Dakota Wizards

International Basketball Association (1995-2001)
Continental Basketball Association (2001-2006)
NBA Development League (2006-2012)

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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 Dakota Wizards were a long-running minor league basketball team that played for 17 seasons at the Civic Center is Bismarck, North Dakota between 1995 and 2012. That lifespan marked that Wizards as one of the more durable minor league hoops outfits in American history. After starting out as a founding franchise in the obscure Upper Midwest-based International Basketball Association (IBA) in 1995, two generations of local owners were able to progressively steer the Wizards into strong and more sophisticated leagues.

After three losing seasons in their first four years in the IBA, the Wizards would emerge as a minor league power of sorts. During the club’s final thirteen seasons from 1999 through 2012, the Wizards would win four league titles and suffer only two losing campaigns.

Dave Joerger Era

The Wizards’ finest seasons came under the direction of head coach Dave Joerger. Joerger joined the team as an assistant coach and front office worker shortly after finishing college in 1997. In 2000, the team elevated the 25-year old to the head coach’s chair. The Wizards responded by winning the 2001 IBA championship, besting the Des Moines Dragons in a best-of-five series.

2001 was also a time of intense turmoil for the minor league basketball ecosystem. At various points in the year, each of the top three minor leagues in the county – the 55-year Continental Basketball Association (CBA) the Wizards’ own International Basketball Association and the upstart International Basketball League (IBL)- went out of business. Meanwhile, the National Basketball Association was preparing the launch of its own official minor league system, the National Basketball Development League (AKA the “D-League”), that fall.

By the late summer of 2001, the IBA, CBA and IBL had all disbanded. The three leagues had collectively fielded 26 minor league basketball clubs across North America at the outset of the 2000-01 season. Eight survivors, including the Dakota Wizards, banded together to organize a hastily re-booted version of the Continental Basketball Association for the 2001-02 season.

Dave Joerger returned as the Wizards head coach. Over the next three seasons, he led Dakota to consecutive division titles and CBA championships in 2002 and 2004. Joerger would leave the Wizards for the rival Sioux Falls Skyforce of the CBA for the 2004-05 season and promptly won his fourth minor league title in five seasons with Sioux Falls.

Into The D-League

The Wizards hit a temporary low point during the 2005-06 CBA season. Ownership declined the renew the contract of Joerger’s replacement, Casey Owens, despite Owens coaching the Wizards to another division title and taking the team to the CBA semi-finals in his only season at the helm. Inexplicably, Wizards management elected to replace Owens with Dave Bliss, the disgraced former head coach of Baylor University. Bliss’ lawless tenure at Baylor included the murder of player Patrick Dennehy by his teammate Carlton Dotson in 2003. Towering above Bliss’ numerous deplorable violations at Baylor, the coach orchestrated a cover-up of the circumstances of the murder, attempting to posthumously and corruptly smear Dennehy as a drug dealer to obscure Bliss’ own corrupt practices.

The Wizards’ gross hire of Dave Bliss backfired. He brought the team to a last place 19-29 finish in 2005-06 and was gone after one season.

The Wizards started 2006-07 with a clean slate. The Wizards joined the Sioux Falls Skyforce and the Idaho Stampede in jumping ship from the faltering CBA and accepting invitations to join the NBA’s D-League. Most importantly, the team persuaded Dave Joerger to return and replace Dave Bliss as Head Coach.

Joerger’s magic touch paid off yet again, as the Wizards captured the D-League championship in the first season in the league. On April 29th, 2007 the Wizards bested the Colorado 14ers 129-121 in overtime in a single-game championship before 5,224 fans at the Bismarck Civic Center. Former University of Miami star Darius Rice scored 52 points including 11 3-pointers in the victory.

Departure & Aftermath

The Dakota Wizards would go on the play six seasons in the D-League. Prior to the club’s final campaign in 2011-12, the NBA’s Golden State Warriors purchased the franchise from Dakota’s local ownership group. Following the 2011-12 season, the Warriors moved the team to California where the Wizards became the Santa Cruz Warriors.

In 2013, Dave Joerger was hired as the head coach of the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies. He led the Grizzlies to three straight playoff appearances including back-to-back 50-win seasons, but was let go after three seasons. He later served a three-year tenure as head coach of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings from 2016 to 2019.

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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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