Part 2: Why isn’t minor league basketball taken seriously?

(editor's note: After some minor site difficulties, we are now fully operational at our brand spankin' new webhost. We're celebrating this outstanding acheivement in the field of excellence by continuing our series on the wonders of minor league basketball. This entry was written entirely by co-bloggist draftmocker and I found nothing to add of my own, so enjoy!)

To get you up to speed, we're contemplating the state of minor league basketball. For the first in this series, click here.

And to finish up the series, I give you...the Eastern Division



Norfolk/Virginia Beach (1.65 million people, no teams): While this area is kind of spread out, it has a very nice arena in the Hampton Coliseum, more or less centrally located. Hampton is also close enough to draw from Richmond.

Greensboro/Winston-Salem (1.11 million people, no teams): Neither of these cities are huge (both about half a million), but they’re pretty close together. Raleigh-Durham might seem like a better choice in that they’re bigger and have better facilities, but they have the ACC trinity in Duke, UNC, and NC State within metro limits. There’s nothing like that in Greensboro-Winston-Salem. On the other hand, the Hurricanes’ arena in Raleigh may make that a better pick. Either way, there should be a team in central NC.

Hartford (1.19 million people, no teams): If you put the arena on the south side of Hartford, you can draw from New Haven (800k people). If you put the arena on the north side of Hartford, you can draw from Springfield, Mass (600k people). If you use the Whalers’ old arena, you don’t have to build a new one.

Louisville (1.2 million people, no teams): Louisville made a serious run at the Hornets and the Grizzlies when both teams were moving. Freedom Hall would make a decent facility, basketball is big in both Indiana and Kentucky, and Rick Pitino could fulfill his desire to coach in the NBA without leaving town or dealing with egos larger than his.

Columbus (1.7 million people, 1 team): I originally had Dayton in this slot, but Columbus is significantly bigger and has the Blue Jackets arena to poach. While there is some competition from OSU basketball, I don’t expect the Oden era to last 4 years.

Rochester (1.04 million people, no teams): While the population figures are extremely generous (I would put the number closer to 700k), and the city’s slowly dying, there used to have an ABA franchise in Rochester. If it doesn’t work out, they can always move. Also, according to the city website, they have a professional women’s football team. Any city which will support that will go see NBDL games.

Grand Rapids (768,000 people, no teams): Grand Rapids is a lot like Dayton or Toledo, but slightly bigger. Beyond geographic balance and lack of competition, there’s no great reason to put a team here, but it is close enough to Lansing and Kalamazoo to pull additional people from those cities. Franchise player: Mateen Cleaves.

Birmingham (1.01 million people, no teams): Birmingham is growing rapidly for no clear reason, and the megachurches desperately need some competition. Putting a basketball team in town satisfies everyone, as it provides both entertainment and something new to demonize.

Greenville/Spartanburg, SC (848,000 people, no teams): While it’s never good to have to put a state name after the city to make it clear which one you’re talking about it, this is actually a pretty busy area. Some of the outlying area is closer to Charlotte, and it might make more sense to bust the Bobcats down to the D-league- but since that’s not going to happen, this seems as good a place as any for a team.

Jacksonville (1.23 million people, 1 team): How does Jacksonville have an NFL team, again? I’m not sure about this last choice. It’s partially for geographic balance, because it seems like a bad idea to leave Florida unrepresented (and the closest other choice was Albany, which is too much like Rochester), and partially because it was one of the largest cities on here. Still, I’d feel better about putting a team in a place like Peoria, if only it were bigger. Not that there’s a reason for Peoria to be bigger. Jacksonville it is.

Other options considered: Cincinnati, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Nashville, and Tampa were all eliminated due to overrepresentation (and, in the case of Pittsburgh at least, failure to justify the existence of existing franchises). It would be something of an embarrassment to Tampa to have an NBDL team out-draw the Devil Rays; Cincinnati already has a team of professional-caliber miscreants, and putting a team in Buffalo would almost guarantee it a shitty name, like the Horns or the Herd. Nashville has redeeming qualities, but there’s already a lot to do there. Baltimore is like the Oakland of the East coast- we know it’s there, and it’s big and all, but have you ever heard anybody excitedly talking about their next trip to Baltimore? Like Oakland to San Francisco, Baltimore is the poorer, blacker sibling of Washington, DC, which is already very poor and very black. Not that poverty or blackitude is grounds for dismissal, it’s just overrepresented with teams as is.

Dayton: Very nearly got the nod over Columbus, mostly due to lack of representation in teams and proximity to Cincy suburbs. Would still be a decent pick, but we can’t have teams in both Dayton and Columbus. Or Toledo, also considered.

Albany: I considered this one instead of Jacksonville, but it seemed hard to justify two teams in upstate NY. I also insisted earlier that this would be a better site than Rochester, but after thinking about it more I’m not really sure. It always surprises me how many people live in those places (Syracuse, too).

Providence: Somehow, the census bureau puts 1.6 million people living in the Providence metro area, which is almost twice the population of Rhode Island. Until they can get their facts straight, they don’t deserve consideration.

New Haven: The home of Yale, and of smack. Too close to Hartford.

Syracuse: See Albany.

Madison: I like Madison, but it’s not big enough yet, and UW’s in town. It’s not fair to Bo Ryan to put a more exciting team in his backyard.

Knoxville: Growing like a weed, but full of football-loving bumpkins. No.

Richmond: Too close to Norfolk.

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Why isn’t minor league basketball taken seriously?

(editor's note: the bulk of this post was written by co-bloggist draftmocker. notations have been made when there is disagreement by head bloggist draftmockery)

This question grew out of a conversation that we had around three years ago, while sitting in our house of office (Duddley’s Draw) in College Station, TX. It was shortly after Isaiah had been hired as the GM of the Knicks, and we were laughing over how he kept getting put in charge of things after destroying the CBA. This turned the conversation to a more serious note- why did the CBA fail, and why had nothing replaced it, as basketball was clearly in need of a minor league? The proto-NBDL had existed for a year or two, playing and failing miserably in places like Roanoke, VA, Fayetteville, NC, and Minot, ND (!), but it was clear that a better minor league was both necessary and feasible, and we set about designing it.

As both of us have serious, disturbing-to-our-friends political wonkish tendencies, we went about this by trying to establish simple standards for a league (How many teams? Divisions? Playoffs? If so, how?) and then tried to come up with the most logical places to put teams. We looked at geographic balance, population figures, average income levels, representation by other pro franchises (NFL, MLB, and grudgingly, NHL), and regional popularity/tradition (i.e. Ft. Wayne might be a better location for a franchise than Lubbock, even though neither city has much in the way of redeeming value). Around a year later, the current incarnation of the NBDL was implemented, and while it represents a clear improvement over its predecessor, we still feel that there is room for improvement. That is, improvement in terms of viability/profitability for the league. We can offer no advice to help Siberian giants develop a consistent jump shot, or to convince people to stay at the University of Memphis for more than a month. One hint to collegians who would really like to play in the Association instead of the D: Stop stabbing people. And stop calling ex-girlfriends 200 times in one night.

For the league, we decided to go with a 2-division (West and East), 20-team format, with a short playoff between teams 1-4 in each division, winners playing for the championship (and a 10-day contract). Each NBA franchise would be required to commit at least three players to their developmental franchise, and second-round picks would be guaranteed contracts (albeit shitty ones). Teams without picks in a draft would be obligated to sign undrafted free agents to fill their roster slots, assuming that they didn’t have picks carrying over from prior years that they wanted to keep developing. Here, then, are our picks for which cities should have franchises in an updated NBDL, and the rationale behind our choices.



First, the Western Division.

Western Division (10 teams)

Las Vegas (1.66 million people, no teams): Someone has to put a franchise here eventually. While Vegas won’t always be the fastest-growing city in the country, it’s the largest city without a professional franchise, and will hit 2 million people sometime in the next ten years. Also, while the residents of Vegas aren’t particularly wealthy, tens of thousands of people fly there every day to spend money. You think that some tourists might catch a game while they’re in town? It might actually make more sense to dissolve UNLV (the nominal university behind the basketball team) and promote the college program to the league. They already have a NBDL coach in Lon Kruger, the man with three eyebrows. The biggest reason to put a team here would be to take advantage of the population explosion and possibly priming the city for an NBA franchise. The biggest disadvantage would be Keeping budding D-leaguers focused and out of the casinos. For both the residents and the visitors…there’s a lot to do in Vegas. Why go see minor league hoops?


Austin (1.4 million people, no teams): Austin is another example of a city that’s growing rapidly and lacking any representation in the world of professional sports. In all fairness to the league, there’s already an NBDL franchise here, where you can go to see Marcus Fizer dominate the proceedings like the seasoned journeyman he is. Arguments against Austin include the fact that there’s already a lot to do there, diminishing the lure of a subpar pro team a bit, and that the University of Texas is as close to a professional organization as you can find in college sports (football more so than basketball). Could minor league hoops help in “keeping Austin weird” or would the hipsters who have made Round Rock’s Dell Diamond the best ballpark in minor league baseball ignore it? A better choice in Texas might be Ft. Worth. While Dallas overshadows it in the metroplex, there’s a long-established metropolitan structure (as compared to Austin, which basically grew out of the state capitol/university area and hasn’t stopped growing. Plus, with 5 million or more in the metro area (which has long been a hotbed for talent) it’s probably not that far of a stretch to think that 6,000 or so would come to the Stockyards for minor league basketball.

Tucson (900,000 people, no teams): When did Tucson get this big? The University of Arizona is here, which could be seen as a potential drawback for attendance. On the other hand, they produce about one not-as-good-as-expected pro per year (Miles Simon, Loren Woods, Michael Dickerson, I’m looking at you guys), so they could benefit from the hometown support. Tucson probably doesn’t have designs on being a major league city, and in this case it helps them quite a bit. It’s not too much of a stretch to hope that a fevered following of Wildcat hoops could possibly bleed over into support for a minor league team.

Albuquerque (781,000 people, no teams): U.S. News and World Report recently ranked Albuquerque as the sixth-best place to live in the country. I can only conclude from this information that they’ve never been to Albuquerque. Why, then, include it on this list? Well, mostly for reasons of geographic balance. While it’s big, it’s also poor- but it’s better than El Paso, which is the other potential pick for this geographic region. One benefit is that they have the facilities for it- and I believe that they have an NBDL team at the moment, proving that someone in the front office is thinking about geographic balance. Albuquerque is a lot like Tucson in that nobody expects them to be contending for major league status and if a tie can be made to the glory days of Lobo hoops, this could be a very successful franchise. Leave Dave Bliss out of this, though.

Riverside/San Bernardino (3.8 million people (!), no teams*): To say that there are 3.8 people living in Riverside and San Bernardino is pretty ridiculous. SB county is the size of New England, there’s not a whole lot going on in either city, and we can basically conclude that the residents of both are trying to live in LA, and are as close to that as they can afford to get. By that logic, why not give them an NBDL team? Sure, they won’t be the Lakers- but they could be the Lakers affiliate! Also, Riverside/SB/Ontario are far enough out from central LA that they function as an independent system for fouling traffic. That counts as a city to me. Would the citizens of the Inland Empire look down their noses at the D league? And would model/bartenders and waitress/actresses rather see games close to their homes or would they rather take out a third mortgage to sit within shouting distance of Jack Nicholson or Billy Crystal?

Omaha (804,000 people, no teams): Somewhere in middle America, right to the heart of the matter, etc. Omaha could serve as a place of exile for ex-Cincinnati players- upon being drafted, all of them are assigned to Omaha. It would go a long way towards making both the players’ lives and Nebraska more interesting. Also, there are facilities available, and Omaha’s close enough to draw from Lincoln, another 250k people.

Fresno (867,000 people, no teams): Another large city in the middle of nowhere, without much going on. There are a lot of these in California, but Fresno seems like a better place than a team for most, even if the median income is kind of low. It’s higher than Bakersfield, which was the other option (also, it’s further from LA and closer to SF). The only drawback is that people might equate basketball in Fresno with players attacking people with swords. Or maybe that’s just me.

Boise (525,000 people, no teams): The smallest of the cities selected so far, this seems like a bit of a stretch. However, consider these factors- the city is growing very quickly (it was about 150,000 people as recently as 15 years ago), and most of its new population is made up of rich and idle Californians. Like Austin, it’s a relatively young and wealthy city that seems likely to continue growing, and Boise State isn’t going to provide much competition for viewers. Boise also adds a degree of geographic balance to a division that is heavily weighted towards the Sun Belt. A successful stint in the CBA that led to a spot in the real NBDL is enough to justify their existence in minor league basketball.

Little Rock (637,000 people, no teams): While Little Rock isn’t very big, it has an established ABA team which draws very well (and which will be integrated into the NBDL next year), and good facilities. The potential for growth isn’t as high as it is for some cities, but knowing that the fans will show up is good for something. This could possibly be a model franchise given the love for basketball in Arkansas. What’s Nolan Richardson doing these days anyway? Are all his lawsuits completed by now? Make him coach and GM and sit back and count the money.

Oklahoma City/New Orleans/Seattle/Portland (many people, team situations varied): It looks like one of these cities is going to be left out when the music stops. If that city is Seattle, Portland, or Oklahoma City, the logical choice is to put a team there. If the city without a team is New Orleans…then things get more complicated. I personally don’t believe that New Orleans will remain viable as a major city, and that it will continue its sharp decline as it is repeatedly flattened and flooded by hurricanes. Baton Rouge may pick up some of the people, but I’m not sure that basketball has a future in Louisiana. None of these cities really want a minor league basketball team. They’re established as major league cities and to put a franchise in a fledgling league would be a waste of money.

Other options considered: It seems strange that big western cities like St. Louis, Kansas City, and San Diego don’t have NBA teams, but obviously there’s not enough talent around to justify expanding the league, and aside from the current carousel in New Orleans/Oklahoma City, which is spreading to Seattle and to Portland, things seem pretty stable around the league. I think that St. Louis will eventually end up with a team, as they have a beautiful facility (Savvis Center) for it, and a large, enthusiastic fan base. Kansas City has similar positives. All three have had NBA franchises in the past, which might make the league pause in moving teams to the cities…but I wouldn’t have predicted that basketball would have worked in OKC, and it seems to be going fine. Here are the other cities I considered, and why I decided against them.

Tulsa: This one was the hardest to pass up, because there are close to a million people in Tulsa and just over a million in OKC. The cities are about an hour apart, and OKC’s really spread out- if there were a suitable bridge city, a la Trenton or Akron, it might make sense to build a stadium there and draw from both locations. However, if there is a team in OKC, it doesn’t really make sense to put a team in Tulsa.

San Jose: Another tricky one. San Jose’s definitely a part of the SF Bay area, but it represents a separate urban center from the SF-Oakland nexus. They have the Sharks and an MLS team, both of which do pretty well- but it seemed like the Bay Area market is pretty well saturated with teams, and the Warriors don’t do that well. As San Jose is the world’s largest suburb, it makes little sense to plunk a team down in the middle. It might disturb the traffic flow to Chili’s.

Bakersfield: On the one hand, people might go see the games just to get out of the heat, sulfurous stench, and smog. On the other hand, the city is a blistering hellhole, a Californian version of Lubbock. It’s poor, it smells bad, it’s remote, and is at the uncomfortable point of being too large to exist practically, but not large enough to justify its own existence. I wouldn’t wish it on Qyntel Woods or Ruben Patterson.

El Paso: Functionally not so different from Albuquerque, but poorer. Also worth mentioning, can you imagine giving marginal NBA players easy access to Juarez? It’s a bad, bad idea with potentially hilarious results.

Rio Grande Valley/Brownsville: Same basic problems as El Paso. Lots of people, but not much money, and zero urban base.

Baton Rouge: Depends on New Orleans. The Census Bureau says that 727,000 people live in Baton Rouge, which seems as though the estimate might be based on the guesses of LSU athletes. On the good side, they do have the facilities. On the bad side, if there’s a team in New Orleans, there’s no need for a team in Baton Rouge. This is where I (draftmockery) most disagree. I think Baton Rouge is as close to a perfect market as you can get for minor league basketball. There’s always been a ton of homegrown talent here. It’s a budding city that doesn’t have eyes on the major leagues of anything. Even if the choices were Baton Rouge and New Orleans, I’d go for Baton Rouge anyway. Despite the near-loss of New Orleans as a city, I believe New Orleans still has an aura all its own that frankly, would swallow minor league basketball in the same way it could get swallowed in Las Vegas or Austin. While Baton Rouge is a lot like Austin in that its base is the university and the state capital, nobody will ever think of it as a major league city and it is unknown what effect the Katrina-inflicted growing pains will have on the city.

Des Moines: Has potential since there’s nothing to do there, but is small and shrinking.

Wichita: Some potential. Small but established urban base, decent average income, and access to facilities- but doesn’t do much for geographic balance.

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Trust the Gorton's Fisherman!

In one of the oddest managerial changes in recent memory, the New York Islanders fired GM Neil Smith today. It's not altogether odd that the Islanders fired Smith, considering the legions of men who have come to Nassau Coliseum with the best of intentions only to leave bloodied and confused. What is odd is who the Islanders chose to replace him with.

Meet Garth Snow.


Yes, that Garth Snow. He of the giant shoulder pads and with the words "career backup" seemingly permanently attached to his first name. Well, he did have a decent run with the Flyers in the late 90s...or maybe it was the early 00s... I guess his run in Philly wasn't that decent if it can't stay in my gray matter, eh?

I'm not here to question Garth Snow's hockey acumen. (His shoulder pads, maybe.) And I'm not here to question Charles Wang's business acumen. He's owned more hockey teams than I have. All I'm saying is that when it came time to find a new GM, Wang chose the guy on the end of the bench, sitting on that little step above everyone else. The guy with the fresh towel around his neck. The one with the half-empty water bottle who spends most of his evening at the arena looking up at the Jumbotron.

Doesn't that strike you as a bid odd? What if this trend is picked up in the other major North American team sports? Is Ozzie Newsome on the verge of being replaced as the Ravens GM by Kyle Boller? Does Joe Dumars have to look over his shoulder to see if Carlos Delfino is going to take his job? Is Brian Cashman worried that Kelly Stinnett is going to see the Boss behind his back?

There's been some questionable coach/GM decisions made to be sure. The post-Pat Riley era was pretty bizarre for the Lakers. Some worked out, even if it was with another team (Randy Pfund, polishing a ring as the GM of the newly crowned Heat) and some didn't work out at all and the remnants were never heard from again. (Bill Bertka, please pick up a white courtesy phone.) I think it's safe to say that the aforementioned examples both featured longtime, experienced people in the league who had paid their dues and worked their way up. And it's not like former athletes (star or otherwise) have all been busts. Mike Scioscia's made a nice name for himself as a manager, and you can easily find former players who have shown they can handle running operations quite successfully...that Larry Bird guy's had his ups and downs, but he's done alright running the Pacers.

However, in the new era of sports (1980-present) has there ever been someone who went straight from the playing field to the front office? Even Michael Jordan, arguably the best player in any team sport ever had problems in his first front office stint and couldn't get back on the floor fast enough. The other possible "best ever" is Wayne Gretzky, and he wisely tip-toed lightly into sports management, first taking the reigns of Team Canada before joining the Coyotes. So, is Charles Wang and the Islanders hierarchy telling me that Wayne freaking Gretzky couldn't skate from his last shift to the front office, but Garth Snow can? I don't buy it.

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Projecting the draft class of '06

Finally, after a nice solid 2 weeks or so of digestion, we come to our projections of this year's draft class. There are 2 people collaborating on this blog, and this marks the first contribution of draftmocker. We apologize for the ugliness of the table and for linking to it instead of just posting it, but we didn't spend a combined 14 years in higher education just to learn some fancy html.

To see the table (and we assure you, it's really good) just follow this link.

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