A League Built to Compete
The American Basketball Association tipped off on October 13, 1967, with 11 teams spread across the country, from California to New Jersey. The upstart league was created to challenge the established NBA, with its founders hoping that direct competition would eventually lead to a merger. For would-be owners who found the NBA difficult or too expensive to enter, the ABA offered another route into professional basketball.
George Mikan, the Minneapolis Lakers legend and Basketball Hall of Famer, was named the ABA’s first commissioner. He also championed the idea that became the league’s most enduring symbol: a red, white, and blue basketball. The colors were patriotic, but Mikan’s reasoning was practical, too. Nearsighted himself, he found the traditional brown ball difficult to follow in dim arenas and believed a brighter design would be easier to see on television. What might have seemed like a gimmick became one of the most recognizable images in basketball history.
The ABA, Season by Season
From tip-off to merger, the ABA’s entire run lasted less than a decade — but every one of its nine seasons crowned a champion.
Inaugural season. 11 charter teams tip off the league.
Oaks post a 60–18 record, best in ABA history at the time.
Pacers win the first of their three ABA titles.
Mel Daniels named season MVP for Indiana.
Kentucky posts a 68–16 record, best ever in ABA history.
Pacers beat Kentucky for their third and final ABA title.
Julius Erving leads the Nets past the Utah Stars.
Artis Gilmore named Finals MVP in the Colonels’ only title.
The league’s final season. Merger follows on June 17, 1976.
The ABA’s 50th Reunion
In April 2018, the Dropping Dimes Foundation brought the American Basketball Association back together. Former players, coaches, and league personnel gathered in Indianapolis to mark 50 years since the league’s founding, swapping stories, signing autographs, and raising money for the very players who built the game.
Faster, Looser, Louder
Compared with the NBA’s more controlled style, the ABA played loose and fast. It used a 30-second shot clock and its three-point line encouraged teams to spread the floor, take chances, and play a more open, improvisational game. The NBA would not adopt the three-pointer until 1979, three years after the leagues merged.
The players matched the league’s personality. Stars such as Julius “Dr. J” Erving, George “Iceman” Gervin, David “Skywalker” Thompson, and Darnell “Dr. Dunk” Hillman became known not only for their talent, but for their style, nicknames, and larger-than-life presence. The ABA understood that basketball could be both serious competition and great entertainment.
The Dunk Contest Is Born
By 1976, the ABA was running out of time and money. Looking for something that might sell a few more tickets to the league’s final All-Star Game, marketing director Jim Bukata, finance director Jim Keeler, and Denver Nuggets general manager Carl Scheer landed on an idea no professional league had tried before: a slam dunk contest.
The contest was held at halftime on January 27 at McNichols Sports Arena in Denver. Five players took part: Julius Erving, Artis Gilmore, Larry Kenon, David Thompson, and George Gervin. Thompson, the hometown favorite, brought the crowd to its feet with a soaring 360-degree dunk. But Erving saved the night’s defining moment for last, taking a running start and launching from the free-throw line.
Erving won the contest, and his final dunk became one of the enduring images of the ABA. After the leagues merged later that year, the NBA experimented with its own season-long dunk competition. The contest eventually returned as part of All-Star Weekend in 1984, turning one of the ABA’s last promotional ideas into a basketball tradition.
“Even before he took off he was really rolling, his afro blowing. We all became entangled in what he was going to do.”
Artis Gilmore, recalling Julius Erving’s free-throw-line dunk at the 1976 ABA All-Star GameOutlandish Gimmicks
The ABA’s reputation for showmanship extended far beyond the basketball court. With many teams struggling to fill seats and make payroll, game night could feel as much like a traveling carnival as a professional sporting event. The Miami Floridians became famous for ball girls in white bikinis and go-go boots, while other teams experimented with promotions such as Halter-Top Night and cow-milking contests.
Few stunts captured the league’s anything-goes spirit better than an Indiana Pacers halftime show in April 1975, when local sportscaster Chet Coppock stepped onto the court to wrestle Victor, an Alaskan brown bear. The Kentucky Colonels had gone even further several years earlier, signing jockey Penny Ann Early and briefly putting her into a regular-season game as a publicity stunt. She appeared for a single inbound play before the Colonels called timeout.
Some promotions were clever, others were tasteless, and a few were genuinely dangerous. Together, they reflected both the ABA’s personality and its predicament: it had to be louder, stranger, and more entertaining than the NBA because, for much of its existence, simply playing good basketball was not enough to survive.
Victor the Wrestling Bear, Pacers halftime flyer, 1975
Miami Floridians Ballgirls
A courtside promotional giveaway
Fans cheering on the Denver Nuggets
The Merger
After years of failed negotiations, legal battles, and mounting financial losses, the NBA and ABA finally reached an agreement on June 17, 1976. Four ABA franchises, the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New York Nets, and San Antonio Spurs, were admitted into the NBA, each paying a $3.2 million expansion fee. All four remain in the league today, although the Nets have since moved to Brooklyn.
The price of admission was steep. The four teams received no share of the NBA’s national television revenue for their first three seasons and were barred from the 1976 NBA draft. For two years, they also had no vote on certain league matters, including the distribution of gate receipts and the alignment of divisions.
Two other ABA teams, the Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis, agreed to fold in exchange for separate financial settlements. Their players were made available to NBA teams through a dispersal draft. The Virginia Squires had already gone out of business a month earlier. Still, the ABA’s talent survived the league itself: of the 84 players on ABA rosters near the time of the merger, 63 played in the NBA the following season.
Hall of Fame Caliber Throughout the ABA
The ABA lasted just nine seasons, but its talent pool still reads like a who’s-who of basketball royalty. Many of the sport’s most beloved names built their reputations on ABA hardwood before the NBA ever knew their names.
