Scott Adamson, Author at Adamsonmedia.com

Squadron ready for duty

**Birmingham coach Ryan Pannone talks to media members Monday morning at Protective Stadium.**

The last official professional basketball game played by a Birmingham-based NBA affiliate came on March 25, 1992, when the Birmingham Bandits lost to the Quad City Thunder in the Continental Basketball Association playoffs. That team, linked with the Atlanta Hawks and San Antonio Spurs, was one-and-done – finishing dead last in the CBA in attendance.

Nearly 30 years later, a bolder and better Birmingham is back in the pro basketball business, and the NBA G League team looks to hold court much longer than a single season.

**Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl**

The Birmingham Squadron has joined the ranks of the 29-team league (plus the NBA G League Ignite, the club reserved for elite Draft prospects) and will play its home opener at the renovated Legacy Arena on December 5 against the Capitanes de Ciudad de México, aka the Mexico City Capitanes. The regular season lid-lifter is Friday at Greensboro (Birmingham’s first six games are on the road).

The Squadron’s on-court debut actually came on Saturday in College Park, Georgia, in a 95-90 exhibition victory over the College Park Skyhawks.

Squadron head coach Ryan Pannone and various players met with the media earlier today at Protective Stadium to officially talk up the newest member of Birmingham’s sports scene.

“We met with some of the community leaders in August and I thought there would be about 50 people there, and there were 150 people,” Pannone said. “I was blown away at how excited people were about having a team here. That’s the nature of the G League. At the end of the day it’s a minor league sport, and when you’re in a bigger city it’s just not that important to a lot of people. What you want as a player is to feel like it’s important, and I was blown away by the support.”

The team formerly known as the Erie BayHawks relocated from Pennsylvania, where they were well supported. Pannone hopes the team can win over new fans in the Magic City.

“I spent two years in Erie and the people in the town and the fans loved the team,” he said. “They love their minor league sports. In one way it’s sad to move away from there but obviously it’s exciting to move to Birmingham. Legacy Arena is amazing. It’s the top arena in the G League.”

The circuit is the NBA’s developmental league so it’s obviously quality stuff; 41 percent of players on this season’s opening night NBA rosters (205 total) had G league experience, and every NBA team started the 2021-22 campaign with at least three former G leaguers. But there’s also just something that seems fun about it from a fan standpoint, everything from rule experimentation to a nice, tight 36-game regular season schedule plus a 14-game tournament called the Showcase Cup.

“The fans are truly dialed in and making a lot of noise about the Birmingham Squadron coming into the city,” said guard Joe Young, who played three years with the Indiana Pacers and was one of the top players in China last season with the Beijing Royal Fighters. “I feel like we have a great new beginning. I’ve been through a lot of training camp and this is one of the best I’ve been through, from the high intensity and how we’ve become a team. There’s a lot of unity and as early as the season is, it’s like we’ve been knowing each other for years.”

The arrival of the New Orleans Pelicans affiliate is the city’s next and best chance to prove it can support pro hoops. The 1991-92 CBA team that called State Fair Arena home made the playoffs despite a losing record, but fans had lost interest in them long before the postseason. Birmingham averaged 1,058 fans per game during the regular season, last in the 17-team league. Its three home postseason games in March drew crowds of 405, 825, and 2,274.

By May the team was gone, moved to Rochester, Minnesota, and rebranded the Renegades.

The modern era has seen Birmingham host several semi-pro teams, but like most semi-pro teams they’re here today, gone tomorrow and quickly forgotten.

But the Pelicans’ farm club has a chance to be memorable right out of the gate, which could go a long way toward a much different fate than that of the Bandits.

The roster features former Auburn star Jared Harper and Alabama standout John Petty Jr. – both guards – and there are currently 15 players in training camp hoping to survive Thursday’s cut day.

“I think anything you do, it’s easier with higher character people and one thing I’ve learned about the G league is it’s essentially the junior college of professional basketball,” Pannone explained. “It’s not a place where a player wants to be for the rest of their career. It’s hopefully a stopping ground in terms of improving their career. When you get high character guys, it’s not hard. When you get guys like Joe Young, Zylan Cheatham (who has a career G League average of 14.5 points and 10.7 rebounds per game from the forward spot), Jared Harper … those are really high character guys that want to be here and understand this a necessity to get where they want to go. Joe Young has turned down millions playing overseas to be here. His engagement and humbleness and excitedness to be here has been amazing. He’s got the most NBA experience on our team and he’s been a great leader. He’s imparting knowledge to the other players.”

Pannone said regardless of who’s on the court when the Squadron meets the Greensboro Swarm on Friday at the Greensboro Coliseum, they’ll be defined by “unselfishness and effort.”

“It’s what we talk to the players about,” Pannone said. “The game is full of mistakes. The coaches and players don’t want mistakes, but it’s an imperfect game. You’re gonna make mistakes but when you do, make them with unselfishness and effort. I want execution to be great and to execute our game plan, but if we play hard and play the right way, that’s what we want the identity of our team to be.”

Harper is confident fans will like what they see.

“We play great as a collective,” he said. “Nobody’s worried about stats or whatever – we just want to win.”

And with the Squadron coming in right as the Uptown entertainment district starts to take shape, the time seems right for Birmingham and pro basketball to be a winning combination.

My Halloween costumes

Tomorrow night, all the little Trick-or-Treaters will be dressed as witches, ghosts, goblins and telemarketers, and I’ll be reminded of the wonderful times I had as a child begging for teeth-destroying edibles. As you might know, I would often dress up as either a werewolf, Batman or Joe Namath, and had no desire to be anything other than those three iconic figures. Why?

I’ll tell you.

Werewolves are far and away my favorite mythological creature. They shapeshift into a wolf due to a curse or bite from another mythological creature that has shapeshifted into a wolf due to a curse or bite from yet another mythological creature that has shapeshifted into a wolf due to a curse or bite … you get the idea. There’s cursing and biting involved, then you sprout fur and foam at the mouth.

My favorite werewolf mask was based on the 1941 “The Wolf Man” movie character, and it even had fake hair that made it look authentic. It was also shaped in such a way that I could wear my eyeglasses underneath it. Man, I loved that mask … didn’t even need Halloween as an excuse to put it on. Sometimes I’d be sitting at the dinner table in mid-July wearing it … just thinking about how cool it would be if I were a lycanthrope. Then I’d lift it up so I could take a bite out of a yeast roll, and then put it back in position and think more about lycanthropy. And really, the mask was the only expense to the ensemble; the rest of the costume was just regular clothes.

I can’t tell you how many times I’d knock on a door and the person who opened it would say, “Oh my, you’re scary!”

And I’d want to answer, “No shit. I’m a werewolf … you should be scared,” but I wouldn’t because nippers shouldn’t cuss.

Batman is my favorite masked vigilante – a man who presents himself as a nocturnal flying mammal in order to strike fear into the hearts of malefactors, ne’er-do-wells and tosspots. Personally, I’ve always liked bats – I find them quite pleasant. But then again I’m a delightful person, so Batman would have no reason to strike fear into me. Now feral hogs are another story … I find them quite off-putting. So if I may digress for a moment, let me say that if someone dressed as a feral hog – we’ll call him Feral Hog Man for the purposes of this column – then yes, I would be scared of them. (Note to self: as soon as I’m done here call DC and Marvel and pitch a character that has shapeshifted into a feral hog due to a curse or bite administered by late country singer/sausage maven Jimmy Dean).

Anyway, Batman costumes were more difficult for bespectacled kids like me, at least when it came to the cowl. I couldn’t wear them over or under the hard, plastic, traditional Halloween masks, and wearing them under cloth Batman masks made me resemble a large bug.

One year my mom convinced me to just place my glasses over the homemade cowl she had fashioned from an old dress.

“Oh, Scotty,” she said, “No one will even notice.”

First house I went to an old man answered the door and said, “You supposed to be Batman? I didn’t know Batman wore glasses.”

What an ass. I mean, Batman watched his parents killed right in front of him in an alley behind a theater, and all that’s going through this codger’s mind is, “Hey Myrtle – get a load of the Caped Crusader wearing horn rims!” Maybe – just maybe – the Dark Knight’s retinas were damaged during a fight with Mr. Freeze, forcing him to follow optometrist’s orders. I really wanted to tell that geezer off, but he gave me two Snickers bars so I let it go.

Finally, when I became obsessed with tackle football, I decided to Trick-or-Treat while rocking the uniform of my favorite player, Joe Namath. In retrospect, this was probably my most authentic recreation.

Christmas of 1970 I got a New York Jets/Joe Namath Rawlings uniform, complete with helmet, jersey, pants and shoulder pads. It was absolutely glorious. The packaging said the helmet was “not suitable for competition,” but when it came to competing for the best Halloween costume, it suited me just fine.

If Joe Namath and I had been standing side-by-side, it would’ve been hard to tell us apart – except for the age, height and muscle differences. And the great thing is, no one would even see that I was wearing glasses because I’d have my helmet on.

So while my friends were dressed like cowboys, lumberjacks and dental hygienists, I was repping No. 12 and snagging copious amounts of candy.

After being told by several snack-givers I looked just like Namath, I finally reached a house occupied by a teenager who I believe was babysitting. She looked me up and down and said, “Hey little boy, I don’t think Joe Namath wears glasses.”

And I thought, “How do you know? Maybe Joe Willie’s been hit so many times by Ben Davidson he suffers from blurred vision. Or maybe since by the end of his injury-plagued 1970 season the coaching staff was concerned that his career interception total was 116 against just 102 touchdown passes, and Weeb Ewbank decided to buy him a pair to better spot Don Maynard and George Sauer. Or maybe he just likes how cerebral they make him look. You’re not omniscient.”

This Tiger Beat-reading, Bobby Sherman-lusting teen had absolutely no clue about Joe Namath’s optical history, and I was this close to giving her a piece of my mind when she stuck a big bowl full of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in my face and told me to grab a handful. At that point I realized she was both kind and beautiful, and I was in love.

Ah, what great memories those were. Even years later when late October rolls around, I’ll occasionally think about dressing up as a werewolf, Batman or Joe Namath. Sometimes I daydream about combining the three, where Joe Namath is secretly Batman but also shapeshifts into a wolf due to a curse or bite. Of course I’d still have to deal with the glasses situation, and being ridiculed by the person handing out candy. Then again, if a 60-year-old man dressed as Joe WereBat came to the door holding a pumpkin bucket, eyewear would probably be the least of their concerns.

Four teams in search of a league

On this 46^th anniversary of the World Football League’s demise, I could mark the occasion by regaling you with tales you’ve probably already heard or read before. That might be cathartic for me, but it wouldn’t provide you with any new information.

We’ve already been there, done that and got the Birmingham Vulcans T-shirt.

But while doing some research on the WFL’s October 22, 1975, expiration date I did stumble upon some information I always seem to forget; four franchises considered playing on in a new league in 1976.

Yep, turns out officials associated with the San Antonio Wings spearheaded informal talks with reps from the Charlotte Hornets, Jacksonville Express and Shreveport Steamer about keeping the franchises afloat in a WFL spinoff that would utilize a public ownership/non-profit franchise model.

“Right now it’s going to be very hard to get anybody interested in it,” Ralph Rich, one of the main investors in the Wings, told the Associated Press. “The shock’s still there. Right now we’ve got to regroup. But we’re talking Green Bay, Wisconsin, concept. If a guy’s got $100 in a team, he’s an owner and he’ll be out there at the games.”

Wings governor Norm Bevan said the league folded based on a 6-4 vote by the owners, putting 380 players out of work. San Antonio, Charlotte, Jacksonville and Memphis were in the minority, and Shreveport voted to fold after its proposal for a six-team playoff to start the following weekend was turned down.

Bevan said San Antonio had raised $350,000 to continue.

“I’m not sure you won’t see another major league football team in San Antonio next year,” Bevan told AP.

Shreveport coach Marshall Taylor told the Shreveport Journal that, in theory, he liked the concept of a “Southern League.”

“I think it would go over if it had football people running it,” he said. “Businessmen just don’t understand the problems.”

Once the WFL officially went out of business, Birmingham and Memphis immediately applied for NFL franchises while Southern California, Philadelphia, Portland and The Hawaiians grabbed their coats and headed for the exit.

So how close did the four “breakaway” franchises come to staying alive?

Not very. Remember, the 1975 WFL was actually a separate entity from the 1974 original (New League Inc. doing business as the World Football League) and both were unmitigated financial disasters. It’s hard to imagine anyone having an appetite for a third, fragmented incarnation.

And it’s not like any of the four were huge box office successes. Shreveport had the most fan support with an average of 15,070 paying customers per game, followed by San Antonio (13,376), Jacksonville (12,984) and Charlotte (10,924).

I reached out to Upton Bell, who owned the Hornets, and asked him if such an idea ever had any real legs.

“There were talks, but I was more interested in getting Charlotte into the NFL,” said Bell, also a former NFL executive and son of late NFL commissioner Bert Bell. “John Bassett of Memphis was also interested in getting into the NFL. I called Dan Rooney on behalf of Charlotte knowing I would not be the owner if they did take us in. They were looking for a rich guy like Jerry Richardson. I proved that Charlotte was a major league city, unfortunately it wasn’t me (leading the city into the NFL).”

The four cities ultimately resurfaced in the minor league American Football Association, with the San Antonio Charros joining in 1977, the Shreveport Steamer coming aboard in 1978, and the Carolina Chargers and Jacksonville Firebirds becoming AFA members in 1979.

Jacksonville and San Antonio were also part of the United States Football League; San Antonio’s most recent pro football experience was in the Alliance of American Football following a stint in the World League of American Football; and Shreveport’s last significant outdoor team was in the Canadian Football League during the CFL’s “American experiment” in the mid-1990s.

Charlotte and Jacksonville, of course, did make it to football’s biggest league, joining the NFL in 1995 as the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars.

But today, as we again mark the end of the World Football League, I salute those four intrepid franchises that refused to go quietly to the sports graveyard. They never had a chance, but their willingness to take another chance showed moxie.