ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 9, 1996 TAG: 9604090078
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HARRIS RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
A MEMBER OF THE ABA, professional basketball's other league, the Virginia Squires helped revolutionize the NBA.
During the final season of the American Basketball Association, the Virginia Squires were a mess.
The Squires went through six coaches during the 1976-77 season. They won only 15 games. Checks bounced. Numerous times the team appeared ready to fold.
Shortly after the season ended, the team did fold. Five weeks later, four ABA teams were taken into the National Basketball Association. The Squires already were only a distant memory.
``It really turned out to be kind of bad,'' said Bob Travaglini, the Squires' trainer.
Said radio voice Marty Brennaman, ``It's too bad if that's all people remember. The first couple of years, it was special.''
The current NBA season is winding down. The playoffs loom.
Twenty-five years ago, the Virginia Squires were in their first year of existence and already in the playoffs. They won the ABA's Eastern Division by 11 games and had realistic championship hopes.
``It was the greatest fun I ever had in basketball,'' said Charlie Scott, the rookie who led the first Squires team in scoring.
``The best year I ever spent in pro ball,'' said guard Mike Barrett.
``A fun year, a good team,'' said Doug Moe, one of three players on that team who ended up as head coaches in the NBA.
``The most fun I've ever had playing basketball,'' said forward Neil Johnson.
``It was good. Real, real good,'' said Al Bianchi, the team's coach.
The Squires started life as the Oakland Oaks in 1967-68, the first year of the ABA. They went from 22 victories that year to 60 and the ABA championship the following season.
George Earl Foreman, a Bethesda, Md., lawyer, bought the team after that season and moved it to Washington, where it became the Capitols.
With a team in Washington, Foreman hoped to help force a merger between the ABA and the NBA. Foreman said the NBA agreed to give Foreman a franchise if he moved his ABA team out of Washington.
``The idea was to force a merger by moving a team into the D.C. territory,'' Foreman said. ``It worked. I got a commitment from the NBA that if I moved out I would get a franchise when the merger came.''
Never happened.
As a result, Virginia got a professional sports franchise - the Squires - but Foreman never got his NBA team.
Foreman sold the Squires after the 1975 season, but he had high hopes for Virginia in the beginning.
``We felt it was a good sports territory, that we could make a go of it,'' Foreman said.
The idea was to make the team regional, like another ABA team, the Carolina Cougars. It would be based in Norfolk and play home games across the state. The Hampton Coliseum and Roanoke Civic Center already were open. Norfolk's Scope and the Richmond Coliseum were being built.
Not many people knew what to make of the ABA at that time. It was perceived as inferior to the NBA and as a gimmick-oriented league that used a red, white and blue ball and featured some ghastly innovation called the 3-point shot.
``The NBA looked down their nose at that, and we all know what happened later,'' Brennaman said. ``Nobody said the ABA was on par with the NBA. It wasn't. But it was a league that played an exciting brand of basketball. Unfortunately, in the end, it couldn't compete. For a short time, it was a heck of a league.''
Said Moe, ``I can't say the ABA was better because it didn't have enough solvent teams. The ABA had more character. The ABA was perceived as nothing, and it was really a lot more. The NBA was perceived as everything, and at the time it was really a lot less.''
It turned out the ABA was better than even it thought. The book ``Loose Balls'' by Terry Pluto points out these post-merger facts:
* The NBA in 1976-77 included 63 of the 84 players who were on final ABA rosters.
* Four of the league's top 10 scorers that year were former ABA players.
* Five of the 10 starters in the NBA championship series between Portland and Philadelphia were former ABA players.
* Denver, one of the four ex-ABA teams, had the league's second-best record. The other ABA teams that went to the NBA were the Indiana Pacers, the New York Nets (now in New Jersey) and the San Antonio Spurs.
* Of the 24 players in the NBA All-Star Game, 10 had ABA experience.
And the early Squires were among the ABA's elite.
``It was very good, very cool,'' said Squires center Jim Eakins. ``We were very well-accepted.''
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Brennamanby CNB