Inland Empire 5linx???

[brucker]

WTH?? This team is scheduled to begin play in the west coast this week, beginning Wednesday against Aoshen. Anyone have info on who they are / where they came from?

[nhamilton88]

Can you imagine the NBA, NFL, MLB just throwing teams into the league in the MIDDLE of the season!!?? WTF?? Does the ABA even have a playoff culture anymore? Do teams follow the standings and wonder how many games back they are, wondering if they have a shot at the playoffs,????

Has the ABA simply become a roadshow, a barnstorming league of teams playing each other for entertainment, financing itself through "reservation fees" and "tryout fees"? I have never seen anything like it. There is absolutely NO SEMBLANCE of a league anymore. It is like pro boxing where teams play and hope to move up the rankings with victories and at the end....what???? The stats on the website are so inept and unintelligible that I have no clue what they mean? There is a new "marketing partnership" daily and even those have evolved into nothing more then MLM alliances.

Chairman of the Power Rankings Committee? WTF is that and who is on the committee? What happened to the World Basketball Cup? This Newman guy tries so freaking hard to emulate the NBA with rankings, committees, marketing agreements, ABA properties, entertainment.......all from a %#$*^ Basement. Un^%$%^$believable!!!

[preeths]

Can you imagine the NBA, NFL, MLB just throwing teams into the league in the MIDDLE of the season!!?? WTF?? Does the ABA even have a playoff culture anymore? Do teams follow the standings and wonder how many games back they are, wondering if they have a shot at the playoffs,????

I can't imagine the AHL, GBL, MLL or af2 being run this way. We can't hold a minor league to major league standards, but we sure can hold the ABA to minor league standards. It fails in that respect year after year, seemingly more miserably with every turn of the calendar. For the last several years running, for instance, it has played the lowest percentage of its scheduled games than any other minor league we cover, and it hasn't even been close.

Has the ABA simply become a roadshow, a barnstorming league of teams playing each other for entertainment, financing itself through "reservation fees" and "tryout fees"? I have never seen anything like it. There is absolutely NO SEMBLANCE of a league anymore. It is like pro boxing where teams play and hope to move up the rankings with victories and at the end....what???? The stats on the website are so inept and unintelligible that I have no clue what they mean? There is a new "marketing partnership" daily and even those have evolved into nothing more then MLM alliances.

Has it really ever been anything different? The ABA has only one product, and that is market reservation fees. That creates an incentive for the league to sell as many of them as possible, and I believe, leading it to ignore the longterm good of the league in the meantime. The result is a house-of-cards schedule, zero accountability for the teams and league office, and virtually no hope of improvement under the current setup.

[nhamilton88]

Paul you are 110% correct, but where does it all end? Seriously? Is there an END to all of this? I hear people come on here and talk about Joe's "scorched Earth" effect and they are absolutely correct.

NEVER....and please correct me if I am wrong here....NEVER has one individual done so much damage to a sports league at such an incredible level in return for wanting so little ($10K fees?). It will be years and years and years....if ever....where minor league basketball will gain respectability. Thankfully the D-League gives some credibility because the CBA's merger with the ABA completely wiped that out.

Never has one man, done so much harm to so many people on such a massive level without any semblance of a conscious with the exception of Madoff. What Joe Newman has done to minor league probasketball is reprehensible to the point that most U.S. cities will never give their trust again to a credible, reputable minor league franchise.

[TEN]

Paul you are 110% correct, but where does it all end? Seriously? Is there an END to all of this? I hear people come on here and talk about Joe's "scorched Earth" effect and they are absolutely correct.

NEVER....and please correct me if I am wrong here....NEVER has one individual done so much damage to a sports league at such an incredible level in return for wanting so little ($10K fees?). It will be years and years and years....if ever....where minor league basketball will gain respectability. Thankfully the D-League gives some credibility because the CBA's merger with the ABA completely wiped that out.

Never has one man, done so much harm to so many people on such a massive level without any semblance of a conscious with the exception of Madoff. What Joe Newman has done to minor league probasketball is reprehensible to the point that most U.S. cities will never give their trust again to a credible, reputable minor league franchise.

yep...............

[Paul S]

Ya the CBA really had to be desperate to, in my opinion, have anything to do with the ABA. They've taken a giant step down, actually they've stepped out of an airplane and skydived down with Newman Parachutes.

Its just a shambles. They are pulling these teams out of thin air.

[turbocamyes]

The original Beijing schedule did not show a game on that date, so it doesn't appear to be a fill-in game. My guess it is an exhibition game.

From the LA Slam site:

January 19, 2009 at 1pm – Maywood Activity Center The Los Angeles SLAM is scheduled to play against the Inland Empire 5 Linx in the Maywood Buzz 3rd Annual MLK Day Classic. The Inland Empire 5 Linx is coached by ex NBA player Tony Farmer. The Los Angeles The 1:00 pm game time is not definite and still has to be confirmed. Organized by ABA & ABL ( American Bsaketball League )

http://www.losangelesslam.com/events/event/listByType?type=Basketball

And wasn't Farmer coaching another ABA team this year?

[Sam Hill]

Paul you are 110% correct, but where does it all end?

You're assuming it's going to end.

It's going to continue as long as the seemingly-endless supply of entertainer/wannabe pro basketball owners thinks it would be cool to have a team.

Or until this guy shows up at Newman's door:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/images/grim-reaper-monty-python-close-up.jpg

[CHris902]

NEVER....and please correct me if I am wrong here....NEVER has one individual done so much damage to a sports league at such an incredible level in return for wanting so little ($10K fees?). It will be years and years and years....if ever....where minor league basketball will gain respectability. Thankfully the D-League gives some credibility because the CBA's merger with the ABA completely wiped that out.
Isiah Thomas really did a number on the CBA and never made a cent on it - I think he even lost at least a million dollars on the whole debacle, but someone else can correct me on that.

That said, he really only damaged a handful of markets, some of which recovered, at least for awhile. Newman has certainly done the most long term damage over the widest area that I can think of. He also did a pretty serious number on sullying the once valuable ABA brand.

Never has one man, done so much harm to so many people on such a massive level without any semblance of a conscious with the exception of Madoff.
ummm... Hitler? Mussolini? David Duke? McCarthy? Franco? Pinochet?

Even if you're just talking about the business world I'd put Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick's ordering of shooting up Homestead or the Rockefeller's involvement in the Ludlow massacre or any of George Hearst's many uses of violence to maintain control of his mining empire miles and miles a head of anything Joe Newman has even considered doing. The history of American business is littered with thousands of people who have done far worse than Newman or Madoff have ever even imagined. Yeah, he's really destroyed some people's lives and it is inexcusable, but let's not go crazy here.

[Sam Hill]

Isiah Thomas really did a number on the CBA and never made a cent on it - I think he even lost at least a million dollars on the whole debacle, but someone else can correct me on that.

He deserved to lose a lot more.

That one decision - not to sell the CBA when he had the chance - has had quite the ripple effect, hasn't it? He could have made a $1 million profit in less than a year, but - as Isiah always has done - he thought he was the smartest guy in the room.

That said, he really only damaged a handful of markets, some of which recovered, at least for awhile.

Yeah, but the CBA hasn't been the same since.

When Thomas bought the CBA, it had the following teams:

Connecticut Pride
Fort Wayne Fury
Grand Rapids Hoops
Idaho Stampede
La Crosse Bobcats
Quad City Thunder
Rockford Lightning
Sioux Falls Skyforce
Yakima Sun Kings

The Gary Steelheads came in in 2000, so there were ten franchises/markets in the CBA at the time it all went poof in February 2001.


Connecticut Pride...finished out the 00/01 season in the IBL and then went away.
Fort Wayne Fury...never came back. The city does have a D-League team now, the Mad Ants.
Gary Steelheads...still around, sorta, but they've been a freaking mess, jumping from the reconstituted CBA to the USBL to the IBL and now they're sitting out a year, supposedly.
Grand Rapids Hoops...hung on for a bit. Grand Rapids now has an IBL team (the Fight), apparently.
Idaho Stampede...one of two markets you could say came through the whole ordeal in decent shape. The Stampede survived four more years in the CBA and then jumped to the D-League, where they won the title last year. (Which I did not know.)
La Crosse Bobcats...never recovered, correct?
Quad City Thunder...did they ever come back?
Rockford Lightning...came back, then went away after the 2005-2006 season.
Sioux Falls Skyforce...the other survivor market, the SkyForce came back for five years in the CBA before jumping to the D-League, as Idaho did.
Yakima Sun Kings...they did come back and won back-to-back CBA titles in 2006 and 2007, but folded despite going 43-5 in 2007-2008.


Given the transient nature of minor pro basketball franchises, you can't say that all of those teams would have survived or thrived had Isiah not become involved. But the saga sure was a bad time that killed a few of those teams straight away and most of the others not long thereafter.

Like Joey Harrington said of his time with the Lions recently: "Who'd have thought that I was there during the heyday?" Considering how bad the CBA in particular has become recently and minor league basketball is in general, it's odd to think of how much better things were just ten years ago, overall.

Newman has certainly done the most long term damage over the widest area that I can think of. He also did a pretty serious number on sullying the once valuable ABA brand.

To be honest, it was more valuable as nostalgia. You weren't going to start a competing major league with that brand and a minor league with any brand is going to be a crapshoot, based on history. But, yeah, he took what little brand equity it had in reality and trashed it.

ummm... Hitler?

Hitler? Who said anything about Hitler? ;)

[CHris902]

Thanks for the further details on the CBA. Would you say Isiah did more damage to minor league hoops than Newman? Would the ABA have even been able to gain traction in markets the way it did early on if not for Isiah's involvement with the CBA? I am curious since I don't know that much about the history of minor league ball.


To be honest, it was more valuable as nostalgia. You weren't going to start a competing major league with that brand and a minor league with any brand is going to be a crapshoot, based on history. But, yeah, he took what little brand equity it had in reality and trashed it.
I think that the ABA brand had value prior to it getting Newmanized. Obviously you're not going to get a major league out of it, but as a minor league name the history carries some marketing weight as do some of the other things like the ball - at least more than starting from scratch with a league like the PBL. Nostalgia is a surprisingly good marketing tool.


Hitler? Who said anything about Hitler? ;)

This was just a response to the outlandish claim that:
Never has one man, done so much harm to so many people on such a massive level without any semblance of a conscious with the exception of Madoff.
I just felt like pointing out how crazy it is to suggest that Joe Newman and Bernard Madoff even register on the list of men who have done harm to large numbers of people, let alone top that list.

[Sam Hill]

Thanks for the further details on the CBA. Would you say Isiah did more damage to minor league hoops than Newman?

I would say Thomas, in a short time, wrecked something that had been in existence for a very long time. I would say Newman took something that had been dead (but fondly remembered) for a long time and pissed on its grave, but the stream has lasted now some eight years. For Damage Inflicted, Thomas might win, but for Career Achievement, Newman might win.

The difference between dying in a bomb blast and dying of lupus, I guess.

Would the ABA have even been able to gain traction in markets the way it did early on if not for Isiah's involvement with the CBA? I am curious since I don't know that much about the history of minor league ball.

I don't know that the ABA has ever had traction anywhere. In the beginning, it positioned itself as an alternative to the NBA, and its choices of markets reflected that. Thomas' doings (as well as other factors, some of which may have been inevitable) helped poison the waters for minor league basketball. Newman's charades haven't helped, either, nor have the other fly-by-night operators of other teams and other leagues (I'm not sure anybody has covered themselves in glory in the last ten years in this game).

This was just a response to the outlandish claim that:

I just felt like pointing out how crazy it is to suggest that Joe Newman and Bernard Madoff even register on the list of men who have done harm to large numbers of people, let alone top that list.

I know. You missed the joke. Sorry.

[MJHankel]

They are listed as a team in the PACIFIC COAST BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION

http://www.htosports.com/teams/default.asp?u=PCBA&t=c&s=basketball&p=schedule&div=5LINX

[Shootmaster_44]

They are listed as a team in the PACIFIC COAST BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION

http://www.htosports.com/teams/default.asp?u=PCBA&t=c&s=basketball&p=schedule&div=5LINX

So is the PCBA the rumoured West Coast split we've been hearing so much about?

[CHris902]

So is the PCBA the rumoured West Coast split we've been hearing so much about?

It certainly looks that way. It seems that someone put together a website and schedule before the whole thing fell apart... which means they move faster than the ABA.

[TEN]

It doesn't end as long as there are clueless wannabe idiots like Embry Malone willing to part with their money...

[turbocamyes]

From the Inland Empire Rage's Guestbook:

Posted by Benjamin Mireles <coachb-showboats08@yahoo.com>San Antonio, Tx on 01/04/09

Fantastic Start
Monique has given lots of insight for a great expansion team to be created and I have gained a very respectable relationship with her about this team. I am very proud to say that this team will be a very competitve and winning team come the 2009-2010 season.(GUARANTEED)

Thanks Monique

http://www.htosports.com/teams/default.asp?u=MORENOVALLEY&t=c&s=basketball&p=guestbook

[formerlyknownasfells]

It doesn't end as long as there are clueless wannabe idiots like Embry Malone willing to part with their money...

It shouldn't shock anyone that Burrel tried to pull this off and then failed miserably. I just think it is funny he had a website, had the teams lined up and then bailed out at the last minute.

I wonder how much influence Joe had in Burrel's decision to bail out.

[BuzzBasketball]

Whos to say it was me starting this league or cancelled it

I am working on some other local ventures like my youth teams and stuff like that...dont have time to mess around with the BS

Good day...LOL

It was a thought that we all had and we figured if we move to fast it will all fall down....

Call me at 310 493 4391 if you ever have any questions about me, my team or what we do...

Burrel

[PIONEERSFAN101]

And I see a PR saying IE Rage is now a full ABA member team..I don't remember the context of Newman's quote but i noticed within the first two sentences he says "with a twist" and I said to myself..yeah..everything has a screwed up "twist" in this league.

[PIONEERSFAN101]

Burrell..question for you while I'm sitting here thinking about it...Why stay in the ABA?!?!! Seems like you have your team together and stuff...Why even bother with the biggest scam in minor league sports?