NBA expansion and relocation: A chaotic start to possibly Las Vegas and Seattle (again)

The NBA’s Board of Governors on Wednesday formally authorized the league to explore expansion to Seattle and Las Vegas. Adding two franchises to the NBA would bring the league’s total to 32.

The NBA returning to Seattle would right what many believe to be a grievous wrong when the SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City for the 2008-09 season and became the Thunder. For some NBA fans, seeing the Sonics move to OKC after 41 seasons in Seattle was like when the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles or when the Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens.

If the NBA heads to Las Vegas, it’ll be the culmination of a dance the league has done with the city since 2007, when it hosted the All-Star Game in February and formally established its NBA Summer League later that year. Interestingly, if the NBA decides to put a franchise there, it’ll arrive after teams representing the NFL, WNBA, NHL and Major League Baseball.

So, how did we get here? Here’s a brief history of how the NBA, the youngest of the four major men’s North American sports leagues, arrived at this point.

A chaotic start

In the beginning, the National Basketball Association was filler. Actually, in the beginning, the Basketball Association of America was filler.

After World War II, arena owners, mainly located in the East, were looking to fill their buildings with events when those facilities weren’t hosting ice hockey, college hoops, boxing matches, wrestling matches, track meets, concerts or traveling ice shows.

In June 1946, the owners of arenas in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Toronto, Washington and Providence, R.I., agreed to start the Basketball Association of America. Meanwhile, in the Midwest, the more established National Basketball League had been running for more than a decade. With their head start, the NBL had better players than the nascent BAA.

In 1949, after three seasons of a contentious coexistence that included raiding players and teams (such as the Minneapolis Lakers with George Mikan), the BAA and NBL merged to form the National Basketball Association, with 17 teams in three divisions. There were teams in Denver, Waterloo, Iowa, Moline, Ill., Fort Wayne, Ind., Anderson, Ind., and Sheboygan, Wis. There were also large-market franchises in Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Chicago.

There were Nationals, Capitols, Olympians and Royals. There were Bombers, Bullets and Packers. There were Nuggets, Stags, Hawks and Blackhawks.

It would also be the last time the league had 17 franchises until the 1970-71 season. Immediately following the first season, the NBA began shedding teams as six franchises folded.

There was chaos early in the league’s existence, for numerous reasons. That 17-team league was a logistical nightmare. With Boston in the East, the first iteration of the Denver Nuggets in the West and 15 teams in between, it was too spread out. Boston to Denver is a haul in this day and age. Moving between far flung locales in an era before airline travel was difficult.

One night, a team could be playing in front of nearly 18,000 people at Madison Square Garden. Days later, it could take the court in a high school gym in Fort Wayne, or Anderson, or the Sheboygan Municipal Auditorium and Armory, a Works Progress Administration-built facility that had a stage at one end of the playing floor.

Already behind a variety of sports in popularity, the NBA’s ugly play had a tough time finding an audience.

The rule change that changed everything

After years of an unsteady existence, the NBA surprisingly needed a mere 24 seconds to stabilize itself.

Plagued by slowdown tactics, the most famous being the Fort Wayne Pistons’ 19-18 win over the Minneapolis Lakers in November 1950, the NBA sought a solution. They found it in Syracuse, thanks to Nationals’ owner Danny Biasone and general manager Leo Ferris.

They came up with the idea of a 24-second shot clock. Like the forward pass saved football and the rabbit ball saved Major League Baseball, the idea and the implementation of the shot clock saved the NBA.

By the time the NBA introduced the shot clock, the league was down to nine teams. The clock didn’t help the 1948 champion Baltimore Bullets, who folded 14 games into the 1954-55 season, leaving the NBA with eight teams: Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Syracuse in the Eastern Division; Fort Wayne, Milwaukee (now the Hawks formerly of Tri Cities), Minneapolis and Rochester in the Western Division.

But with the shot clock creating a faster, more entertaining NBA, the league would remain at eight teams for seven seasons, the biggest changes being relocation. The Hawks moved to St. Louis. The Pistons moved to Detroit. The Royals moved to Cincinnati. The most seismic of all: The five-time champion Lakers moved to Los Angeles (and kept the Lakers nickname) before the 1960-61 season.

That move opened the West to the NBA, starting a new era.

Windy City, what are you doing?

In 1961, the NBA’s stability was challenged once again when Abe Saperstein, founder of the Harlem Globetrotters, started the American Basketball League. It was a strange twist of fate for the NBA, as the Globetrotters were often scheduled as a doubleheader with NBA games to boost attendance — and often after the NBA games to make sure people would come to the opener.

But with this new eight-team league launching its inaugural season in 1961, the NBA set its eyes on Chicago. The Windy City had an NBA entry, the Stags, that lasted four seasons before folding. With the nation’s then second-largest market open, the NBA chose to return to Chicago and bring the number of teams to nine.

It was a great idea, except for one thing — the nickname.

The team’s home games were scheduled for the International Amphitheater on Chicago’s South Side next to the Union Stock Yards, the national center of the meatpacking industry. The team received hundreds of suggestions but settled on the Chicago Packers, with a steer superimposed over a basketball as the logo.

The issue was (and still is) the NFL team in Green Bay, Wis., with the same name — the team that happened to be bitter rivals with Chicago’s beloved Bears for 40 years prior. It was another small example of the NBA being slightly out of touch with the sporting public back in the day.

The Packers name lasted a season before it was changed to the Zephyrs. (Interestingly enough, the modern three-letter code for the Chicago Zephyrs is CHZ. Even in retrospect, the franchise couldn’t shake the Wisconsin connections.)

The NBA’s second stint in the Second City lasted two seasons. Before the 1963-64 season, the Zephyrs moved to Baltimore and changed their name to the Bullets, becoming the second franchise in Maryland’s biggest city with the Bullets moniker. The NBA, however, kept the Bullets in the Western Division, an awkward decision after the NBA’s other huge move the following season.

That’s when Warriors founder Eddie Gottlieb took Wilt Chamberlain — and his 50.4 points-per-game average — and the Warriors to San Francisco to give the NBA two teams on the West Coast before the 1962-63 season. Of the three teams remaining from the first BAA season in 1946-47, the Warriors are the only team not in its original city.

To replace the Warriors, the Syracuse Nationals moved to Philly before the 1963-64 season to become the 76ers.

The NBA would remain a nine-team league until …

Chicago returns, but so does competition

For the third time, the NBA cast its lot with Chicago, as the better-named Bulls entered the league before the 1966-67 season. Not only did it bring the league to 10 teams for the first time since the 1952-53 season, but it restored some geographic logic, as the Bulls played in the Western Division and the Bullets moved to the East.

This time, the NBA and Chicago worked out. The Bulls are the third-oldest franchise still in its original city behind the Celtics and the Knicks.

But also for a second time in less than a decade, the NBA faced a challenge to its pro basketball hegemony, as the American Basketball Association debuted with nine teams in 1967-68. The ABA’s arrival accelerated the basketball arms race between the leagues for players — 1967 NBA scoring champ Rick Barry left the Warriors for the ABA’s Oakland Oaks — and for locations.

In the same season the ABA debuted, the NBA added the San Diego Rockets and the Seattle SuperSonics. The Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns were added in 1968-69. That same season, St. Louis lost its second NBA team, this time to Atlanta. For 1970-71 season, the Cleveland Cavaliers, Buffalo Braves and Portland Trail Blazers joined the league. The next season, the Rockets moved to Houston, and the Warriors moved across the Bay to Oakland and became Golden State.

Before the 1972-73 season, the Royals, who originated in Rochester, N.Y., would move from Cincinnati to Kansas City, Mo., and Omaha, Neb., playing home games in two towns in two states and rebranding themselves as the Kansas City-Omaha Kings. Meanwhile, Baltimore would lose its second NBA team when the Bullets moved to Washington to become the Capital Bullets in 1973-74. The next season, the NBA would make its first foray into New Orleans with the Jazz and the Bullets franchise would change its name again, this time to the Washington Bullets.

The KC-Omaha arrangement would last for three seasons before the Kings settled in Kansas City for a majority of their games before the 1975-76 season. That NBA season featured 18 teams, nine apiece for the Eastern and Western conferences.

The ABA, however, was struggling and hoping for a merger between the two leagues. Only four of the ABA’s seven teams in 1975-76, its final season, would survive.

The merger, then Magic, Bird and MJ

Fifty years ago, before the 1976-77 season, the NBA absorbed four teams from the now-defunct ABA — the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New York Nets and San Antonio Spurs — bringing the number of teams to 22.

The league, which was struggling financially and showing some NBA Finals games on tape delay, remained at 22 teams for four seasons, but the Nets moved to New Jersey in 1977, and the Braves moved to San Diego in 1978 and became the Clippers. The Jazz moved to Utah in ’79 and, like the Lakers nearly two decades earlier, decided to keep another region’s nickname as its own.

Before the 1980-81 season, the NBA added a third team to Texas, as the Dallas Mavericks debuted and were placed in the Western Conference. While this would seem logical, it also helped the NBA correct some strange groupings as the league moved the Rockets and Spurs from the Eastern Conference to the West and the Bulls and Bucks to the East.

And while the Mavericks were formed before the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird, Lakers-Celtics rivalry took full flight, the presence of those two superstars, with others such as Julius Erving, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone and, soon, Isiah Thomas, Dominique Wilkins and, most importantly and famously, Michael Jordan, helped lift the NBA to heights of popularity it had never seen before.

Aside from the Kings moving from Kansas City to Sacramento and the Clippers moving to Los Angeles, the league was stable, remaining at 23 teams until the 1988-89 and 1989-90 seasons. In those two seasons, the NBA added the Charlotte Hornets and Miami Heat in ’88, then the Orlando Magic and Minnesota Timberwolves in ’89. Six seasons later, the NBA would go international, adding the Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies to the mix, bringing the number of teams to 29.

Those Grizzlies would move to Memphis in 2001, and the Hornets would move to New Orleans in 2002. The league would replace the Hornets with the Bobcats in Charlotte before the 2004-05 season.

Since adding the Bobcats (now the Hornets after the New Orleans Hornets rebranded as the Pelicans in 2013), the league has remained at 30 teams, the longest the NBA has remained at the same number of teams in its history.

It also brings us full circle to potential future expansion in Seattle.

How Katrina changed the NBA

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the NBA’s Hornets and the NFL’s Saints had to find other cities in which to play home games as the region tried to recover and rebuild.

The Hornets found a temporary home in Oklahoma City for two seasons, playing 71 of their next 82 home games in the Oklahoma state capital. (The Hornets played one home game in Norman, Okla., in 2005, then 10 games in New Orleans spread over the two seasons.)

While Oklahoma City provided a haven for the Hornets, it also proved to the NBA that a franchise could survive there. According to ESPN, the Hornets averaged 4,000 more fans in OKC than in NOLA and twice the gate.

When the Hornets returned to New Orleans for the 2007-08 season, Oklahoma City didn’t have a team. But it showed the NBA it was prepared for one. And it would soon have a franchise of its own.

In 2006, Clay Bennett bought the SuperSonics from Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz for $350 million. After contentious negotiations around the renovation of what was then Key Arena, Bennett petitioned the NBA to relocate the Sonics to Oklahoma. In April 2008, the NBA’s Board of Governors OK’d the move to OKC. In July 2008, the city of Seattle and Bennett reached an agreement to allow the Sonics to leave.

“As part of the deal,” The New York Times reported, “Seattle retains the Sonics name, logo and colors for a possible future NBA team.”

So if or when the NBA returns to The Emerald City, expect the team to be named the SuperSonics. The brand remains strong, and the connection between the Sonics and its fans even stronger.

Since that relocation before the 2008-09 season, the only thing that has changed in the NBA is the names of the teams in New Orleans and Charlotte. No teams have moved cities, conferences or even divisions during that time. It marks the longest stretch of stability in the NBA — a league born out of chaos more than 80 years ago.

And thanks to that steadiness, the league seems ready to return to a city it never should have left and roll the dice in a crowded Vegas market.