The Nets won the ABA’s final game. Then they were forced to sell the best player in the world just to survive. Yeah, that qualifies as a justification for a curse.
The Nets and Nuggets were the last two teams to play an ABA game: May 13, 1976.
It’s the 50-year anniversary for the final ABA season and the final championship won by the then New York, then New Jersey, then Brooklyn Nets. .
There are four ABA teams that are still in the NBA: Nuggets, Nets, Pacers, and Spurs, the survivors of a league that once reached 12. The Nets are the outlier in that they’re the only team that has not won a championship since the merger in 1976. You’d think a 50th anniversary would be mentioned this year, in some form. It hasn’t happened.
Perhaps it’s uncelebrated for several reasons.
The 50-year anniversary of the merger is less a celebration than a blemished milestone. The NBA didn’t inherit the ABA… it sort of replaced it. The league kept the stars and the style, but erased the branding, records, and much of the acknowledgment that another league helped build the modern game.
“The ABA still lives within the NBA, no question about it,” Erving said in 2016.
Honoring the ABA means revisiting uncomfortable math. Four teams were allowed in. Two were paid to essentially disappear (Kentucky Colonels & Spirits of St. Louis). The Spirits, owned by Ozzie and Daniel Silna, negotiated a television deal so lucrative that until a decade ago it still made airwaves in today’s NBA TV rights.
They got $2.2 million upfront plus a one-seventh share of television revenue from each ABA team that joined the NBA… forever. As NBA broadcasts exploded in the ’80s and ’90s, that tiny share became massive. The Silnas collected tens of millions a year for decades, eventually totaling hundreds of millions before a 2014 settlement capped it. Forbes called it the “greatest sports deal of all-time.”
Others got rich but ABA contracts got voided or renegotiated. Players had minimal benefits. ABA stats weren’t fully integrated into NBA history, thus the Nets championships technically aren’t even recognized as official.
And one… the Nets
Half a century after joining the NBA, the merger’s costs still cast a shadow over the Nets’ legacy, and Dr. J’s presence looms large.
The New York Nets faced the opposite problem to the Spirits of St. Louis. The Nets were forced to pay the standard $3.2 million expansion fee plus $4.5 million to the New York Knicks for territorial rights. It may not seem onerous now but it was a big deal back then for the Nets owners whose primary asset was not the Nets, but the NHL’s Islanders both of whom played at Nassau Coliseum.
Under the NBA merger rules, each team controlled a 75-mile radius around its arena. No other franchise could relocate, play, or market in that zone without permission, and teams could demand compensation if a newcomer entered their territory. Nassau Coliseum fell squarely inside the Knicks’ protected zone.
Roy Boe, owners of the Nets, paid the $7.7 million in fees (roughly $37-40M today) before salaries, operations, or retaining Julius Erving. The Knicks’ refusal to waive the territorial fee forced the Nets to make the only viable move: sell Erving, native of Roosevelt, Long Island, twisting the knife even further. (Oh yes, the Knicks also refused to accept Dr. J as compensation. They wanted the cash.)
Owner Roy Boe sold Dr. J to the Sixers but it might’ve bought the team a curse. “It killed me to have to think about doing it,” he said in 2002.
Basketball’s sweethearts with Dr. J at the forefront of it all, in the red, white, blue jerseys with the stars on the side. An afro as vibrant and in-your-face as the league. The Boes were simply forced to demolish the culture, the legend.
“There will always be a soft spot in my heart for the Nets, having played on two ABA championship teams for the franchise.” Erving has said.
But Dr. J didn’t necessarily want it to end.
Erving and his agent knew his value. When Boe told him the team couldn’t meet his salary demands, Erving refused to play under those conditions, holding out of camp until a resolution could be found.
In the years that followed, his Philadelphia teams became a perennial contender. The Nets fell into instability, missed the playoffs repeatedly, and Roy Boe sold the team in 1978. He also dealt the Isles and they immediately went on to dominate the NHL with four straight Stanley Cup titles,
Since then…
Relocations:
In 1977, the Nets moved back to New Jersey.
They played at the Rutgers Athletic Center and later the Meadowlands for roughly 30 years.
In 2012, they relocated to Brooklyn, moving into the Barclays Center and rebranding as the Brooklyn Nets.
The Nets reached their first NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003 but fell short both times.
Since moving to Brooklyn in 2012, the team has made it past the first round of the playoffs twice.
42.4 win percentage (1,692 wins & 2,303 losses).
Roy Boe purchased the team for $1.1 million in 1969. In 1978, the NYT estimated the Nets valuation at $10 million, but the price of the sale was never made public. The group that purchased the Nets was led by Alan N. Cohen, former Chairman and CEO of the Madison Square Garden Corporation, the parent company of the New York Knicks and New York Rangers, the Nets’ primary territorial rivals.
As far as it goes for 54-point losses on MSG hardwood or Nets franchise players demanding trades to the Knicks — there’s a reason why it stings extra for the little brother. By no mistake.
Now, 50 years later, Erving returned to the spotlight specifically for Vince Carter’s jersey retirement. Anniversaries tend to spotlight triumph but this one isn’t. The ABA’s influence is everywhere in today’s NBA, but the cost of getting here doesn’t fit neatly into a highlight reel.
The Nets defeated the Nuggets and claimed basketball glory in 1976. Since then, the franchise has moved, rebranded, and struggled, never fully escaping the consequences of the merger.
The Nuggets now boast the best player in the world, Nikola Jokić, and it’s hard not to see the irony. The Nets once had the best player in the world too — and the merger forced them to give him up. Then sold to the rivals.
The franchise hasn’t erased their history completely, but there’s an opportunity to honor it. Just as Dr. J returned for Vince Carter’s retirement, could he also return to the Nets again. Just this week, the NBA finally announced the day for the NBA Lottery: May 10, just three days before the actual anniversary. It would an ideal way to honor the 1976 team, Erving and can conduct a worthy science experiment: if karma can move ping pong balls.
It’ll be expensive to arrange, difficult too with NBA but the price might be worth paying.
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