Global Basketball Association (1991-1992)

Background

The Global Basketball Association was a minor league basketball organization that played one season and part of a second from 1991 to 1992.

The league was the brainchild of notorious former Cleveland Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien, who frequently tops lists of the worst pro sports owners in history thanks to his 1980-1983 reign of terror in Cleveland.  After leaving the NBA, Stepien began investing in minor league basketball teams in the Continental Basketball Association (CBA).  He quickly wore out his welcome in the CBA by relocating his franchise in the middle of a season in back-to-back years.  The first Commissioner of the GBA was Mike Storen, the former Commissioner of the American Basketball Association from 1973 to 1975.  But Stepien took over Commissioner duties somewhere along the way.

Most of the GBA franchises were clustered in the Southeastern United States, but a few far flung clubs played as far away as Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Saginaw, Michigan.  The league played a fall/winter schedule and competed with the more established CBA for talent and expansion markets.  The original plan for the league, announced in March 1991, was for a pair of touring European clubs from Estonia and the Republic of San Marino to participate in a schedule against small-market American teams (hence the “Global” moniker).  The European clubs never materialized, but the GBA launched in November 1991 with 11 franchises.  The Nashville-based Music City Jammers won the first and only championship of the GBA.

The GBA attempted to launch a second season in November 1992 with eight clubs, but the wheels came off quickly.  The Louisville Shooters club folded after three games and the remaining seven clubs threw in the towel one month later.  The GBA folded in mid-season on December 19, 1992.

Global Basketball Association Franchise List

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