy to professional basketball for which he will be remembered.

New Landscape On The Moon.

Truth be known, the landscape of minor leagues in this country for basketball will not look the same in a year or two.

To be sure, certain teams in each of these leagues, like Idaho in the CBA, New Mexico and Cincinnati in the IBL, and perhaps Tampa Bay in the ABA-2000 can endure, merge, and form a powerful minor league.

Joe Stalin, Meet Joe Fan

Time, however, and the current season at hand, are not the friends of those in the deal-making process.

Unless all of the leagues get real with their public face, and start telling management, players, agents, front-office staff and, oh yes THE FANS what is going on, there is going to be a predictable amount of back-lash to last-minute apologies and extensions of schedules and annoucements of changes.

Unlike Joltin' Joe Stalin, it's Joe Fan, the guy with the Born-to-Boogie t-shirt, ducat in one hand and Bud in the other, who holds the ultimate power here.

None of these leagues are in a position to piss off Joe Fan, but they are running dangerously close to doing so.

To the presidents of the leagues in question: You know where the non-owned media is. Your PR people have the phone number. When you're ready to get real with your audience, you know who ya gonna call...

Brian Ross
Publisher
MinorLeagueNews.com

Joltin' Joe Stalin Meets Joe Fan