I have to admit to having become somewhat jaded about minor league pro basketball the past several years. Or perhaps a better word than "jaded" would be "skeptical." Let's face it. So have you.It would be impossible not to look upon every new venture or off-court player in the minors without a degree of wonder or outright suspicion. After witnessing Isiah Thomas come within a hare's breath of alomst singlehandedly burying the CBA during his disastrous reign as owner/commissioner, you get that way. Then there's Joe Newman's farcical operation of an ABA in which teams come and go like hookers in a motel with hourly rates, with one exception. With hookers, the bill usually gets paid. Then there's the USBL, which has been more solid than most, but has never really figured out that they do better in towns like Enid and Dodge City than big cities like St. Louis or Brooklyn. Where to begin with the NBA-D League? Let's give the Reader's Digest version: A McHoops replica on a smaller scale and set in smaller cities, a league without a soul that draws as much affection among basketball fans that a cineplex gets from moviegoers. Basketball will survive, but it sure does look bleak at times when you consider who is running the sport.
Then there's Mikal Duilio.
Duilio is the founder and commissioner of the International Basketball Association, a nationwide minor league that will be entering its third season in 2007. A native of Iowa, the 38-year-old Diulio began the IBL in his adopted hometown of Portland, Oregon with two precepts at the core of his league: One, give fans a high-octane brand of basketball that will bring them back. Two, use a little financial common sense in running a league and its teams.
On that first point, the IBL appears to be succeeding, at least artisically. It's pretty safe to say that when teams combine for more than 250 in games that end in two hours, they are not boring affairs. In contrast, NBA games in which neither team scores 100 points are not unusual. Not that defense isn't important, but who would fans rather pay to watch: LeBron James or Ben Wallace? While fans may not stream into IBL games, they aren't staying away because teams are milking the shot clock (which is 22 seconds in the IBL).
Now about that second point. Although his league has just two divsions, Diulio has actually designed the IBL to contain several clusters of teams geographically close to each other. Although one result is an uneven schedule in which one team may play 25 games while another plays just 18, the tradeoff is that no team has to travel by air more than once per year because the emphasis in scheduling is on those nearby teams. That may sound innocuous, but travel costs have led to a veritable graveyard of minor league basketball franchises. It's a lot less expensive to send a team 100 miles to a game than 1,000 miles. No air fares, no hotel bills, no per diems. Player salaries are kept to $50 to $100 each per game, which means prudent teams won't go crazy on payroll. Front office staffs are kept to a minimum. The gospel of cost containment has been one of Diulio's constant preachings, and one hallmark of the 2006 season was that no games were cancelled. While IBL teams don't necessarily make it from one season to the next, they generally do make it from the beginning of a season to the end. Given the cartoonish operations that dot the minor league hoops landscape, that means something.
Is the IBL perfect? Of course not. Far from it. There's that unbalanced schedule. As with any league, there are owners who are either unqualified to run a team or in the game for the wrong reasons; and with 25-28 teams, there's a better chance of having such an owner in the IBL. While it's laudable that Diuilio has made it affordable to own an IBL team, that makes it more imperative to do background checks make sure franchises are not awarded to underfinanced or corrupt ownerships. At a recent news conference in which the IBL introduced a new team for Lewis County, Washington, Diulio mentioned a desire to expand the league in the future to Japan and England, which would be a dubious move at best, entirely at odds with Diulio's stated desire to keep expenses down while projecting a move into countries that could hardly be considered basketball hotbeds. Want to go international? Try Canada and Mexico instead.
But still, all things considered, the IBL has a better chance of surviving than many other minor leagues if it stays the course. In many ways, it's a throwback to the old Eastern League, a weekend circuit in which players piled into cars to drive to games in high school gyms in a nearby state, played contests in which defense was nonexistent, and then collected $50 or so before the drive home. While the EBL had its problems and teams popped up and then left on a frequent basis, the league itself lasted three decades by staying within itself geographically and staying away from airplanes and hotels. Diulio's IBL seems built on the same principles, and one hopes he and the league can make a go of it. Otherwise, minor league basketball will remain a bastion of broken promises and broken dreams.
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