Minor Leagues

Last month, Major League Baseball (MLB) announced plans to potentially reduce the number of Minor League Baseball (MiLB) teams across the United States by 42. Considering the number of MiLB teams out there stands at around 160 or so, 42 is quite a cut. MLB claims this will save them a ton of money and they might be right. I've read that the cost savings might be around $22 million or so per year. I've also read that Major League Baseball brings in revenue of about $10 billion per year. $22 million divided among 30 teams pulling in $10 billion seems like small potatoes to me.

Understandably, there has been some backlash to this plan, particularly from the communities which stand to lose their baseball teams. Think this isn't important? I disagree. Access to live professional sports for communities is sometimes vital for community pride and social connection. It has been for centuries. Take away the Pioneer League (which is part of the contraction plan) and you've just wiped out professional baseball in Montana. Like all of it. So maybe not that many people out west care about a rookie league or any other team that's being run out of business, but I bet some do. And not just the owners of the teams (MiLB teams are not owned by parent organizations) and the communities that have financed stadiums for those teams. Although those two groups might have a pretty strong opinion of Major League Baseball telling them they are out of business.

Need any other reasons why this sucks? How about tradition? The Chattanooga (Tennessee) Lookouts are on the chopping block with this proposal. They have been the Lookouts since 1909 and their franchise dates back to 1885. They might have survived without MLB affiliation in the early 20th century but today that might be a different proposition.

So why am I writing about baseball on a Washington Wizards blog that's supposed to be about basketball? Well, because I think this same sort of thing has been going on for the past few years in the NBA's minor league system, the G League. Not the contraction (because the G League has actually been expanding) but the removal of professional sports from towns and cities with little to no access to that kind of thing once the NBA moved their teams. And I'm arguing what the G League is doing pretty much sucks too.

Erie Insurance Arena: Home of the Erie (PA) BayHawks. For now.

Consider this: at the beginning of the 2009-2010 NBDL season (the NBDL or National Basketball Development League was what the G League used to be called before corporate sponsorship got involved) had 16 independently owned and operated teams spread out over 14 states. Of those 14 states, seven of them had no NBA team so the NBDL was all they had. Of the nine teams located in NBA states, one (the Tulsa 66ers) was in their state before the NBA was (on a permanent basis, anyway) and two of the other teams (in Hidalgo, Texas and Bakersfield, California) were hours by car from the nearest NBA arena, which made access to live pro basketball an overnight or very late arrival home affair. Point is, professional basketball was available to people in the United States without having a visit an NBA city.

Fast forward to today and the G League looks much different. There are now 28 teams in the league which from a growth standpoint is awesome. But all of those teams are now owned by NBA franchises and just six of those 28 teams are located outside the state of their parent team. Considering one of the remaining six is the Memphis Hustle which plays just over the Mississippi border about 12 miles from Memphis but is named after the city where the NBA team plays, it's really just five remote teams. Of those five, just four are located in states without an NBA team. I think things are trending in the wrong direction there.

When the NBDL was launched in 2001, it was deliberately located in the underserved (from a professional basketball standpoint anyway) southeast of the country. At that time there were other non-NBA affiliated regional leagues (notably the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) centered in the midwest of the country) around the United States but I guess the southeast stood out to the NBA as an area of opportunity. Plus I imagine locating all eight charter members of the league in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama cut down on travel expenses.

It didn't work. Within four years, two of the franchises had folded and four of the other six had moved. The two that remained in place? Gone one year later. New teams were added in Arkansas and Texas and they too went belly up after just two years in business. Not such a good idea to start a basketball league in the southeast apparently.

Inside the rockin' Portland Expo Center.

Obviously, the league was able to weather the poor start, likely because it had the backing of the NBA. Original franchises which had re-located to Albuquerque, Austin and Tulsa were more successful in their new locales than their original cites and in 2005, the league engaged in a serious expansion, fueled in part by the defection of four teams from the CBA, to bring the total number of franchises to 12. Three years later it was 17. The league that started in the deep south now spread from Los Angeles to North Dakota to Portland, Maine. And they had taken the CBA out along the way and stood as the only serious minor professional basketball league in the country.

Things were good. Good for basketball fans. Good for small cities which needed professional basketball. Good for the NBA.

Then things started to go downhill. Maybe not for the NBA. Maybe not for the players. Maybe not for the owners of the teams that were suddenly being offered large sums of money for their teams. But for fans in small cities...for sure. In 2011, the Boston Celtics entered into what would be known as a hybrid affiliation with the Maine Red Claws. Under that arrangement the Celtics got to run the operations of the team and install their own coaching staff. That meant they could coach their G League assignees in the exact same system they were using in the NBA. Huge advantage to have that kind of control.

Two years later, the Knicks founded their own G League team. That slowly became the new norm. One by one (well except for the Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers) teams were either added to the League (typically in very close proximity to the parent club) or NBA teams purchased existing franchises and moved them. 

Dakota Wizards? Gone from North Dakota to be close to the Warriors who bought them. Replaced by...nothing. Reno Bighorns? Also gone. Moved to Stockton, CA to be close to the Sacramento Kings. Idaho Stampede? No more (say hello to the Salt Lake City Stars)! Get the picture? How about in Oklahoma where the Thunder actually moved a team from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. That's 107 miles away. Did they really need to move that team?

The Springfield (MA) Civic Center, no longer home of minor league basketball.

I have never visited Bismarck, North Dakota or Reno, Nevada or Boise, Idaho during basketball season or at any other time in my life. But I have visited Hidalgo, Texas and Erie, Pennsylvania and Canton, Ohio and Portland, Maine. They are all cool little cities who showed up to root for their basketball teams, no matter that they were in the G League. All of those cities fortunately still have their teams (except Hildago - the Rio Grande Valley Vipers moved to Edinburg about 20 miles away) although Erie will lose theirs at the end of this season.

The Celtics, I guess to their credit, didn't move the Red Claws (awesome name by the way) from Maine to Boston but instead keep them in the old 1915 Portland Expo Center. I saw that team play on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of winter and the place was filled. If any team saw the atmosphere inside that place I kind of believe they would think twice about moving that team. Maybe. Probably not.

While I have never been to Bismarck, Reno or Boise, I have been to Springfield, Massachusetts. I was there in 2014 to see the Springfield Armor play in their final season, right before the Detroit Pistons bought the team and moved it to Grand Rapids. With no offense intended toward the place where basketball was founded, Springfield is dead. In the two days I was there (small sample size I know) the streets were empty and decidedly not alive. Except before and right after the Armor played. The NBA took that away.

So I know I'm being a little melodramatic here. I mean, it's not like the NBA forced all these team owners to take millions of dollars for what were probably barely profitable teams. On the other hand, I'm not. I really believe in the power of sports to bring people and communities together. And I think the NBA has played a role in taking that away from some cities and towns. Just like Major League Baseball will if their plan to contract their (admittedly much more extensive) minor league system goes forward. They should stop it.

So should the NBA. But they probably won't.

The cover photo of this post is the logos of six of the original eight NBDL teams.