California Dreams

Women’s Professional Basketball League (1979-1980)

Tombstone

Born: 1979 – WPBL expansion franchise
Folded: March 2, 1980¹

First Game: November 16, 1979 (L 118-113 @ Chicago Hustle)
Last Game: February 23, 1980 (W 88-80 @ San Francisco Pioneers)

WBL Championships: None

Arenas

Anaheim Convention Center
Opened: 1967

Long Beach Arena (5,000)
Opened: 1962

Marketing

Team Colors: Orange, Brown & Yellow

Ownership

Owners: Larry Kozlicki, Terrell Iselhard & Gerald Schenk

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Background

The California Dreams were a one-year wonder in the pioneering Women’s Professional Basketball League. The club failed to complete its only season of play in the winter of 1979-80 after insolvency and game cancellations compelled the league office to revoke the franchise several weeks before the end of the regular season.

Heading into its second season in the winter of 1979-80, the WPBL and its Commissioner Bill Byrne embarked on and aggressive and disorganized expansion campaign, swelling the circuit from eight to fourteen teams. It soon became apparent the Byrne greenlit some of the expansion clubs without securing committed investors. The league suffered national embarrassment when it had to shut down the owner-less Philadelphia Fox and Washington Metros expansion clubs less than a month into the season in December 1979.

Ownership

The Dreams did have an ownership group – a trio of Chicago attorneys led by Larry Kozlicki. By his own account, Kozlicki got hooked on women’s pro basketball when he wandered into a Chicago Hustle game at DePaul’s Alumni Hall during the league’s first season. The Hustle were league’s flagship franchise and occasionally played to crowds ranging from 2,000 to 5,000. It was a standard that Kozlicki’s Dreams would not live up to.

Kozlicki originally hoped to set up the Dreams at the Anaheim Convention Center in Orange County, former home of the old Anaheim Amigos of the American Basketball Association. But the Convention Center could only accommodate a handful of the Dreams’ eighteen home games, so the club played the bulk of its schedule at Long Beach Arena.

Charm School

Mel Sims, a former men’s assistant coach at Cal-State Fullerton, signed on as Head Coach. Sims signed the Dreams’ best player Nancy Dunkle, a CS-Fullerton alum who won played on the U.S. Olympic silver medal-winning team at Montreal in 1976. Dunkle reportedly signed a two-year deal with the Dreams worth $50,000/year. Such a salary would have placed her among the highest paid players in the WPBL.

Indeed, Kozlicki seemed willing to spend money on his team during the initial early excitement of owning a pro sports franchise. In addition to shelling out for Dunkle, he paid to enroll all of the Dreams’ players at the John Robert Powers charm school where the Dreams’ players received lessons in applying make-up, walking on runaways and other essential basketball skills.

1979-80 Season

The Dreams made their debut on November 16, 1979. The team lost a 118-113 road game against the Chicago Hustle in Kozlicki’s home town. An odd game schedule did the Dreams few favors in the standings or at the box office. The club played only one home game during the season’s first month, going 1-7 during a cross-country trek. The Dreams returned home in mid-December for a glut of three home games in six days. On December 15th, 1979 the Dreams played what would be their only home game in Anaheim. A meager crowd of 258 fans rattled around in the nearly 9,000-seat arena.

The wheels came off quickly after the turn of the New Year. Attendance was equally abysmal in Long Beach – a February game against the Houston Angels drew less than 100 fans. Paychecks stopped arriving in mid-January. The Dreams played through the month of February without pay. Years later, players interviewed by WPBL historian Karra Porter for her book Mad Seasons recalled a road trip to New Jersey when the team discovered their air fare was only booked one way. The entire squad was stranded on the East Coast with no way to get back home. The team finally made it back to California when the parents of Dreams player Patti Bucklew bought the team plane tickets on their own dime.

On the bright side, Dunkle and Jane Cook were selected to represent the Dreams at the WPBL’s midseason All-Star Game at Chicago.

Midseason Meltdown

By the end of February 1980, the Dreams players were ready to strike over six weeks of missed payrolls. General Manager Bob Joseph cancelled the Dreams’ home game against the Minnesota Fillies, incurring the wrath of owner Larry Kozlicki who fired him immediately. Joseph responded through the press that he could not have fielded a team, due to the threatened walkout. He also pointed out that the team owed $15,000 in back salaries – including his own. Three days later the league revoked the Dreams franchise, over the pleas of Kozlicki, who wanted an exemption from the league’s minimum roster standard of eight players in order to forge on with any players he could muster up.

The Dreams officially closed for business on March 2nd, 1980.

Aftermath

Bizarrely, the Women’s Basketball league let Larry Kozlicki back in a few months after the Dreams debacle as the lead investor in the new Nebraska Wranglers expansion franchise. The Wranglers were sometimes mistakenly referred to in the media as the relocated California Dreams. They were, in fact, two completely separate franchises owned by the same man.

Kozlicki’s Wranglers won the final WPBL championship in April 1981 – despite another series of missed paychecks. The WPBL quietly faded into oblivion after the 1980-81 season without ever formally announcing its demise.

Women’s professional basketball returned to Long Beach in 1997, with the Long Beach Stingrays of the American Basketball League. The Stingrays lasted only a single season before the struggling ABL contracted the club in August 1998.

Trivia

Former Dreams guard Muffet McGraw took over Head Coach duties at Notre Dame in 1987. She has led the Fighting Irish to three Final Four appearances and one national championship (2001) as of this writing.