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American Basketball League (1961–1962)

For other uses, see American Basketball League.

The American Basketball League played one full season, 1961–1962, and approximately one-third of the next season until the league folded on December 31, 1962. The ABL was the first basketball league to have a three-point field goal for shots attempted from longer distance. Other rules that set the league apart from the National Basketball Association (NBA) were a 30-second shooting clock, as opposed to 24, and a wider free throw lane of 18 feet instead of the NBA's then-standard 12; the NBA would later expand their free throw lane to 16 feet (a couple of feet shorter than the ABL's free throw lane) a few years later in 1964, partially as a means of preventing the dominance of center play there, which is still in use as that to this day.

American Basketball League
SportBasketball
Founded1961
Ceased1962
No. of teams8
CountryUnited States
Last
champion(s)		Kansas City Steers

Formation

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The league was formed when Harlem Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein was not awarded the Los Angeles National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise he felt he had been promised in return for his years of supporting the NBA with doubleheader games featuring his highly popular Trotters.

When Minneapolis Lakers owner Bob Short was permitted to move the Lakers to Los Angeles, Saperstein reacted by convincing National Alliance of Basketball Leagues (NABL) team owner Paul Cohen (Tuck Tapers) and Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) National Champion Cleveland Pipers owner George Steinbrenner to take the top NABL and AAU teams and players and form a rival league.

Saperstein had been secretly planning the new league since 1959 but it is unclear whether he would have abandoned these plans had he been granted the NBA franchise.[1] In reality, Saperstein and Cohen each secretly made arrangements with local promoters in the other cities to finance those teams so there would be an eight-team league. The eight teams would be separated into two divisions: the East Division (originally hosting the Chicago Majors, Cleveland Pipers, Pittsburgh Rens, and Washington Tapers) and the West Division (hosting the Hawaii Chiefs, Kansas City Steers, Los Angeles Jets, and San Francisco Saints).[2]

Saperstein placed the Los Angeles Jets to take on the transplanted Lakers. He got Bill Sharman as coach and signed former NBA players Larry Friend and George Yardley to give the team instant credibility. The idea backfired; the Jets did not last the season.

George Steinbrenner

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In Cleveland, Steinbrenner's coach was John McLendon, who became the first African-American coach of a major pro basketball team. He was hired by Pipers' general manager, Mike Cleary, later the Executive Director of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. McLendon had several of his star players from Tennessee State such as John Barnhill and Ben Warley, plus several former Akron Wingfoots, such as Johnny Cox and Jimmy Darrow, who had won the AAU National Championship the year before. In a game against the Hawaii Chiefs, Steinbrenner sold player Grady McCollum to the Chiefs at halftime.[3] McLendon chafed at Steinbrenner's interference and quit in midseason, following the team's return from playing in Hawaii. Steinbrenner immediately named Sharman, from the recently defunct Jets, as his coach, and the Pipers went on to win the only ABL title in the league's brief history.

Jerry Lucas

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Steinbrenner signed All-American Jerry Lucas to a contract worth $40,000.[4] With the Lucas signing, Steinbrenner had a secret deal with NBA commissioner Maurice Podoloff. The Pipers would merge with the Kansas City Steers and join the NBA. A schedule was printed for the 1963–64 NBA season with the Pipers playing the New York Knicks in the first game.[4] The gambit worked, but the ABL sued to block the move, and as a result Steinbrenner had a team and no league. Instead of returning to the ABL, Steinbrenner folded his tent. This chicanery masked a series of other ABL moves.[ambiguous]

Relocation

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The Hawaii Chiefs drew well, but other teams felt the cost of air travel was prohibitive, resulting in scheduling that saw the Eastern teams playing all of their games in Hawaii within a 5-6 day period and vice versa. After that first season, the Chiefs relocated to Long Beach, California. The San Francisco Saints escaped head-to-head competition with the newly relocated San Francisco Warriors by heading to Oakland. Paul Cohen, who secretly owned the Pittsburgh team as well as officially owning the Tapers, moved the Tapers again from New York, where they had been an NABL powerhouse for years, to Philadelphia, where he hoped to fill the void of the move of the Warriors (with Wilt Chamberlain) from Philadelphia to San Francisco.

The radical changes, combined with uneven attendance (although some teams, such as the Kansas City Steers, drew well), and no fresh capital from new owners, caused Saperstein and Cohen to decide to throw in the towel with the close of 1962 on December 31. The league that pioneered the three-point shot and the wider foul line (both eventually adopted by the rest of the basketball world) was gone. After the ABL folded, Steinbrenner had $125,000 in debts and personal losses of $2 million.[5]

Teams

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Champions

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Year | Winner | Result | Runner-up

Notable players

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List of ABL players:

Drafts

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During the new ABL's existence, Abe Saperstein and the league would compete with the NBA by creating their own draft system against the NBA draft system of that era in time. They would only have two whole ABL drafts to work with during their existence before prematurely shutting down the league in 1962.

1961 ABL draft

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The inaugural ABL draft took place at Chicago, Illinois on March 19, 1961, over a week before the 1961 NBA draft began. The ABL proved to be a helpful alternative for some players that had been implicated in the 1961 NCAA University Division men's basketball gambling scandal (as well as the CCNY point-shaving scandal in the case of Bill Spivey), as a select few players like Tony Jackson and Connie Hawkins (who would not be drafted there, but would sign up with the ABL following this draft) would manage to see professional playing time they otherwise wouldn't have due to their bans from the NBA at the time. Outside of those players, however, the ABL would see scant success from this year’s draft with the players they got, as a vast majority of players would sign with the NBA instead if they weren't banned from that league already. Outside of that, only the territorial selections for this year (which every team got two of this year) were officially recorded for each team. While every team got enough picks to showcase entire, proper teams, no known round records were officially held during that period of time, though it was known that Rafer Johnson was drafted in what could technically be considered the first round of that draft (even though he's officially considered to be a territorial pick) by the Los Angeles Jets and he would go into the 1956 & 1960 Summer Olympics for the decathlon.[6]

Territorial Picks
Chicago Majors
Cleveland Pipers
Hawaii Chiefs
Kansas City Steers
Los Angeles Jets
Pittsburgh Rens
San Francisco Saints
Washington Tapers
Additional Selections
Chicago Majors
Cleveland Pipers
Hawaii Chiefs
Kansas City Steers
Los Angeles Jets
Pittsburgh Rens
San Francisco Saints
Washington Tapers

1962 ABL draft

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The second ABL draft took place at Chicago, Illinois on March 25, 1962, this time being two days before the NBA completed their draft. It would also prove to be their final draft in general due to a combination of a failure to persuade top-tier players to join the competing ABL instead of the NBA, financial struggles with the ABL in general, and the notion that one of their teams intended on leaving the ABL to join the NBA instead, which showcased greater instability in mind (especially with a few of the ABL's teams already moving elsewhere following their first season's completion and the Los Angeles Jets later folding before the upcoming season began). Much like last year's draft, each team had two territorial draft picks to select players with, though the Long Beach Chiefs (who were still named the Hawaii Chiefs at the time) could not find any suitable players that fit the territorial distinction this time around, while the Kansas City Steers and Oakland Oaks (known as the San Francisco Saints at the time) could only get one territorial selection at hand. However, unlike last year's draft, which held no known records of rounds for each team in the draft, they did keep record of at least the first round before not keeping record of any other rounds afterward (including the first names of at least two players selected), though there was a known record for Cornell Green going to what could be considered the second round by the Hawaii Chiefs despite him later joining the NFL for the Dallas Cowboys instead. As such, excluding territorial selections, the #1 pick of that year's draft in the ABL would become UCLA's John Green by the Los Angeles Jets, who would later fold operations before their upcoming season began alongside the Cleveland Pipers franchise, with Cleveland folding following their failed attempt to transfer into the NBA.[7]

Territorial Picks
Chicago Majors
Cleveland Pipers
Hawaii Chiefs
  • No players that could be considered eligible were selected there.
Kansas City Steers
Los Angeles Jets
New York Tapers
Pittsburgh Rens
San Francisco Saints
First Round
Round Pick Player Pos. Nationality Team College
1 1 John Green G   United States Los Angeles Jets UCLA (Sr.)
1 2 Chris Appel G   United States Hawaii Chiefs USC (Sr.)
1 3 Bobby Rascoe G/F   United States New York Tapers Western Kentucky (Sr.)
1 4 Don Nelson SF   United States Chicago Majors Iowa (Sr.)
1 5 Paul Hogue C   United States San Francisco Saints Cincinnati (Sr.)
1 6 Garry Roggenburk SF   United States Pittsburgh Rens Dayton (Sr.)
1 7 Terry Dischinger G/F   United States Cleveland Pipers Purdue (Sr.)
1 8 John Windsor PF   United States Kansas City Steers Stanford (Sr.)
Additional Rounds
Chicago Majors
Cleveland Pipers
Hawaii Chiefs
Kansas City Steers
Los Angeles Jets
New York Tapers
Pittsburgh Rens
San Francisco Saints

Rebirth

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The Philadelphia Tapers, Kansas City Steers, Hawaii Chiefs, Cleveland Pipers, and the Los Angeles Jets eventually returned to their NABL roots, where they continue as AAU Elite teams.

References

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  1. ^ Nelson 2013, p. 17.
  2. ^ Nelson 2013, p. 2.
  3. ^ Madden 2010, p. 39.
  4. ^ a b Madden 2010, p. 42.
  5. ^ Madden 2010, p. 43.
  6. ^ Bradley 2013, pp. 68–73.
  7. ^ Bradley 2013, pp. 78–82.

Bibliography

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  • Bradley, Robert D. (2013). The Basketball Draft Fact Book: A History of Professional Basketball's College Drafts. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810890695.
  • Madden, Bill (2010). Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball. New York: Harper Collins Publishing. ISBN 978-0-06-169031-0.
  • Nelson, Murry R. (2013). Abe Saperstein and the American Basketball League, 1960-1963: The Upstarts Who Shot for Three and Lost to the NBA. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-7244-4.
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