30 years later franchsise swap begs for answers

By Tim Wendel

NBA Commissioner David Stern knows how quickly a sport can die, how its very integrity can be called into question. One of his first jobs in 1966, as outside counsel for the NBA, was the Connie Hawkins case. A star of the Brooklyn playgrounds, Hawkins associated with a known gambler, and that was enough to have him blacklisted from the league.

At the time, basketball was still recovering from point-shaving scandals that rocked the game in the 1950s. Top players, such as Kentucky All-Americans Ralph Beard and Alex Groza, were bribed by gamblers to make sure their teams didn’t cover the point spread. The City College of New York — the only team to win the NIT and NCAA titles in the same season – was involved and never returned to prominence.

Today, with former referee Tim Donaghy still making waves for fixing NBA games, commissioner Stern likely cannot help but flash-back to those dark days in the 1950s. Stern realizes as well as anybody how fast a sport can fade away.

Thirty years ago, boxing was on top of the world. Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali were household names — national heroes. A Saturday night bout was almost certainly water-cooler talk on Monday morning. Now the sport in which they were once kings has become a shell of its former self.

During that sport’s fall from grace, the public often wondered if the fix was in. Too many times what happened in the ring was manipulated — boxers lost fights on purpose; promoters, judges and referees rigged things to favor one party over another.

The recent news of Donaghy reminds me of another time when I wondered if the fix was really in. If there was much more than met the public eye?

In Buffalo, Home of the Braves, we detail how John Y. Brown swapped the entire franchise with Irving Levin, the owner of the Boston Celtics. One of the architects of that stunning team swap, perhaps the ultimate trade of all time, was David Stern.

Levin headed west with his team, becoming the Lost Angeles Clippers. Brown’s new Celtics, dare we say the old Braves, somehow held the draft right to collegian Larry Bird when the dust settled. Thanks to such an influx of talent, they returned to championship form.

“I was home in Buffalo. Somebody called me from the Braves’ office to tell me the news…,” Randy Smith told me years later. “I was stunned. I couldn’t believe it.”

With that, basketball’s glory days in Buffalo ended.

Confusion still abounds with Celtics swap

by Tim Wendel, author of Buffalo Home of the Braves

Welcome back the 1980s, as the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics return to the NBA Finals. But Braves fans know that the “wayback machine” can lead to the 1970s. As much as we rooted against the Celtics in those classic playoff matches at the old Aud, the final injustice for the Braves was seeing the team swapped with the Celtics after the team’s final season in 1978. One reincarnation headed west to become the San Diego Clippers, while the new Celtics, headed by former Braves owner John Y. Brown, stayed in Boston and went on to greatness, thanks in large part to landing the draft rights for Larry Bird.

As I watched the Celtics oust the Detroit Pistons last night, I remembered an interview I did with Randy Smith for Buffalo, Home of the Braves. Smith was the guy caught in the middle of the most confusing team swap in sports history. Here’s how he remembers that bizarre period:

“Once John Young Brown got his hands on the team, Buffalo was the last place he wanted to have it play. He and I used to talk a lot. He’d tell me about the possibility of the team going to Dallas, San Diego, Kentucky — it was inevitable that the team was going to leave the Buffalo area. Then I woke up one morning to hear that he had made a swap of entire teams.

“I was home in Buffalo. Somebody called me from the Braves’ office to tell me the news. … I started to get checks from the Boston Celtics for deferred payments, even though I was going west to play for this new team, the Clippers. I didn’t know where to expect my checks to come from, but, you know, you don’t care as long as they don’t bounce.”

Situation in Seattle reopens old wounds

Find out more about: Buffalo, Home of the Braves

Seattle is about to lose its basketball team the Super-Sonics to Oklahoma City of all places. Seattle fans fear the worst and even though the team still has two years remaining on their lease, the odds of the Sonics remaining in Seattle are low. Another owner makes a business decision, another franchise leaves town, fans feel betrayed, and there is likely nothing they can do about it.

The more things change the more they remain the same. The NBA owners voted this week 28-2 to allow the Sonics to move for the start of the 2008-09 season with NBA Commissioner David Stern very much in the fray. 30 years ago Stern negotiated the bizarre deal that swapped the Buffalo Braves franchise with the Boston Celtics and sent what remained to San Diego to become the Clippers.

As much as our nostalgic minds believe that sports weren’t dictated by money back in the 70’s; they were. The Braves swap/sale/exit from Western New York was all about an out of town owner who sought greener pastures and higher long term revenue.

The Sonics present a situation strangely similar to the Braves prior to their move. An owner from the south purchases the team (Clay Bennett) with the hidden desire to move the team elsewhere (in Bennett’s case to his home state of Oklahoma). The out of town owner makes veiled threats and demands of the city to keep the team, when the plan was to move the team from the very beginning.

The unfortunate part for Buffalo is that the fans did fill seats when the product on the court was good and finally threw up their hands with frustration witnessing the revolving door of players that paraded in and out of town that final season.

Who could blame the Buffalo faithful for not investing in season tickets when the John Y. Brown circus was wheeling and dealing away the talents of Moses Malone, Adrian Dantley, Marvin Barnes, and John Shumate? Meanwhile the Buffalo Sabres were building a competitive team with players who would spend most of their careers in Buffalo with a stable local ownership.

The irony of all this is if the Sonics end up in Oklahoma City, a metropolitan region with a population base slightly ahead of Buffalo’s. We feel Seattle’s pain in an all too familiar way.