MAJOR BLOGS of Minor League News (MLN) - OPINION - This month, in “Hoops Hell,” (SZ 10.24.06) we ask: Are there too many leagues and teams in professional minor league and indy basketball? My take: It’s not the quantity, it’s the quality and control of pro basketball leagues that troubles me more.

All of the leagues, from the NBA on down, share a lot of blame for the haphazard roll-out of community-based professional hoops below the major league level. Instead of being a great ambassador to fans and extending the game outward from the major league level, as many other minor league sports do, basketball is a hit-or-miss proposition, with far too many misses. 

This isn't, as some NCAA types would like to believe, because they offer a superior product. They don't. Pro hoops puts together guys with generally more maturity and experience, with a dash of 'I didn't make enough 'I missed the draft' desperation, further maturity, and real-world hunger to kick the game up a big notch. 

The problems in minor and indy hoops have largely to do with the in-fighting of a chaotic league system, an unregulated free-marketplace, a gold-rush mentality for building franchises.  It is sacrificing quality, and dinging communities where half-assed operations execute poorly, and destroy, rather than build, local fan base.

And There Was A Shepherd Amongst Them

The NBA could find, as professional baseball and hockey have, that minor league clubs, which bring the sport back into the community, are great good-will ambassadors for the game. They sell it live and local in a way that NBA-TV, on its best day, cannot. Minor clubs can, as they have in baseball's super-markets, extend the base of fans who buy merchandise and turn on the fountain of profit: PAY-TV.

Sports is an entrepreneurial business, to be sure. These are independent operators. How much better, though would the sport be, overall, if the NBA took a broader view of structuring minor pro basketball comprehensively. 

They don't because the league owners are still not getting the big picture of how good quality developmental basketball affects their bottom line.  Done right, it helps you. Done wrong, it could be a disaster that even drags on the NBA.  Imagine a behemoth ABA that could, one day soon, gyrate between 120 to 90 clubs a year, and  three to five newborn leagues struggling into the limited landscape of pro hoops markets. That is a level of instability in the sport that is downright dangerous to its health and welfare.

Commissioner Stern, the best advocate for a development system in the NBA,  moves through a Lebanon-like landscape of landmines that threaten to blow up what it has taken years for him to create.

GMs and coaches like the Miami Heat’s Pat Riley speak their mind, fairly negatively, about the D-League to the media, which tells you, in the politically correct world of pro basketball, about how fractious the discussions in the back-room about the league must be. Riley’s recent comments to the Sun Sentinel on October 18, 2006 weren’t unfounded though. He wants playing time for his players being sent down. He wants it to be convenient to him and to his staff to check on their progress.  Nearby Estero, Florida was a heap more convenient than having them hundreds of miles further away at the closest open D-League franchise after the Florida Flame went into mothballs at the end of last season.

Real Marketplace for Basketball, or Fantasy Island with Nets?

‘There isn’t a marketplace for it!’ decry some basketball cognoscenti, including my good buddy Dan Hickling. In some areas of the country, I will concede that is true. If you are in Blue Devil country, or near any of the top Division I NCAA schools, it would be a huge uphill climb to get market and mind share for minor hoops.  The NBDL found that out the hard way in several markets in their early going.

What this large number of leagues has shown us, amidst a certain amount of throw-it-on-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks management, is that a lot of communities embrace and support minor and indy pro hoops. Professional basketball below the NBA level in North America is sustainable, if done right.

That, of course, is the BIIIG ‘IF.’ Like a date that turns psycho on you and locks you in the trunk of their car (I hate when that happens!), the problem is how these leagues and teams are set up and operated.

That's Egg on Your Public Face

The public face of indy basketball has been, for want of a better term, embarrassing. League commissioners, CEOs and presidents dis each other in the media like squabbling six-year olds.

The last few months have been particularly bad, in the wake of the NBA D-League taking in CBA clubs that rocked alignments throughout indy hoops. League managers and owners were possessively screaming ‘MINE’ over this team jumping ship, or that top athlete being signed away. Many of them have contacted me to vent their indignation that we have showcased their foibles. Almost all seem to believe that we treat the other guy more fairly. Hopefully our cover feature this month will demonstrate that there is plenty of good and bad news to go around equally.

TAKE NOTE: There is not one league that can sport a totally squeaky-clean record on franchise roll-outs, if they have rolled out franchises. Most of you, at one point or another, have made some serious miscues, or turned a bit of a blind eye at this management or that market when your league's membership numbers have been in crisis.  It is the nature of the beast when you try to stay alive after a third of your viable teams depart, or you are trying to expand rapidly.  There is no clear road map to success as there has been in baseball and hockey.

What is unacceptable, though, in the rapid scrambles to beat the next guy to the market, is that some leagues often resort to throwing so many willing local businessmen who think they know how to run a professional basketball club without a day of experience under the league bus.

A Bit of Applause for the Good Kid in Romper Room

The league with the absolutely most tempered record in franchise handling at this level of basketball is the United States Basketball League (USBL), which has taken very measured and practical approaches to maintaining its membership and managing growth.

Taking on the Albany Patroons for a second run in the USBL was a smart move for both organizations that might help build pragmatically on the strengths of certain markets.

My Two Shiny Lincolns Rollin' Off My Hairy Chest

As an observer of the chaos that has reigned in pro basketball at this level since 1999, and the destruction that it has done to players, coaches, and communities, I have a little constructive advice, by league.

NBA D-League :

ON THE PLUS SIDE: Kent Partridge runs one of the most professional media relations departments in minor league sports. You have great power via NBA-TV to help promote the D-League. You’ve learned your lessons from the NBDL about working cooperatively with the Players Association (PA) and the communities.  The Los Angeles Lakers took the lead and bought themselves a D-League team to have the one-to-one club relationship that D-League teams need to fully succeed.

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT:  Pat Riley is right. Playing time is everything. You can’t have one club hosting players for three teams without dividing court time too much. Multi-tiered minor league sports connect whole regions to your clubs in a personal way that builds TV audience for the major league product and expands the power of your merchandising arm exponentially. You need to learn how to be wise shepherds of the whole flock, before a few bad sheep spread infection and kill off the sport. Relying on USA Basketball is working. NOT. Commissioner Stern needs to build a basketball system for pro hoops that is inclusive of the large, viable players in the business and keeps the peace. It is in the NBA's interest as much as it is for the other leagues.

American Basketball Association (ABA):

The only survivors of a nuclear holocaust will be cockroaches, Keith Richards, and the ABA. Knowing Joe Newman, he'll figure out a way to train at least 5,000 of the roaches to play basketball, and another 50 to buy ABA club franchises. Right now, this is the biggest league under the big top. Unfortunately, it is run more like the side show.  Back office memos emerge with private conversations made public. Clubs are announced and scheduled without certain operating futures for the season.  Owners with very limited experience are given cute names in press releases like "sports savant." 

ON THE PLUS SIDE: There is no doubt that Joe Newman sells an appealing program that can work in a number of markets. The 3D rule game is fun for fans to watch, and the ABA, where it has strong member clubs, is walking the walk of returning affordable regional pro basketball to cities great and small. The league offers opportunities to countless players, coaches, and front office people for employment in occupations that they are passionate about.

This league has the ability to prove that professional regional basketball can really work on a near NCAA scale. With discipline, it could be the most dominant force in developmental professional basketball for years to come. There is no question that they are the best recruiters of new franchisees, as they attract new member clubs like honey draws ants.

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT: The league office needs to enforce discipline upon itself first and foremost.  No league cat-calling, and a more polished, professional demeanor in its public face.  Newman and his crew need to REQUIRE that owners have extensive minor pro sports experience, or spend at least a year working for other successful owners, or develop a program to train GMs in successful clubs as AGMS who will promote out to the new teams. The ABA's current method of handing owners the keys, the franchise-done-right playbook, and a seminar or two works about as well as giving an Air Force pilot the go to jump into an F-18 Fighter with an hour of training and saying "Go get 'em tiger!" Someone needs to hide the league expansion crack-pipe and stay out of markets that haven't worked repeatedly.

Continental Basketball Association (CBA):

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the last half-decade is the pillaging of the oldest professional basketball league in North America. If there was a basketball war crimes tribunal, Isaiah Thomas, the Saddam of Hoops, would be sitting in the docket. The league officially died the day that Thomas and Commissioner Stern's office couldn't come to a deal to sell it to the NBA. It has been revived, but it has never hit the same luster since the D-League was solidified with the Players' Association.  Now the D-League is just sacking it, sucking away its viable clubs and forcing it to bum teams off of the ABA like inmates stealing smokes in a prison yard.

ON THE PLUS SIDE: The CBA will survive another year, by the skin of its teeth. It is playing in the rocks and crags of small towns in places like Montana, sitting like a bunch of Afghan rebels in the hills waiting for its turn to strike and regain its former glory.

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT: The NBA needs to buy up what's left of the CBA and merge it into the family, either as a AA league to the D-League, or as part of the larger D-League, which should be called the CBA if they merge, to develop that one-to-one relationship that will make minor league hoops relevant to guys like Pat Riley.  They are too small to be the ABA, and, if the NBA enforces its D-League relationships and player contracts with the owners and the PA, too unconnected to be the development league that they once were. If the D-League shuts the door, you can't hang around on the fringes of the major league and take on a few players from league owners who aren't on board with Stern's program any longer.

International Basketball League (IBL):

ON THE PLUS SIDE: The IBL plays outside of the winter/fall slugfest of leagues, and doesn't trod on the USBL's turf.  It is much better managed than the old IBL, and has a very candid, open communication with the media and its ownership that speak well of it.

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT:  The IBL has the dubious distinction of having the bad marketing sense to take the name of a league that not only burned, but truly scorched markets AND only collapsed a few years ago (The 'other' IBL: 1999-2001, Rest-In-Pieces). It is a brand confusion that still lingers with those who remember the other IBL.  The league office's routine assail of the ABA's marketing practices gets a little old. Even if you find the ABA's ritual sacrifice of a few wannabe owners without the sense that God gave a mule to be morally distasteful, whining about them publicly just makes them the established league to beat, and makes you look like you're trying to catch up to them.  Some lessons could be learned from the USBL.  Talk up your positives, and, even though you may clash in markets with the ABA, suck it up and head back to mid-court and do it again. 

United States Basketball League (USBL):

ON THE PLUS SIDE: The tortoise at the hare convention. The only place in America where "Stay the Course" may actually be working. You keep to your program. You execute well. You don't frag other leagues. You look smart. You entertain fans and you train players with an eye towards other winter/fall leagues here and abroad. If basketball stratifies like baseball or hockey, you run a dandy Class A league that can serve up a lot of talented players.

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT: If even a fraction of all these leagues survive, you'll need more clubs to help maintain and train players. Not that the IBL would be raising the white flag any time soon, but the complimentary schedules suggest some cooperation could make spring/summer A ball something appealing to a broader, NBA-blessed development system.

Other Current Or Future Leagues

ON THE PLUS SIDE: You put free-wheeling in to the free market. You are enthusiastic, true believers of the sport, who put both your money and your mouth on the line daily.  You all believe that you have a better mousetrap, and are passionate about articulating how it works.

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT: The pitch. If you are going to beat the ABA to millionaire hoops fans, er, future owners of the league, you need a unique hook. The ABA owns the "fan-friendly," "affordable" mantra, which smaller leagues try to glom onto. Some of you try to under-price the ABA for franchise fees. 

Newsflash: It does not instill faith in arenas, insurers, coaches, players, agents, the media or FANS that the same money that can buy a 2000 KIA with 200,000 miles on it  gets you a hoops franchise. 

You want to really be the grown-up, responsible league, as you claim?  Great! Then your franchise fees are $500,000, with a $25,000/year chaser. Team owners have to have a reserve capital fund equal to 5 years operating expense at a total loss and must sign long-term leases with their facilities.  Their operating budgets must be determined by the market where they play, not some arbitrary $120,000 total operating cost figure that looks good on paper, but doesn't work with wildly varying prices of everything from arenas to concessions to cost of living for front office and players in regional markets. Butte Montana and suburban Chicago are NOT equal. Do not even announce a market until your owners or their GMs have either a VETERAN professional staff in place, or a year or more working in success story clubs to learn how to be successful themselves.

In a world of equals, you'd have a chance. You're not in a world of equals though. You're the other guys, and getting smaller by the year as the ABA grows, and the NBA solidifies. In a free market no one can tell you to go away, right?

Politely, we must say: GO AWAY.

Understanding your good intentions and your passion, basketball needs STABILITY and ORDER. You contribute more to the Baghdad-like chaos than to the welfare of the players and fans of basketball because you will always be hemmed in by the bigger and better financed leagues.  If you love the sport, as you claim, then do right by it and combine your skills and talents with the larger market forces to make pro basketball stronger and better.

Hoops needs an orchestra, not a bunch of tinny one-man bands.

 - Brian Ross