The ABA–NBA merger was a major pro sports business maneuver in 1976 when the American Basketball Association (ABA) combined with the National Basketball Association (NBA), after multiple attempts over several years. The NBA and ABA had entered merger talks as early as 1970, but an antitrust suit filed by the head of the NBA players union, Robertson v. National Basketball Ass'n, blocked the merger until 1976.
As part of the merger agreement, the NBA agreed to accept four of the remaining six ABA teams: the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New York Nets, and San Antonio Spurs. The remaining two ABA teams, the Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis, folded, with their players entering a dispersal draft. A seventh ABA team, the Virginia Squires, had hoped to enter merger talks as well at the time, but ultimately folded operations a month before they could officially do so due to a failed assessment payment to the ABA during the 1976 ABA Playoffs despite them already not being in the playoffs that year.
Early attempts at merger From the very beginning, the ABA hoped to force a merger with the NBA, thus repeating the American Football League (AFL)'s successful effort to force a merger with the National Football League (NFL). According to The NBA Encyclopedia, ABA officials told prospective owners that they could get an ABA team for half of what it cost to get an NBA expansion team at the time. The upstart league's officials confidently predicted that if and when a merger occurred, any surviving owners would see their investment more than double. The ABA would get their first and strongest case to try and get a successful merger with the NBA ready by as early as 1968 (the ABA's second year of existence) when they discovered a document that was leaked by a disgruntled ex-employee of the NBA that talked about the order of the 1968 NBA draft, the names of the teams and the players they'd receive, the amount each player would be paid, and most damaging to the NBA and favorable for the ABA, how much each NBA team was to contribute in order to make sure the college stars signed with the NBA instead of with the ABA. (Ironically, the ABA was engaging in the same sort of practices that the NBA was doing at the time, but the ABA did not write their plans out so directly by comparison, which made the idea of an antitrust lawsuit by the ABA possible against the NBA.Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , p. 426) On the ABA's end, they had no real long-term plans for survival since they initially hoped to last for around 3–5 years and then either successfully merge with the NBA or fold operations entirely.Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , p. 6
In contrast to both the earlier AFL and the later World Hockey Association that had also been founded by the ABA's own people (which both endured significant hostility from their established competitors for many years), the ABA found the NBA owners to be reasonably amenable to a merger relatively early on. On June 18, 1970, only three years after the ABA began play, the NBA owners voted 13–4 (barely being over the 3/4 majority), while the ABA owners unanimously voted 11–0 to jointly seek approval from the U.S. Congress to pass an exception to existing antitrust law in order to merge the rivaling circuits into a single, 28-team league that would retain the NBA name."NBA Okays Merger With ABA", AP report in Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, June 19, 1970, p.D1Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , p.200 Seattle SuperSonics owner Sam Schulman, a member of the ABA–NBA merger committee back in 1970, was so ardently eager to merge the leagues together that he publicly announced that if the NBA did not accept the merger agreement that was worked out with the ABA, he would move the SuperSonics franchise from the NBA to the ABA. Schulman also threatened to move his soon-to-be ABA team to Los Angeles to compete directly with the Lakers as well following the Los Angeles Stars moving their franchise to the state of Utah in order to become the Utah Stars.Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , p.186 The owners of the Dallas Chaparrals (now the NBA's San Antonio Spurs) were so confident of the impending merger themselves that they suggested that the ABA hold off on scheduling altogether and play a regular season schedule for the 1971–72 NBA season instead.Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , pp.220–221 After the 1970–71 season, Basketball Weekly wrote "The American basketball public is clamoring for a merger. So are the NBA and ABA owners, the two commissioners, and every college coach. The war is over. The Armistice will be signed soon". Despite the early claims from those reports at hand, the two leagues continued merger discussions and plans throughout the early and mid-1970s instead.Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , pp.425–427
The original planned deal and revisions With the original 1970 ABA–NBA merger at hand, in addition to the merger still having the league be called the National Basketball Association combining the 17 NBA teams at the time (with the San Diego Rockets moving to Houston, Texas to become the Houston Rockets and the San Francisco Warriors moving to Oakland, California to become the Golden State Warriors not long after the initial announcement) with the 11 ABA teams at the time (with a few of the ABA teams moving to new locations and/or being renamed not long afterward), the details from that original planned merger would have also included a single-league schedule that was ready as early as practicable, a world championship playoff between the two league winners akin to the Super Bowl or the World Series (with the potential for teams to "move" to different "leagues" as conference replacements similar to Major League Baseball's Milwaukee Brewers and Houston Astros switching around their original leagues ever since they first entered the MLB), a common draft of college players with the 28 teams being utilized, and an expansion by at least two teams to create a 30-team NBA (predating the current number of teams in the NBA from 1995 onward by around 25 years) before the single-league schedule goes into effect as the basic items in mind, with further items in question (such as addressing the conflict of the Houston Rockets and Denver Rockets having the same team name and later player concerns) being added in the event the U.S. Congress approved of the merger. One condition involved during that time had the ABA make sure they didn't sign any more college underclassmen during that time, but that condition was later broken with George McGinnis being signed by the Indiana Pacers, though that didn't become the breaking point for that original deal.Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , pp. 426-427 A revised agreement would initially be reached a year later on May 4, 1971. The NBA's ratification of the May 1971 deal would have included every team but the Virginia Squires in the merger (Virginia's exclusion related to them being too close to the territory of the Baltimore Bullets (now Washington Wizards) at the time, and the Squires would have to be forced to either move their franchise again to join in or fold operations altogether) in exchange for the ABA to drop their antitrust lawsuit and other legal actions against the NBA, each ABA team paying the NBA $1.25 million over a ten year period, no ABA team having a share in television revenue for two seasons, and the two leagues holding a common draft for college players.Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , p. 425 That revised merger was approved by the U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, but the NBA's own reserve clause was considered illegal and thus could not be a part of the merger. Later amendments by the Senate to address that issue, such as replacing the reserve clause with an option clause, as well as having ABA teams not pay $1.25 million to get into the NBA and the notion that players from both leagues should all be signed to one-year contracts with second year options before becoming free agents, were ultimately rejected by both leagues.Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , pp. 427-428 That would be the last serious attempt at a merger by the two leagues until 1976, following the resolution of another antitrust lawsuit led by Oscar Robertson combined with the ABA losing multiple teams during their final season of existence.
Robertson v. NBA antitrust lawsuit
The early attempts at merging the ABA and NBA were delayed for years by litigation known as the Oscar Robertson suit, styled Robertson v. National Basketball Association, 556 F.2d 682 (2d Cir. 1977). After the NBA owners voted in 1970 to merge with the ABA, the NBA Players Association, led by Robertson, filed a lawsuit in April 1970 to prevent the merger on the basis of antitrust grounds regarding the NBA's players since players were essentially stuck with the rosters they first signed up with via the NBA draft system at the time, with trades being the only viable way to move players around at that period of time.Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , pp.200, 427Ray Kennedy, A Celtic Rookie Puts It Together: First-year Commissioner Larry O'Brien used his Irish gift of gab to lead the NBA owners into a merger with the ABA, Sports Illustrated, October 25, 1976 The existence of the ABA resulted in increased salaries for players in both leagues as the ABA and NBA competed with each other to sign players, to the point where each league figured they needed to potentially bankrupt the other league in order to gain the upper hand with signing players to their own league.Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , p.177-199, 224–225, 230, 232–234, 248–254, 271–272, 275–276, 285, 334 The Robertson suit was finally settled on February 3, 1976, but for the entirety of its pendency, it presented an insurmountable obstacle to the desired merger of the two leagues in general.Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , p.427
Congressional action to allow the merger