Brian ROSS
Sr. Editor
SZ

This is America, and I'm all for the American dream. Anyone can go out tomorrow, get the right licenses, the right spot to sell their wares, hire a few people, and start a business. Let the free market decide if it has merit, or need.  Yet in spite of that all, and with more than a decade in minor pro sports under my belt, I have to sincerely ask the businesspeople who fired the "Cotinental Basketball League" press release over my transom last month: "Why? Why? WHY!"

Other than the misspelling of the league name, the press release at least featured the appointment of Dennis Truax, president of the post-Isiah Thomas Continental Basketball Association (CBA) who has great street cred in minor league basketball.  Dennis is the M. Night Shyamalan of hoops. He managed to keep the Sixth-Sense CBA going for many years long after Thomas had purchased the oldest pro league in North America as some  expensive play-toy and then summarily crushed it.

The CBA is gone now, its better teams bolting to the NBA D-League, but there is not exactly what one might call a hole left by its closure.

The D-League, which was launched as the NBDL when Thomas refused to sell the CBA to the NBA back at the beginning of the decade, is finally getting its act together. It looks like Commissioner Stern's dream will quit being a Pinocchio system and become a real, functioning minor league for the NBA.

The D-League is still a few teams shy of 'there,' but the commitment of ownership, resources, and mindshare all seem to still be heading in the right direction this season, after some question marks over the last couple of years.

Beyond the D-League we have the hard-scrabble leagues that run on shoestrings in nooks, crannies, and out of the trunks of cars, if need be.

These hearty souls in the ABA, PBL and the IBL really have to love basketball, because none of them are going to get rich with Survivor-style indy-ball. The dream of the NBA developing a multi-tiered minor league that will affliate with them and give them the NBA halo of authenticity probably needs a hit or two more on the crack-pipe to make it play after a decade of being clearly ignored by major hoops.

There have been many reasonably credible leagues that have failed over the decade as well. The original IBL, which entered with great fanfare than collapsed in years two and three as the tall-hat-no-cattle owners discovered how much it really costs to run a professional sports league. The United States Basketball League, which operated humbly and well, but, in the end, not profitably enough to keep going. The World Basketball Association, the Western Basketball League, and a half-dozen others that never really got off the ground.

All were all started by businessmen who love basketball. Everyone pitched the big idea that they were going to offer "affordable basketball" to a hoops-hungry basketball world. 

Some leagues, like the IBL, have done a great job of working with what they have, and have eked out modest success. Some clubs have had success, as you see in places like Vermont with the Frost Heaves. 

Many have been obliterated by local college hoops programs. Dozens more, like the Palm Beach Imperials or Tim Hardaway's Florida Pit Bulls, selected mostly because they're under my nose here, have been momentary flashes in the pan, the passions of people with a little free cash and a dream.

Ask Mikal Duilio, President of the IBL, if he would do it all over again, and, looking backward, how crazy it was to start a league. Starting up any pro sports franchise or league outside of the sunshine and player development money of a major league organization is not for the faint of heart.

In eleven years of covering this beat, I have never seen one basketball league really come up with a business model that pushes their product past the colleges in prominence, which is where they really have to be situated to earn the respect of major league ownership and the local fans in most marketplaces.  

You can survive on a handful of fans watching games in a low-cost high school gym, but to make money, and make waves in pro hoops, hitting the 3,000 to 11,000 seat arenas and filling them night after night is a goal that all of basketball, D-League included, needs to shoot for. That would be on par with minor pro hockey, at the very least. The rare teams that have really succeeeded in doing that have moved out of their "starter" leagues and into the D-League.

I applaud the commitment to offering up minor league basketball to anyone with the cash and brain damage enough to want to try.  I have to ask, though, as a point of good business, since these are businesses, after all, if you are going to put a team down on the court, why play to lose?

It would seem to me that, rather than have six separate owners field under-funded teams playing in low-rent holes-in-the-wall, it would be more successful for the business venture that the four, six, or eight businessmen should form one or more ownership groups with their capital and buy expansion NBA D-League clubs and work to bring professional basketball up to similar standards found in baseball and hockey.

The NBA has the street cred, and thanks to Commissioner Stern, the patience to develop the minor league well.

The NBA has shown a more mature hand this summer in its execution of its minor league program, resolving the Bakersfield situation to the benefit of players and fans, which the credibility of minor league pro sports as well.

The D-League still will be shy of a one-to-one representation of its major league teams with minor league clubs this season. There is a real need, to give players not only the court time, but the focus on one program, one game strategy (See: "Gates to the NBA," SZ, 04.07.09).

So, 'Cotninental' Basketball League future owners, this is indeed America. You have the unalienable right to go out and start yet another struggling basketball league.

If you really love basketball, though, I would hope that you might consider forming a D-League team or two that can meet NBA franchise standards, and see if you really can make some money in the most worthwhile business of providing a continued developmental program for kids with talent who are not quite ready for the NBA straight out of college.

Live the dream... sanely.

My shiny two.