The Winnipeg Thunder were a minor league basketball team that played fitfully for parts of three summers at Winnipeg Arena in the early 1990’s. The team had the misfortune to play in not one but two ramshackle leagues that went out of business in the middle of season. As a result, the Thunder managed to complete just one of the three seasons they embarked upon.
The Pittsburgh Rens – short for Renaissance – were one of eight franchises in Abe Saperstein’s American Basketball League that debuted in the autumn of 1961. The team was notable for signing teenage center Connie Hawkins to his first pro contract after the future Hall of Famer was expelled from college and blackballed by the NBA over dubious insinuations of point-shaving. Hawkins dominated the ABL and won the league’s MVP award as a rookie in 1962. The Rens and the rest of the ABL folded midway through the league’s second season in January 1962.
The Panama Banqueros were one of six ball clubs in the doomed Inter-American League experiment of 1979. The league included the Miami Amigos plus five Caribbean teams in the Dominican Republic, Panama, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. Remarkably, the unproven Inter-American League received a Class AAA designation (one step below Major League Baseball) from the governing body of the minor leagues, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues. This despite the fact that none of the teams had an affiliation with a Major League parent club.
The Orlando Apollos were first and only champions – more or less – of the Alliance of American Football (AAF). The Steve Spurrier-coached club had the league’s best record (7-1) when the league collapsed in bankruptcy and recrimination with two weeks remaining in its inaugural season. With the playoffs cancelled as well, bookmaker FanDuel declared the Apollos champions of the AAF for the purposes of resolving futures bets placed by their customers. Read more…
All-American Basketball Alliance (1978) Born: 1977 – AABA founding franchise Folded: February 1978 First Game: January 13, 1978 (L 127-119 @ Kentucky Stallions) Last Game: January 30,
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