Michigan Mayhem

Continental Basketball Association (2004-2006)

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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 Michigan Mayhem were a ramshackle minor league hoops  outfit based out of Muskegon’s L.C. Walker Arena for two winters.  The team played in the Continental Basketball Association, the former Official Developmental League of the NBA. But by the time the Mayhem joined the CBA in 2004, the league was on its last legs, having been pushed aside by the NBA’s own in-house minor league system, the National Basketball Development League (known today as the “G-League”).

7-year NBA vet Sam Mack signed with the Mayhem partway through the team’s debut season. Mack led the CBA in scoring during the 2004-05 season with 22.0 points per game.

Another player of note for the Mayhem was 41-year old center Roy Tarpley, who played for the club in late 2005. Tarpley was the 1985 Big Ten Player-of-the-Year at the University of Michigan and went to the Dallas Mavericks at #7 overall in the 1986 NBA draft. Tarpley’s cocaine addiction and alcohol abuse derailed his promising NBA career, earning lifetime bans in 1991 and again in 1995. Muskegon was the end of the road for Tarpley after a post-NBA odyssey of clubs in Greece, Cyprus, Russia and China.

Tarpley averaged 8.9 points in 10 games and then broke his hand. The Mayhem placed him on injured reserved and he never played another pro game.

The Mayhem folded up shop quietly following their second season in the summer of 2006.

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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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In Memoriam

Center/power forward Roy Tarpley (Mayhem ’05) died on January 9, 2015, reportedly of liver failure. New York Times obituary.

Links

Continental Basketball Association Media Guides

Continental Basketball Association Programs

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