Fifty years ago today, the Golden State Warriors completed a four-game sweep of the Washington Bullets to claim the NBA championship – their first since moving to Northern California (from Philadelphia).
The Warriors finished 48-34 in the regular season before beating the Seattle SuperSonics (four games to two), Chicago Bulls (four games to three) and Washington.
But while the champagne was still dripping from their uniforms, another professional basketball team challenged the NBA kings to a world championship showdown.
The Kentucky Colonels, champions of the American Basketball Association, wanted a series to determine the sport’s true champion. The Louisville-based club logged a 58-36 mark in the ABA regular season before topping the New York Nets, 108-99, to win the Eastern Division tiebreaker game.
The Colonels then bulldozed the Memphis Sounds in the first round of the playoffs, Spirits of St. Louis in the Eastern Conference Finals and Indiana Pacers in the ABA Finals.
They won all three series four games to one.
On the day Golden State raised its trophy, ABA Commissioner Dave DeBusschere sent a telegram to Warriors president Franklin Mieuli, NBA commissioner Walter Kennedy and commissioner-elect Larry O’Brien.
“The television networks would like to put on a world championship series between the two leagues,” read the cable. “A three to five-game series would provide an additional $1 million in revenue for the teams, the leagues and the players. Baseball has its World Series and football has its Super Bowl between the leagues. Professional basketball should have some method to determine the true world champions. We stand ready to prove who has the best team in professional basketball.”
Colonels owners John Y. Brown and his wife, Ellie Brown, had no immediate comment, but Kentucky assistant manager David Vance was all for the NBA vs. ABA challenge.
“We could play the series if they would play it,” he told Associated Press. “There’s no way they can claim to be world champions without beating all of the known world.”
The ABA was hardly punching above its weight when it made the offer. It had completed its eighth season and was already playing – and beating – NBA in exhibition games and talking about a champion vs. champion battle.
In fact, it held a 31-17 edge over the senior circuit in preseason action and was 16-7 in exhibitions played in advance of the 1974-75 campaign.
The Colonels finished 3-2 in their interleague exhibition slate, including wins over the Bullets and Bulls. And as for Kentucky’s credentials, they were coached by Hubie Brown and featured Artis Gilmore, Dan Issel and Louie Dampier – all four future Hall of Famers.
There had been merger talks for several years, so a roundball world series made perfect sense.
Well, it made perfect sense for the ABA.
The NBA had nothing to gain by such a matchup, and a day after DeBusschere sent the telegram Kennedy shot down the idea.
“The NBA, as usual with these annual challenges, rejects the 1975 proposal – period,” he said.
Thus, we’ll never know if the Colonels could’ve topped the Warriors. And sadly, we never got to find out how that franchise would’ve fared in the NBA.
After struggling with attendance during their early years (there was talk of moving the franchise to Cincinnati), the Colonels starting doing big box office business in the 1970s.
Average crowds for the 1970-71 season were 7,375, followed by 8,811 (1971-72), 7,113 (1972-73), 8,201 (1973-74), 8,727 (1974-75) and 6,935 (1975-76). By any standard of measure, they were one of the ABA’s strongest franchises.
There was a merger ahead of the 1976-77 season (it was completed on June 17, 1976), but it didn’t include Kentucky. That seemed odd, considering how crazy for basketball the Bluegrass State is. The NBA accepted the Nets, Pacers, Denver Nuggets and San Antonio Spurs, but the Spirits and Colonels were left out.
The omission of Kentucky is worth a whole ‘nother story (and maybe I’ll get to that another time). Officially, John Brown declined to pay the $4.5 million entry fee to the NBA, which was treating the arrival of former ABA teams as expansion. Ultimately, Brown agreed to fold the franchise in exchange for $3 million, and its players were placed in a dispersal draft.
Anyway, I like to think the Colonels would’ve beaten the Warriors in the million dollar matchup.
As a guy who grew to love the game because of the ABA, how could I think otherwise?
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