Continental Basketball Association (1986-1987)
Tombstone
Born: July 1986 – The Pensacola Tornados relocate to Jacksonville, FL
Moved: January 2, 1987 (Mississippi Jets)
First Game: December 6, 1986 (L 111-108 @ Pensacola Tornados)
Last Game: January 2, 1987 (L 126-123 vs. Savannah Spirits)
CBA Championships: None
Arena
Jacksonville Coliseum (9,120)
Opened: 1960
Demolished: 2003
Marketing
Team Colors: Blue & Gold
Ownership
Owner: Ted Stepien
OUR FAVORITE STUFF
Continental Basketball Association
Logo T-Shirt
This Old School Shirts release is strictly for the hardcore hoop heads.
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 Jacksonville Jets had played all of ten days in their new home city before team owner Ted Stepien began threatening to move his nomadic Continental Basketball Association (CBA) franchise. Again.
Stepien, the much-reviled former owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, was run out of the NBA on a rail by Commissioner David Stern in the spring of 1983. Within weeks, Stepien bought a Toronto expansion franchise in the CBA, the NBA’s developmental league during the 1980’s and 1990’s. In December 1985, Stepien yanked his Toronto Tornados out of Ontario in midseason and moved south to Pensacola, Florida. Seven months later, he moved the team once more, this time to Jacksonville.
On The Court
Jets Head Coach Tom Nissalke was a former Coach-of-the-Year in both the ABA (Dallas Chaparrals 1972) and the NBA (Houston Rockets 1977).
Nissalke had a good, if troubled, squad. 25-year old guard Quintin Dailey, the #7 overall pick in the 1982 NBA Draft, washed up in the CBA after drugs and Michael Jordan curtailed an initially promising tenure with the Chicago Bulls. Dailey scored at will for Jets, but lasted only about a week before earning an NBA contract with the L.A. Clippers.
The Jets’ unforgiving schedule did the team no favors. The team opened on the road on December 6th, 1986, playing a new version of the Pensacola Tornados that had formed to replace Stepien’s old Tornados team that had become the Jets five months earlier. (Welcome to CBA! Don’t bother trying to keep up…)
After an opening loss in Pensacola, the Jets returned to Jacksonville for six home games in nine nights. That homestand drew an average crowd of 224 fans a night in the 9,000-seat Jacksonville Coliseum. Stepien began to muse about moving the Jets to Fort Myers. Or Norfolk, Virginia. Or Nova Scotia.1NO BYLINE. “Jacksonville Jets look at Fort Myers.” Fort Myers News-Press, 12/18/1986
Shortly after Christmas, the Jets two leading scorers, Billy Goodwin and Bobby Parks, were arrested outside a nightclub during another trip to Pensacola. Though charges were later dropped against Parks, CBA officials handed down a two-year ban to both players.
Days after the Pensacola incident, Stepien moved the Jets to Biloxi, Mississippi. The team was 9-4 at the time and had lasted only 27 days in Jacksonville.
Trivia
Fleeting as the Jets’ presence in Jacksonville may have been, it was not the shortest pairing between team and city in the wild and unruly history of the CBA. The 1979 Mohawk Valley Thunderbirds played only 9 games in Utica, New York after relocating from Baltimore at midseason.
In Memoriam
Jets owner Ted Stepien died on September 10, 2007 at age 82. New York Times obituary.
Guard Quintin Dailey passed away in his sleep on November 8, 2010 due to cardiovascular disease. The NBA veteran was 49 years old. New York Times obituary.
Guard Bobby Parks died after a battle with lung cancer on March 20th, 2013. He was 51 years old.
Head coach Tom Nissalke died at age 87 on August 22, 2019. Salt Lake Tribune obituary.
Downloads
1986-87 Jacksonville Jets Ticket Brochure
Links
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2 Responses
I inadvertently might have been the fuse that started this whole mess. I was covering the Tornados in Toronto for the Toronto Daily Star and one day, my editor told me he wanted to cut the game-day stories on the Tornados from 500 words to 250. I mentioned this to the then GM of the club (Keith Fowler, IIRC), who phoned Stepien who phone my editor who phoned me and fired me. The Tornados played one more game in T.O. and then headed south. (I was re-instated after the union stepped in, but as a stringer, I never worked for that particular editor ever again)
If you’re responsible? You did God’s work, son. LMAO