EPISODE 242: Pittsburgh's Civic Arena ("The Igloo") - With Dave Finoli

Our "tour" of lost pro sports venues continues with another stop in the Keystone State, this time for a loving look back at the life and times of Pittsburgh's legendary Civic Arena - aka "The Igloo" - with Steel City native Dave Finoli (editor, "Pittsburgh's Civic Arena: Stories from the Igloo").

Originally constructed in 1961 for the city's Civic Light Opera, the Arena was an ahead-of-its-time architectural marvel - distinctively adorned by a massive 3,000-ton retractable steel-roof dome that was world's first of its kind - making not just an attractive venue for music and entertainment, but big-time sports of all kinds.

Over time, the Igloo became synonymous with its longest-running tenant - the NHL's Penguins - who became the building's main occupant as an expansion franchise in 1967, and saw three (of its total five) Stanley Cup title runs.

But, of course, we remember the other teams that also called the Civic Arena home - including: basketball's Rens, Pipers & Condors; World Team Tennis' Triangles; soccer's Spirit & Stingers; arena football's Gladiators; lacrosse's Bulls & CrosseFire; and even roller hockey's oft-forgotten Phantoms.

And don't forget Dr. J's Pisces too!

Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena: Stories From the Igloo - buy book here

EPISODE 232: DC Hoops History - With Brett Abrams

It's a return to the Nation's Capital this week as we take a romp through Washington, DC's surprisingly rich pro basketball history with Brett Abrams (The Bullets, the Wizards, and Washington, DC Basketball).

While today's astute District hoops fans know the current Washington Wizards were once known as the Bullets - the name under which the franchise won its one and only NBA title back in 1978, and from which it converted to its mystically less violence-connoted label in 1997 - lesser devotees of the team are aware of its previous home (Baltimore: 1963-73), let alone its origins as the NBA's first-ever expansion club in 1961, the Chicago Packers.

Of course, true Washington basketball connoisseurs know the city's relationship with the professional game runs far deeper - dating all the way back to the mid-1920s American Basketball League "Palace Five" - owned by future Washington NFL football owner George Preston Marshall.

And in between, a host of teams - all domiciled in the NE quadrant's history-drenched Washington Coliseum (née Uline Arena) - attempted to keep pro hoops in the local sports spotlight:

• The Red Auerbach-coached Capitols (1946-51) of the NBA-antecedent Basketball Association of America;

• The half-season-lasting Tapers of Abe Saperstein's not-much-longer-lasting "new" American Basketball League (1961); and

• The exceedingly curious single season (1969-70) American Basketball Association "Caps" - the peripatetic franchise that began its life (along with the ABA's) in 1967 as the Oakland Oaks, and ended as the regionally-oriented Virginia Squires until the league's demise in 1976.

The Bullets, The Wizards, and Washington, DC Basketball - buy book here

EPISODE 223: ABA Hoops & More - With Jim O'Brien

Pittsburgh’s dean of sportswriters Jim O’Brien (Looking Up: From the ABA to the NBA the WNBA to the NCAA - A Basketball Memoir; Looking Up Again - A Basketball Memoir) has seen it all in his more than 50 years of chronicling stories across the pro and collegiate sports landscape - but perhaps no more deeply than in basketball, and in more detailed fashion than during the old American Basketball Association.

Throughout the life of the league, you could find O’Brien’s reliable ABA reportage and musings seemingly everywhere: essential weekly columns in The Sporting News; meticulous pre-season team & player profiles in the annual Complete Handbook of Pro Basketball; and the hugely influential Street & Smith’s Basketball Yearbook (which he co-founded in 1970) - where he strove to ensure the challenger circuit's coverage was equal to that of the legacy NBA's.

We merely scratch the surface of O'Brien's treasure trove of stories from the old "red-white-and-blue" in this week's episode - where you'll hear personal reminiscences of legendary ABA figures like Connie Hawkins, Julius Erving, and (Episode 132 guest) Dan Issel; the significance of the former league's recent fiftieth anniversary; and why Pittsburgh was (both in the antecedent American Basketball League, and thrice-versioned in the ABA), and then wasn't a great pro hoops city.

Looking Up: From the ABA to the NBA, the WNBA to the NCAA - A Memoir - buy book here

EPISODE 207: Basketball's Philadelphia SPHAs - With Doug Stark

International Tennis Hall of Fame Museum director Doug Stark (The SPHAs: The Life and Times of Basketball's Greatest Jewish Team) joins this week's 'cast for an authoritative exploration of one of his first loves - pro basketball's pioneering Philadelphia SPHAs.

Originally organized in 1918 as a local amateur team by South Philadelphia High School grads Eddie Gottlieb, Harry Passon and Hughie Black - and acronymically named for their early uniform sponsors, the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association - the SPHAs rose from a regional amateur league power in the 1920s to become an early avatar for professional basketball dominance in the 1930s & 40s.

With home games played in the ballroom of Philly's Broadwood Hotel (replete with customary singles dances afterwards), the SPHAs became a sensation in the local Jewish social scene, and soon graduated (under the guidance of Gottlieb) to winning titles in various early pro hoops leagues like the Eastern League and Abe Saperstein's American Basketball League - while beating legendary teams like Boston's Original Celtics and New York's Renaissance Five along the way. In the ABL alone, the SPHAs captured seven titles in their 13 years of play between 1933-45, and were runners-up twice.

In 1946, the NBA-forerunning Basketball Association of America debuted, and the ABL ceased to be a major league. With Gottlieb establishing the Philadelphia Warriors as his BAA franchise, the SPHAs continued with the minor league ABL and as a touring opponent of the Saperstein's barnstorming Harlem Globetrotters. Gottlieb sold the team in 1950 to former SPHAs star Red Klotz, who changed the name to the Washington Generals.

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The SPHAs: The Life and Times of Basketball’s Greatest Jewish Team - buy book here

EPISODE 201: Eddie "The Mogul" Gottlieb - With Rich Westcott

Philadelphia's dean of baseball writers Rich Westcott ("The Mogul: Eddie Gottlieb, Philadelphia Sports Legend and Pro Basketball Pioneer") steps outside the batter's box this week to help us go deep into the story of one of pro basketball's most foundational figures, Eddie Gottlieb.

Armed with a great smile and a razor-sharp memory, the Ukranian-born and South Philly-raised Gottlieb was a multi-faceted hoops pioneer - rules innovator, successful coach, masterful promoter, and logistics wizard - whose tactical talents and business acumen gave rise to what would ultimately evolve into today's NBA.

In 1918, Gottlieb organized and coached a social club-sponsored amateur team for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association (SPHA) that he grew into a regionally dominant and ultimately professional powerhouse; from the late 1920s to early 1940s, the SPHAs dominated the original Eastern and American Basketball Leagues, winning multiple championships and regularly beating prominent touring clubs like the Original Celtics and the New York Renaissance Five (Rens).

In 1946, Gottlieb helped establish a new professional league - the Basketball Association of America. As owner, general manager, coach, and "promoter-in-chief" of the league's Philadelphia Warriors, he won the BAA’s first championship in 1946-47.

Three seasons later, Gottlieb played a pivotal role in the merger of the BAA with the National Basketball League to form the National Basketball Association, where his Warriors would win a second league crown in 1956, and to which he would later add the groundbreaking talents of one Wilt Chamberlain in 1959.

After selling the team in 1962, Gottleib became the NBA's "Mr. Basketball" - the definitive and authoritative resource spanning league rules, history, scheduling, and operations - until his death in 1979.  He is immortalized not only as a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, but also as the name on the trophy given annually to the NBA's Rookie of the Year.

The Mogul: Eddie Gottlieb, Philadelphia Sports Legend and Pro Basketball Pioneer - buy book here

EPISODE 171: Pittsburgh's Pro Hoops History – With Stephen J. Nesbitt

Pittsburgh-based The Athletic sportswriter Stephen J. Nesbitt (“How the Pipers, Condors and Pro Basketball in Pittsburgh Went Extinct”) joins to help us dig into the surprisingly rich (though mostly woeful) history of professional hoops in the Steel City.

Though the game has long thrived at the collegiate level (Pitt’s Panthers began playing in 1905; the Duquesne Dukes in 1914), the city’s record of success at the pro level has been distinctly more fleeting.  In fact, some would argue it was never better than the pre-integration Black Fives era of the 1910s/20s, when eventual Naismith Hall of Famer Cumberland Posey led his Monticello (1912) and Loendi Big Five (1919-23) clubs to five “Colored” Basketball World Championships.

As professional (and eventually integrated) leagues took root in the decades that followed, Pittsburgh’s attractive demographic profile made it a natural choice for inaugural – yet ultimately short-lived – franchises in virtually every major hardwood circuit that came calling, including:

• The never-playoff-qualifying Pirates (1937-39) and re-born Raiders (1944-45) of the NBA-precedent National Basketball League;

• The lamentable Ironmen (1947-48) of the NBA tributary Basketball Association of America;

• The Connie Hawkins-led Renaissance (“Rens”) of the one-and-a-half-season (1961-62) American Basketball League; and especially;

• The head-scratching Pipers of the legendary American Basketball Association – who, despite winning the league’s first championship behind regular-season and playoff MVP Hawkins in 1968 – relocated to Minneapolis, moved back to Pittsburgh, and finally re-branded as the “Condors” for two forgettable last seasons (1970-72).

With a checkered pro history like that, it’s little wonder that the basketball team most memorably associated with the City of Bridges wasn’t even a real club – the Pittsburgh Pisces (née Pythons) of the 1979 sports/disco fantasy cult film classic The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh.

               

The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh - rent via Amazon Prime here

The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh - buy DVD here

The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh - buy soundtrack here

The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh - buy book here

EPISODE #20: George Steinbrenner’s Cleveland Pipers with Sportswriter Bill Livingston

Award-winning Cleveland Plain Dealer sports columnist Bill Livingston (George Steinbrenner’s Pipe Dream: The ABL Champion Cleveland Pipers) joins Tim Hanlon to delve deeper into the history of the ill-fated 1960s American Basketball League – this time through the lens of one of its (and ultimately, one of pro sports’) most combustible figures.  Livingston describes how Pipers owner (and future New York Yankees “Boss”) George Steinbrenner:  

• Retooled a local Cleveland industrial amateur team into a fledgling pro club with NBA ambitions;

• Traded a player at halftime of a league game, and fired his collegiate hall-of-fame coach in mid-season – and still won a championship;

• Convinced a risk-averse college star named Jerry Lucas to spurn surefire NBA stardom with the Cincinnati Royals for partial ownership/oversight of an ambitious, yet financially wobbly ABL franchise; AND

• Outmaneuvered a similarly-aspirant Abe Saperstein in the race to secure a coveted NBA franchise, only to hasten the demise of the ABL and the financial viability of the Pipers in the process.

Thank you Audible for sponsoring this week’s episode!

George Steinbrenner's Pipe Dream: The ABL Champion Cleveland Pipers - buy book here

EPISODE #17: Abe Saperstein & the American Basketball League with Author Murry Nelson

Penn State University professor emeritus Murry Nelson (Abe Saperstein and the American Basketball League: The Upstarts Who Shot for Three and Lost to the NBA) joins Tim Hanlon to discuss the oft-forgotten second incarnation of the ABL – and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer who willed it into being.  In this hidden gem of an episode, Nelson describes:

• How the master promoter of the legendary Harlem Globetrotters attempted to parlay his influence in pro basketball circles into securing his own West Coast NBA franchise, only to be rebuffed;

• How the advent of reliable and speedy commercial air travel encouraged Saperstein to not only launch the upstart ABL, but with franchises in virgin pro basketball territories like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Honolulu, Hawaii;

• The peripatetic Washington-to-New York-to-Philadelphia Tapers, whose owner also secretly owned the relatively stable Pittsburgh Rens, featuring league superstar and future Hall of Famer Connie Hawkins;

• Why the ABL’s (and Saperstein-owned) Chicago Majors outdrew the more-established NBA’s cross-town Packers; AND

• How an ambitious young shipbuilding scion named George Steinbrenner engineered a championship for his Cleveland Pipers franchise, only to sink the ABL the following season with an ill-fated plot to secretly bolt to the NBA. 

This week’s episode is sponsored by our friends at Audible!

Abe Saperstein and the American Basketball League: The Upstarts Who Shot for Three and Lost to the NBA - buy book here