The American Basketball Association (ABA) was a major professional basketball league that operated for nine seasons from 1967 to 1976. The upstart ABA operated in direct competition with the more established National Basketball Association throughout its existence. The second of two leagues established in the 1960s after the American Basketball League, the ABA was the more successful rival to the NBA.
The league started with eleven teams; the Indiana Pacers, Kentucky Colonels, Minnesota Muskies, New Jersey Americans, and Pittsburgh Pipers were placed in the Eastern Division and the Anaheim Amigos, Dallas Chaparrals, Denver Rockets, Houston Mavericks, New Orleans Buccaneers, and Oakland Oaks in the Western Division. George Mikan served as the first league commissioner and came up with the idea for the three-point shot to go along with a 30-second shot clock. Echoing the NHL, the league named a Most Valuable Player for the entire postseason rather than for just the Finals. Select investors believed they could play their way into getting an NBA franchise by way of a merger, while Mikan did not initially want to get into a bidding war with the NBA for select players.
While the first years of the ABA saw uneven team management (the first two champions immediately relocated after winning the championship), the offense-oriented league managed to attract select talent from players that were either ignored by the NBA, due to perceived talent issues, or because they were not eligible to play in the league. Stars that arose from these circumstances included Roger Brown, Connie Hawkins, and Doug Moe, who each had been blackballed from the NBA due to unfounded allegations of point-shaving; Spencer Haywood, who entered the league as a "hardship exemption" after wanting to turn pro following his sophomore season in college; and Larry Brown, who was thought to be too small to play in the NBA.
The league never had a consistent national television contract, but attracted loyal followings in select markets, most notably in Indianapolis, Denver, San Antonio, Long Island, and Kentucky. The Pacers would win the most championships in league history, winning three with stars such as Mel Daniels, the first player with multiple MVP awards.
The ABA and NBA engaged in talks for a merger as early as 1970, but an antitrust lawsuit filed by the NBA Players Association curtailed the plans for several years. The league went after select NBA stars such as Rick Barry and Billy Cunningham to go along with luring players with a select payment plan by annuity to go along with luring respected NBA referees to the league. In the later years of the league, other stars would arise such as Dan Issel, Artis Gilmore, George Gervin, and Julius Erving. By the end of the 1975–76 season, the league was down to seven teams, with only six surviving long enough to be involved in merger talks. The ABA merged with the NBA in 1976, resulting in four teams (Pacers, Nuggets, Spurs, and Nets) joining the NBA. The final ABA game was played on May 13, 1976, as the New York Nets defeated the Denver Nuggets in six games for the final ABA championship. Adopting the practice of the ABA, the NBA introduced the three-point shot three years later in autumn 1979.
As of 2026, despite the merger of the two leagues, the NBA considers the ABA to be a separate league and its history and statistics are not included in the NBA record books. However, the Basketball Hall of Fame does recognize ABA history and statistics for inductions and honors.
History
The league was created as a result of numerous groups coming together in the interest of promotion in sports. Constantine "Connie" Seredin of Professional Sports Management (a company specializing in bringing athletes and advertisers together) had wanted to expand sports marketing and the firm came across the idea of a second pro sports league; noting that basketball had no other professional competition in the 1960s besides the NBA. Seredin called up famed basketball star George Mikan about potentially being an advisor in this theoretical league. While Mikan made no commitment, Seredin left him his phone number just in case. Not long thereafter, Seredin was called by Dennis Murphy, a marketing executive and sports fan that also happened to have called Mikan as well about a sports league. Murphy had initially come up with wanting to secure a football team in Anaheim, California, which led to a group sponsoring a doubleheader game in the city with the American Football League (AFL). But the war that the AFL had with the National Football League would soon come to a close with a merger with no chance of expansion to Anaheim. Not wanting to waste the effort of people who had money and liked sports, Murphy came up with the idea of starting a second basketball league, as it happened to be his favorite sport.
Murphy soon talked with Bill Sharman, who had coached in the last "second basketball league" with the American Basketball League (ABL) (1961–62) and they came up with the name of the league. While Sharman could not get involved with the ABA at the time due to coaching matters, he suggested talking to Mikan along with suggesting the use of the three-point play (an ABL staple). The eventual meeting with Mikan led to his interest along with mentioning other names interested in business. Murphy initially was just interested in having a league devoted to Western cities to cut into the pro market that had only recently put NBA teams in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Seredin and Murphy later met in a meeting with potential investors that only made Murphy have doubts. But John McShane, a public relations man of McShane Associates, found common ground with Seredin to serve as a go-between for Murphy to forge an actual meeting in organizational form in Beverly Hills under the prospective name of the "United Basketball League". The first meeting, at the Beverly Hills Hilton, was held on December 20, 1966 (with the organization going as the "American Basketball Association") that had seen McShane and Seredin leak the meeting to the press to attract attention while Murphy had a few of his associates pose as potential investors. The meeting resulted in a few legitimate investors and later scheduling. It was later that Gary Davidson (an attorney in Orange County) expressed interest in joining the league, while Mark Binstein served as acting president. Don Regan, a law school associate of Davidson, also joined in. On January 31, 1967, two days prior to a potential press conference, Mikan expressed interest in potentially being league commissioner if the terms were correct. On the day of the intended press conference, the "roll call" of franchises were not all filled with actual buyers, as was the case with Dallas, but merely wishes. Kansas City (as envisioned by Murphy), Honolulu (as desired by McShane), and Cleveland were floated as having interest, but none would play in the league (the Kansas City team instead played for different owners in Denver). It was at this time that Seredin and McShane's proposal to be listed in publicity as founders and organizers of the league was denied despite their clear efforts in developing the league.
Eventually, an array of investors were lined up in several cities: James Ackerman & Art Kim in Anaheim, Arthur J. Brown in New York (plans fell through to play in the area), the DeVoe family in Indiana, Gabe Rubin in Pittsburgh, T. C. Morrow in Houston, Mamie and Joe Gregory in Kentucky (after the franchise was first founded by Regan), Ken Davidson in Oakland, Charlie Smither (among others) in New Orleans, Robert Folsom in Dallas, Bill Ringsby in Denver, and Larry Shields in Minnesota. Another investor, in Milwaukee, was initially setup to join the original eleven cities, but that team never materialized for some unknown reason (most likely due to the later creation of the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA)., p. 31 Mikan agreed to be commissioner and spearheaded the use of a red-white-blue ball to go along with the three-point play. In the press conference on February 2, he stated that while they did not plan to raid the NBA for players, they would invite anyone with no contractual obligations to join and aspired to be a competitor to the league akin to General Motors competing with Ford. It was Mikan who elected to let players such as Brown, Hawkins, Moe, Tony Jackson, and Charlie Williams play in the league, stating years later in Loose Balls that having investigated their situation of being falsely implicated in gambling, each deserved a second chance in his eyes, a decision that Mikan never regretted.
The ABA was conceived at a time stretching from 1960 through the mid-1970s when numerous upstart leagues were challenging, with varying degrees of success, the established major professional sports leagues in the United States. Basketball was seen as particularly vulnerable to a challenge; its major league, the NBA, was the youngest of the Big Four major leagues, having only played 21 seasons to that point, and was still fending off contemporary challenging leagues (it had been less than five years since the ABL shut down); the league, often considered third or fourth in coverage when compared to baseball or football, had just 12 teams at the time the ABA was founded. According to one of the owners of the Indiana Pacers, its goal was to force a merger with the more established league. Potential investors were told that they could get an ABA franchise for half of what it cost to get an NBA expansion franchise at the time. When the merger occurred, ABA officials said their investment would more than double.
The ABA distinguished itself from its older counterpart with a more wide-open, flashy style of offensive play, as well as differences in rules — a 30-second shot clock (as opposed to the NBA's 24-second clock, though the ABA did switch to the 24 second shot clock for the 1975–76 season) and use of a three-point field goal, pioneered in the earlier ABL.The History of the 3-Pointer , USA Basketball, Ryan Wood, June 15, 2011. Also, the ABA used a colorful red, white, and blue ball, instead of the NBA's traditional orange ball. The ABA also had several "regional" franchises, such as the Virginia Squires and Carolina Cougars, that played "home" games in several cities. The league began with the 1967–68 season on October 13, 1967, with Willie Porter contributing the first points scored on a tip-in for the Oakland Oaks as they defeated the Anaheim Amigos 134–129.