East Kentucky Miners

Continental Basketball Association (2007-2009)

Tombstone

Born: July 2007
Folded: ?

First Game: November 16, 2007 (L 123-118 @ Pittsburgh Xplosion)
Last Game:

CBA Championships: None

Arena

East Kentucky Expo Center
Opened: 2005

Branding

Team Colors:

Mascot: Hard Hat Harry (the Canary)

Dance Team: The Diamond Girls

Ownership

Owners: Jay Fiedler and Demetrius Ford

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Continental Basketball Association
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Before the NBA had the G-League, it had the CBA with teams stretched from Puerto Rico to Honolulu. During the CBA’s 1980’s and 90’s heyday, the league provided a launching pad for future NBA All-Stars such as John Starks and Michael Adams as well as coaching legends Phil Jackson and George Karl.

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Background

This obscure minor league basketball outfit joined the Continental Basketball Association during the dying days of the six-decade old organization. The CBA traced its roots back to the Eastern Pennsylvania Basketball League, formed in 1946 with six teams in Pennsylvania and New York. By the 1980’s, the CBA was spread from coast-to-coast and served as the official developmental league of the NBA. Unheralded players such as Michael Adams and John Starks used the CBA as a springboard to All-Star careers in the NBA. George Karl and Phil Jackson launched their coaching careers in the CBA during the 1980’s.

The league fell on hard times during the 2000’s and declared bankruptcy in 2001. The NBA discarded the CBA and started its own minor league system, the National Basketball Development League (known today as the G-League).

Ownership

The Miners were owned by recently retired NFL quarterback Jay Fielder and his business partner Demetrius Ford. Fiedler was a sports investment novice. Ford had experience in a low-budget expropriation of the American Basketball Association brand, a notorious fly-by-night venture operated out of an Indianapolis basement that sold franchises for $10,000 to unsuspecting dreamers and dupes. Fiedler and Ford operated the CBA’s Indiana Alley Cats out of a high school gym during the 2006-07 season. That club folded after the season, but the CBA soon awarded Fielder and Ford a new expansion franchise to play at the 5,700-seat East Kentucky Expo Center.

The CBA fielded ten teams for the 2007-08 season, stretched from upstate New York to Washington state and south to Texas. The Miners acquitted themselves well, finishing third in their division with a 26-22 record.

Demise

But the CBA’s efforts to stage a 2008-09 season as the Great Recession bore down on the country quickly turned into a debacle. Six of the CBA’s ten franchises from the prior season folded. The Miners decided to play on, along with the Albany (NY) Patroons, Minot (ND) Skyrockets and Lawton-Fort Sill (OK) Cavalry. To pad out the schedule and save on travel costs, CBA officials decided to schedule games against teams from the dreadfully organized American Basketball Association. These contests turned out to be something of a joke – the Miners destroyed a hapless ABA squad by 102 points in the fall of 2008.

By February 2009 the Miners and the CBA were out of gas. League officials voted to suspend the schedule in mid-season and hastily scheduled a three-game championship series between the Cavalry and the Patroons, the league’s top two clubs, a few days later. The league never took the floor again.