The Toronto Toros started out as the Ottawa Nationals, a charter member of the World Hockey Association (WHA) in 1972. They moved to Toronto for their playoff games and were referred to as the Ontario Nationals. Less than a month later, the team was sold and permantely relocated to Toronto, where the became the Toros.
During the 1982-83 NBA season, despised Cleveland Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien threatened to move his woeful club to Toronto. It was one of the final missteps in a four-year marathon of civic humiliations that began with a 1979 Rave Magazine interview where Stepien opined that the Cavaliers had “too many black players”. The gaffes spanned his disastrous three-year reign as Cavs’ owner from 1980 to 1983. The Cavs’ move to Toronto never came to pass and Stepien mercifully divested himself of the Cavaliers in the spring of 1983. But oddly, the reviled owner ended up with his Toronto hoops team anyway.
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