Yakima Sun Kings

Continental Basketball Association (1990-2001, 2002-2008)

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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

The Yakima Sun Kings were a resilient minor league basketball outfit that plodded along for nearly two decades in Central Washington state.  The team won the championship of the Continental Basketball Association five times.

During the Sun Kings’ hey day in the mid-1990’s, the CBA was the Official Developmental League of the National Basketball Association and Yakima was a legitimate destination for former NBA draft picks and other fringe pros battling to make it back to the NBA, or to earn contracts in Europe or Asia.

Playing in a small, low-income market with a limited corporate support base, the Sun Kings had several near-death experiences over the years and actually went out of business not once, but twice.  The first shut down was in February 2001 when NBA Hall-of-Famer Isaiah Thomas’ disastrous $9 million dollar buyout of the CBA ended in the entire league’s bankruptcy and closure.

After a season without pro basketball at the SunDome in the winter of 1991-92, local investors revived the Sun Kings in 2002.  By this time, though, the Continental Basketball Association itself was in existential crisis.  The NBA launched its own proprietary developmental league in 2001 – the NBA D-League.  The CBA was no longer essential to the NBA and no longer the beneficiary of a seven-figure annual subsidy from the senior league.

Final Seasons & Demise

In 2005 the Yakama Indian Nation purchased the Sun Kings from the Uceny family. The price was a fire sale figure of $140,000.  During the final three years of the franchise’s existence, the Sun Kings were known as “Yakama” instead of “Yakima”, in tribute to the Indian Nation and its preferred spelling.

That figure was evidence of the CBA’s decrepitude and increasing irrelevance – fifteen years earlier, the original Sun Kings came to Washington from Topeka, Kansas in a $550,000 sale. In early 1992, minority investor and General Manager Brooks Ellison acquired an option to purchase the club from original owner Bob Wilson for $1 million.  Nevertheless, even at $140K, the purchase of a minor league basketball team caused dissension and recriminations within the leadership of the Yakama Nation.

After three seasons of red ink, the Nation pulled the plug on the Sun Kings once and for all in April 2008.

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Underbelly Hoops

Adventures in the CBA
A.K.A. The Crazy Basketball Association

By Carson Cunningham

UNDERBELLY HOOPS covers Carson Cunningham’s final season in the storied and now defunct Continental Basketball Association (CBA). In the process, it takes a sober look at minor league professional basketball, as Cunningham tries to navigate a poor relationship with his coach and yet finish his career on his own terms by playing a final season and winning a championship.

 

“The hoops answer to Ball Four. By turns funny and poignant—and always self aware—this book allows fans into the locker room and huddle, yes, but also into the cortex of a professional basketball player. If Carson Cunningham could have jumped, run and created his shot off the dribble as masterfully as he writes and observes, he’d be starring in the NBA.”

—L. Jon Wertheim, Senior Writer for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

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Links

Continental Basketball Association Media Guides

Continental Basketball Association Programs

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