OPINION - Joe Newman goes by many names. Founder of the modern American Basketball Association, the  P.T. Barnum-like sports imprimatur has been called a genius, a visionary, an opportunist, a scoundrel, and grandpa. I've covered the league on and off since it was the ABA-2000, and I've interviewed Joe a dozen times for this and that.  Still, beyond the grandpa part, I can never really put my finger on which of the comments that I've heard about him over the years is entirely true.

"For all you see about Joe Newman I’m just a family man," says Joe biographically. "I’m just a grandfather, you know?  People think I’m some sort of, I’m this evil monster."  

Some. Some see him as the champion of a pro game that has priced itself out of the reach of many fans, or the patron of professional basketball in small and medium markets.

Perhaps that inability to peg him is his genius, or his ability to give this shoestring league the nine lives that it has had since  he and his partners dredged the ABA back into existence in 2000.

Have no doubt though, that this is not your father's ABA.  That upstart league, ultimately consumed by the NBA, existed at a different level, in a different world.

The modern ABA is, at best, a class A professional basketball league, a step over from the NCAA, one step up from the AND1 Tour and the Harlem Globetrotters, but a far cry from the NBA-D League, the CBA, or the USBL.

League stability has always been a problem. The ABA has a lot of teams come and go. The Gwinnett Gwizzlies, Minot City Freeze, and Louisiana Cajun Pelicans are just a small sampling of at least 49 failed franchises since 2000.  I'll couch the "at least" because MLN decertified coverage of the league in 2002 for more than a year when they had a complete communications breakdown with the outside world and we couldn't confirm that they were operating (They did.).

Joe plays a bit of a semantics game with these "closings."  Ask why so many teams have folded, and he'll correct you quickly.

"There has not been any team in the ABA that has folded, contrary to opinion. All of the teams that are not playing were suspended or expelled for operations that were not in the best interests of the league and the partner teams."

Of course that begs the question as to how he let operators into the league that could get themselves into trouble so quickly as to fail within the first season, or two. 

The answer to that largely lies in the franchise fee.

"...[A]s you know, the NBDL charges $250,000, the USBL and the CBA charge $150[,000] and they have monthly assessments that run anywhere from five to fifteen to twenty thousand dollars," says Newman. "An ABA team costs $20[,000], not $150 or $250 and there are no dues or assessments.  We want all of our owners to put all of their money back into their teams and into their market. So at the league level, we don’t need their big expansion, their big franchise fees.”  

There are some people who, off the record, will say that there isn't a franchise fee that Joe Newman doesn't like.  They point to the fact that the league has mushroomed from 18 teams to an announced crop of nearly 70 announced in the 2005-2006 season that shrank into the 40s by opening day, and then dropped into the 30s within the opening weeks of the season.

Of course, Joe will counter that he has put more of his own money back into the league, that he helps worthwhile ownership groups get started, and  that he has even propped up a few struggling franchises that he felt were important to the league.

Newman sees himself as the first equal opportunity league president, playing the race and gender cards in an inside scoop on league franchises and politics:

“Isn’t it strange that the 24 teams that are in the USBL, CBA, and NDBL are all white-owned?  Now there’s a message when you’ve got 70% of my teams are Black, Hispanic, Asian and women.  We give opportunities, and I don’t know, and I’m not saying there’s any discrimination, I’m just saying that we have diversified at a level that no other league has done before." 

The other leagues would counter that assertion with the observation that Isaiah Thomas owned the whole CBA at one point, and that there have been African American and Asian owners in professional basketball in other leagues great and small, including the past  International Basketball League (IBL).

If anything, the comings and goings of the franchises provide a soap-opera like drama that, in some perverse way, adds to the entertainment value of the league.  Newman  has a very open platform for communications, sometimes too open.  Spats with owners are played out publicly.  The recent falling out with Demetrius Ford of the Florida Pit Bulls, who objected to the league's scheduling of his team into the playoffs turned out a couple of unpleasant public exchanges with Ford ultimately taking his team to play elsewhere.

Still, there is an infectious enthusiasm for the sport that Joe and his owner-disciples bring to the game that you have to like, even if their execution of the business side is not always what it should be.  Alexander Wolff, SI sportswriter and owner of the Vermont Frost Heaves, loves his town and loves basketball.  For less than the cost of a car you can own a team, and get SI to pay you to write about the experience.

Wolff talks Vermontese social responsibility and community and green environment as part of his pitch for the club. He's emblematic of a type of newer ownership coming into the league that they need more of. Small market, away from the fray, who can generate a powerful local community form of professional basketball.

Ultimately, if Joe Newman wants to run a 70+ team network that is kind of a mini-NCAA, it will be in these little towns that they find success and happiness.   The ABA has failed multiple times in markets like Nashville and indy cities in Los Angeles.  Still, Newman refuses to acknowledge that there are markets where the ABA should fear to tread.

"“I’ve never believed that there’s a market anywhere in the country, just as WalMart and McDonalds does, that cannot support an ABA team.  I believe that every market can. I believe that the blame is 100% the fault of the team operation and management. I think that everybody would find fan-friendly affordable, you know, high-level energy, professional basketball. When you don’t treat your youth groups, your churches and your schools properly, and you don’t treat the media properly, you don’t treat the city administration and your service clubs properly and you don’t market and you don’t treat the press properly you have problems in a city. And to blame it on a city like Nashville which is a fabulous entertainment city or  on an Inglewood, it’s just not true."

Unfortunately, the reality is that it is true.

Playing in Inglewood, in the shadow of the Lakers and the Clippers has not proved to be economically viable for either the ABA or its competitors.  Sometimes the ownership is the problem. Or the venue.  One cannot discount the nearby NBA or powerhouse college program's ability to draw.  There is also a reason that having the deep pockets to pay for an NBA D-League franchise is important.  If you can front the money to get into the game, you should also have the capital to be able to operate under the difficult conditions that most indy pro sports teams struggle with for the first five years.

Establishing the Reality Curve 

The job of keeping the league in full operation and somewhere on the reality curve falls to Ricardo Richardson, Newman's EVP and the mechanic of the league's ops.  Given the way that the ABA has managed to keep operating in spite of the numerous comings and goings of franchises on his watch, it shows a really amazing executive ability on Richardson's part.

Ricardo envisions a two-tiered ABA, with large market clubs like the now-ankled Pit Bulls playing in bigger arenas in the major markets, and a development league for the ABA operating in the Vermonts and Santa Fes and Palm Beaches.

Is there a viable model for professional sports in venues of 1600 or less?  As long as there are players who can turn out fans in those numbers, and the teams are very integrated into the communities, yes.

The NBA's D-League will continue to grow.  The other markets that Newman covets may be out of the ABA's reach.  While the IBL failed miserably in Albuquerque, the NBA, with its name value and the restrained respect that it generates from college programs, may have a better time working cooperatively in  markets like this with established and highly competitive college programs. 

 The winners and losers of the ABA formula are the fans.  Where they can keep the clubs operating and stable, the ABA does what it advertises: Family friendly sports entertainment.  There are a lot of frustrated fans in places like Long Beach, California, Jacksonville, Florida, and Nashville, and possibly even Weston (Miami) Florida, for whom the promise of some cheap sports fun the for the family is more illusion than promise.

Stability, not growth, should be Joe Newman's mantra for the next few years.  If the ABA is to be a stable professional sports league when it grows up, it needs to factor what market segment it can really hold on to. Based on franchise rules and their current markets, it would seem that developing into small town America and the distant suburbs of major American cities might make the ABA a great niche league that is a credit to the sport of basketball.