I spent Wednesday evening at a business dinner where the conversation flowed and 3 ½ hours passed before we headed back to our vehicles.
Are some of you asking yourselves, “Who could endure a 3 ½ hour dinner with Chip Davenport?”
I don’t blame you. Many folks present had plenty to say Wednesday evening, though, so it wasn’t a Davenport dissertation.
The American Basketball Association (ABA) was one of our topics of discussion, but only three of us at the table knew of the league that eventually merged with the NBA in the summer of 1976.
I segued the group toward this topic when one of the guests talked about growing up in Omaha and seeing the (now Sacramento) Kings host several home games there, splitting time with Kemper Arena in Kansas City.
This mid 1970s venue hosting NBA arrangement made me mention the ABA, another 1970s basketball memory. It was the mention of the ABA that brought a confused look among several faces in the group.
“Hold on,” one guest said. “I’m trying to figure out what the ABA is.”
Boy, did I suddenly feel old, and awkward for a split second.
When you’re the oldest person at the table, the last thing you want to do is make a dated reference requiring you to get your audience up to speed.
Almost all of us were professional basketball fans, but five of the eight folks seated were born after the 1976 merger, and since I was the oldest at the table, I brought everyone up to speed. I got us into it. I was getting us out of it.
They didn’t want to change the topic, though. They just wanted to know what in hell the ABA was.
Thank Heaven the ABA was ahead of its time, featuring a product on the court like what younger NBA fans have enjoyed during recent decades.
I briefly explained what the ABA was – a league formed for nine seasons (fall 1967 – spring 1976) whose collective intention was to merge with the NBA from its inception – before noting what four teams merged with the NBA, and how talented its players were.
We punctuated the discussion noting much of what these younger people have seen and enjoyed in the NBA even when they started following it (in the late 1980s and early 1990s) came to the league courtesy of the ABA.
For those of you who don’t know some of the ABA’s contributions to NBA play, these include the zone defense, the slam dunk contest, defensive presses and traps, drafting college underclassmen, and an overall faster pace of play.
Proof of the collective ABA talent being almost equal to the NBA furthermore making an immediate impact, were the two finalists in the 1976-77 season following the merger: the champion Portland Trail Blazers and the runner-up Philadelphia 76-ers.
Those points were where we left the topic before moving on, and I was relieved that my outdated reference did not create a lull in the conversation. Instead, the younger team members were curious, thank Heaven.
For those of you whose frame of reference doesn’t go back almost fifty years, I’ll share more about the ABA’s immediate impact on the NBA’s first season following the summer merger.
Philly had Julius “Dr. J” Erving, George McGinnis (not from the merger, but signed in 1975 away from the Indiana Pacers when they were in the ABA) and shot-blocking center Caldwell Jones in their starting lineup.
The Blazers had Maurice “The Enforcer” Lucas, and point guard Dave Twardzik,
Half the players on the court made their bones in the ABA.
The Sixers finished 50-32, picking up four wins from their previous season, unseated the defending champs, the Boston Celtics, in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
The Blazers, moved from a regular season record of 37-45 the prior season to 49-33, four game behind the Lakers in the Pacific division. It must be noted, oft-injured Bill Walton was healthy the entire season, but the ABA adds at point guard and power forward made immediate contributions.
The Blazers sent the Lakers home in the Western Conference finals to reach, and win in turn, the NBA finals.
Three of the four teams merging from the ABA were competitive, and in fact very good right away.
The Denver Nuggets finished 50-32 to capture the Midwest Division. The San Antonio Spurs earned a playoff spot in a very rugged Central Division with a 44-38 showing. These two teams were among the five best shooting teams in the league, and the top two scoring squads (San Antonio 115 points per game, Denver 112.6 ppg).
There were, in fact, five teams who averaged at least 110 points per contest. No NBA team in the prior season this mark. This was still prior to the NBA’s addition of the 3-point arc.
The Indiana Pacers - joined Denver in the Midwest Division finishing 36-46 while giving some of the league’s best teams fits throughout their initial NBA campaign. One of their biggest early wins was a 112-109 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, who were off to a 16-4 start in early December 1976. before traveling to Market Square Arena to face the Pacers.
The Pacers’ Darnell “Dr. Dunk” Hillman was one of the NBA’s flashiest players in the slam dunk contest that was pre-recorded and shown at halftime as it progressed like a tournament throughout the year.
The Pacers’ 6’4” guard Don Buse, who led the ABA in steals (a remarkable 4.1 per game) and assists (8.2) in his final ABA season, had no problem transitioning the senior league finishing as the league leader in both categories (3.5, and 8.5, respectively).
Hall-of-Famer Moses Malone, long before his dominating tenure with the Philadelphia 76ers, helped the Houston Rockets in his first full season (he left the ABA one season before the merger) move from 40 wins to 49 wins in 1976-77.
Artis Gilmore, a great 7’2” center with an even greater afro, was a Kentucky Colonel in the ABA before the Chicago Bulls picked him up with the number-one pick in the dispersal draft. The Bulls finished he previous campaign with a league worst record of 24-58 among 18 premerger NBA teams.
Gilmore and some solid draft picks added 16 wins to the Chicago’s post-merger campaign, and they were the only team with a defensive scoring average below 100 points. They were the league’s poorest shooting team pre-Gilmore, hitting 41.4% of their shots in ’75-’76.
The New York (now Brooklyn) Nets had the dubious distinction of going from first to worst. The ABA champs in the junior league’s final season went from 55-29 to an abysmal league-worst 22-60 in their inaugural NBA campaign.
The Nets barely had the wherewithal to cover the expenses associated with the merger and were consequently forced to sell Erving to the 76ers. They also dressed 18 different players that season resulting from injuries and depleted talent.
The Nuggets’ 2023 NBA Finals appearance meant they were the final team among the four merging teams to reach the championship series. They made the best of their single opportunity, of course, taking the trophy home last summer.
I’m still a little less than eight months away from my “get off my lawn” decade, and I dodged a bullet from arriving there a few months too early.