ABA–NBA merger
Merger that united two rival basketball leagues in 1976.
In 1976, the American Basketball Association (ABA) merged with the National Basketball Association (NBA) after years of negotiations, marking a major shift in professional basketball. The two leagues had first entered merger talks in 1970, but those efforts were stalled by an antitrust lawsuit, Robertson v. National Basketball Ass'n, filed by the head of the NBA players union, which prevented the merger from happening until 1976.
Under the final agreement, the NBA absorbed four of the six remaining ABA franchises: the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New York Nets, and San Antonio Spurs. The other two teams, the Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis, folded, and their players were placed into a dispersal draft. A seventh team, the Virginia Squires, had hoped to join the merger talks but ceased operations a month before the merger could be finalized, after failing to make a required assessment payment to the ABA during the 1976 playoffs—despite not being in the postseason that year.
Early merger attempts began almost immediately after the ABA’s founding. The league’s officials, hoping to replicate the AFL–NFL merger, told prospective owners that an ABA franchise cost half as much as an NBA expansion team and predicted that a merger would more than double their investment. In 1968, the ABA gained leverage when a disgruntled former NBA employee leaked a document detailing the 1968 NBA draft order, player salaries, and the amounts each NBA team contributed to ensure college stars signed with the NBA rather than the ABA. (The ABA itself engaged in similar practices but avoided writing them down as explicitly.) The ABA had no long-term survival plan, expecting to last only three to five years before either merging with the NBA or folding.
Unlike the earlier AFL or the later World Hockey Association (founded by some of the same people), the ABA found NBA owners relatively open to a merger early on. On June 18, 1970, NBA owners voted 13–4 in favor—barely meeting the required three-quarters majority—while ABA owners voted unanimously 11–0 to seek congressional approval for an antitrust exemption, aiming to create a single 28-team league under the NBA name.
Quick Facts
- Field
- Professional basketball
- Known for
- Combining the ABA and NBA into a single league in 1976
Facts from the source article.
Background
From the very beginning, the ABA hoped to force a merger with the NBA, thus repeating the American Football League's successful effort to force a merger with the National Football League. According to The NBA Encyclopedia, ABA officials told prospective owners that they could get an ABA team for half of what it cost to get an NBA expansion team at the time. The upstart league's officials confidently predicted that if and when a merger occurred, any surviving owners would see their investment more than double. The ABA would get their first and strongest case to try and get a successful merger with the NBA ready by as early as 1968 when they discovered a document that was leaked by a disgruntled ex-employee of the NBA that talked about the order of the 1968 NBA draft, the names of the teams and the players they'd receive, the amount each player would be paid, and most damaging to the NBA and favorable for the ABA, how much each NBA team was to contribute in order to make sure the college stars signed with the NBA instead of with the ABA.
On June 18, 1970, only three years after the ABA began play, the NBA owners voted 13–4, while the ABA owners unanimously voted 11–0 to jointly seek approval from the U.S. Congress to pass an exception to existing antitrust law in order to merge the rivaling circuits into a single, 28-team league that would retain the NBA name. A revised agreement would initially be reached a year later on May 4, 1971. That revised merger was approved by the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, but the NBA's own reserve clause was considered illegal and thus could not be a part of the merger. Later amendments by the Senate to address that issue were ultimately rejected by both leagues. That would be the last serious attempt at a merger by the two leagues until 1976, following the resolution of another antitrust lawsuit led by Oscar Robertson combined with the ABA losing multiple teams during their final season of existence.
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