American Basketball Association Totally Explained

Everything about The American Basketball Association totally explained

The American Basketball Association (ABA) was a professional basketball league founded in 1967, and eventually merged, in part, with the National Basketball Association (NBA).

League history

The original ABA was founded in 1967, competing with the well-established National Basketball Association, until reaching an agreement of merger in 1976. Ultimately, four ABA teams were absorbed into the older league: the New York Nets, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers and San Antonio Spurs. Two other clubs, the Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis were disbanded upon the merger. A third, the Virginia Squires, had folded less than a month earlier, missing out on the opportunities that a merger might have provided.
   The ABA distinguished itself from its older counterpart with a more wide-open, flashy style of offensive play, as well as differences in rules (a 30-second shot clock–as opposed to the NBA's 24-second clock–and use of a three-point field goal arc). Also, the ABA used a colorful red, white and blue ball, instead of the NBA's traditional orange ball. The freewheeling style of the ABA eventually caught on with fans, but the lack of a national television contract and protracted financial losses would spell doom for the ABA as an independent circuit. In 1976 (its last year of existence), the ABA pioneered the now-popular slam dunk contest at its all-star game in Denver.
   Perhaps the most significant long-term contribution of the ABA to professional basketball was to tap into markets in the southeast that had been collegiate basketball hotbeds (including North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, and Florida). The NBA was focused on the urban areas of the industrial northeast and midwest and showed no interest in placing a team south of Washington, DC.
   NBA great George Mikan was the first commissioner of the ABA, where he introduced both the 3-point line and the league's trademark red, white and blue basketball. Dave DeBusschere, one of the stars of the New York Knicks championship teams, moved from his job as Vice President and GM of the ABA's New York Nets in 1975 to become the last commissioner of the ABA and facilitate the merger of the four ABA teams into the NBA.

List of ABA teams

List of ABA championships

Year	Winner	Finals Loser	Games	Playoffs MVP
1967-1968	Pittsburgh Pipers	New Orleans Buccaneers	4-3	Connie Hawkins C, Pittsburgh
1968-1969	Oakland Oaks	Indiana Pacers	4-1	Warren Jabali G, Oakland
1969-1970	Indiana Pacers	Los Angeles Stars	4-2	Roger Brown F/G, Indiana
1970-1971	Utah Stars	Kentucky Colonels	4-2	Zelmo Beaty C, Utah
1971-1972	Indiana Pacers	New York Nets	4-2	Freddie Lewis G, Indiana
1972-1973	Indiana Pacers	Kentucky Colonels	4-3	George McGinnis F/C, Indiana
1973-1974	New York Nets	Utah Stars	4-1	Julius Erving F, New York
1974-1975	Kentucky Colonels	Indiana Pacers	4-1	Artis Gilmore C, Kentucky
1975-1976	New York Nets	Denver Nuggets	4-2	Julius Erving F, New York

Prominent players of the ABA

Semi-Pro
The 2008 film Semi-Pro is set in 1976, during the league's last days. At a meeting of ABA owners, the commissioner states that only four teams will be merged, and they vote that the teams that place in the top four will be those four. Fictional owner Jackie Moon rallies his Flint Tropics team to move to fourth place (in reality, the placement of teams had nothing to do with which four teams went to the NBA, instead, those teams were determined by various business-related factors).
Succession
In 1999, a new league calling itself the ABA 2000 was established. The new league uses the same red, white and blue basketball as the old ABA, but unlike the original ABA, it doesn't feature players of the same caliber as the NBA, nor does it play games in major arenas nor on television as the original ABA did.

Further Information
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