1969 ABA draft

The 1969 ABA draft was the third draft done by the American Basketball Association (ABA), an upstart rivaling league to the National Basketball Association (NBA) that they would eventually merge with as a part of the NBA a number of years later. This draft began on February 15, 1969, and was held in Bloomington, Minnesota (home of both the Minnesota Pipers and the ABA's own headquarters at the time) and ended exactly two months later on April 15, 1969, with it being held in Charlotte, North Carolina (home to the future Carolina Cougars ABA franchise that came from the Houston Mavericks' prior existence), though they'd decrease the number of rounds back down to 10 rounds again similar to their inaugural draft year. Much like their first two drafts, this draft was also held as a "secret draft", with this specific draft also having an operation codename in mind called "Operation Kingfish", in which the two worst teams of the ABA by February 15 of that year, the New York Nets and Houston Mavericks (later becoming the Carolina Cougars during the April portion of that draft period), would acquire what was deemed the two best players of the draft period that year, Lew Alcindor from UCLA and Neal Walk from the University of Florida, and persuade them to join them over the two new expansion teams from the previous season, the Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns respectively, with Alcindor being the main prize in question. However, both teams would fail in acquiring the key players they deemed necessary to upgrade their quality of performance in order to effectively compete against the NBA at the time (even against the newest NBA teams created at the time), which led to ABA commissioner George Mikan effectively resigning from his position following his failure to persuade Alcindor in particular to join the Nets instead of the Bucks for new Houston Mavericks/Carolina Cougars owner Jim Gardner in an interim period before Jack Dolph (formerly of CBS Sports) took over the position in the long-term, as well as led to an ownership change for the Nets with Roy Boe taking over that team instead.of Arthur J. Brown (and Mark Binstein) and the ABA moving their headquarters from the state of Minnesota to the New York City area akin to the NBA. Despite that failure, the period afterward would also be notable for the acquisition of undrafted sophomore Spencer Haywood, which led to the Haywood v. National Basketball Association Supreme Court case years later that would help modify both the ABA & NBA's own draft systems for years to come following Haywood's brief time with the ABA's Denver Rockets. Outside of Haywood, the best draft prospect from the ABA that stayed in the league during that year would be a late round selection named Mack Calvin. This also became the last draft that the Houston Mavericks would participate in under that name, as once the 1968–69 ABA season officially concluded for the Mavericks, they would officially move eastward to the state of North Carolina to become a regional franchise called the Carolina Cougars, taking on that franchise's entire history and draft stock in the process entering the rest of that draft period in April. Not only that, but it also became the last draft done by the defending champion Oakland Oaks since they would also move out east (yet strangely compete in the West Division) to become the Washington Caps following an accidental bankruptcy threat at hand,Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , pp. 90-99 as well as the only draft done by the Minnesota Pipers since they would return to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania after one year out in Minnesota to once again become the Pittsburgh Pipers.

Operation Kingfish According to the at-the-time general manager of the Indiana Pacers (and later, future commissioner of the ABA), Mike Storen, the ABA could have potentially either secured their position as a permanent alternative professional basketball league to the NBA or at least force the ABA-NBA merger to happen a lot sooner than it eventually did in 1976 had their plans for "Operation Kingfish" worked out like they had intended it to. The first plan for the ABA to secure Lew Alcindor to their league instead of the NBA involved them trying to get Howard Hughes to put up $1,000,000 to sign Alcindor for the Los Angeles Stars and then allow Hughes the right to televise Stars games especially on the Hughes Television Sports Network akin to a competing fourth network to what was the big three networks of American TV at the time, but that plan ultimately went nowhere despite Hughes' #1 guy at the time, Robert Mayhew, really being a fan of the ABA's idea himself. They then followed suit by spending no more than $10,000 on research to develop a strategy on getting Alcindor to join the ABA instead of the NBA, which included noting two key points on his profile that reflected him well during this time: his self-reliance and self-confidence in himself. Alcindor later had commissioner George Mikan and the Nets' owner at the time, Arthur Brown, meet with him in New York alongside the Bucks' owners at Milwaukee Pro demanding that both teams gave him their best and only offer available to him before he made his decision (Storen wanted to also get Pacers owner Dick Tinkham involved in the meeting as well, but ultimately couldn't do so), with the initial plan in mind having the ABA offer Alcindor an instant $1,000,000 alongside a mink coat (for his mother) as a bonus for signing with the Nets while working out the finer details of his yearly salary later on in the negotiations. Unfortunately, during the only meeting the ABA did have with Alcindor, Mikan and Brown neglected to bring out the million dollar check written out to his name and the exclusion of that check made the difference between him playing for the Nets in the ABA and playing for the Bucks in the NBA (the stated offer without the check and mink coat bonus was slated to be worth $1,000,000 for four years against the Bucks' $1.4 million deal for five years). Despite later efforts made by the ABA to get a second chance with him and later even have his parents try and have him reconsider once they saw the ABA's check and offer for him, Alcindor ultimately wouldn't budge from his initial decision, which ultimately led to Mikan resigning from his position as commissioner of the ABA for James Carson Gardner briefly before Jack Dolph (a former president of CBS Sports) became their more permanent commissioner for the next few seasons and helped led to Roy Boe taking over the Nets franchise a month after the draft concluded in May 1969 (which later helped them become a successful, championship winning franchise in the ABA, even without Alcindor playing for them).Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association (Simon & Schuster, 1990), , pp. 190-194

Draftee career notes For the third year in a row, the ABA and NBA would share the same #1 pick in their respective draft years. Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar during his career) from UCLA was selected first overall by the New York Nets, the team near his birth home area. Much like Jimmy Walker and Elvin Hayes before him, Alcindor would decline the ABA to join the NBA instead. He would later become a six-time NBA Finals champion (one with the Bucks and five with the Showtime Lakers) with two Finals MVPs in 1971 and 1985, a six-time MVP (which is still a record for the NBA to this day), a nineteen-time All-Star, a fifteen-time All-NBA Team member (ten times a member of the first team, five times a member of the second team), an eleven-time NBA All-Defensive Team member (five times a member of the first team, six teams a member of the second team), a two-time scoring champion, a four-time block leader, a rebounding leader in 1976, and the Rookie of the Year Award alongside his first appearances in the All-Star Game, All-NBA Second Team, and All-Defensive Second Team in 1970. He was later named a member of the NBA's 35th and 75th Anniversary Teams, as well as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. He would retire with many of the NBA's all-time honors at the time, including the most blocks and points in league history at the time until those specific honors were broken by Hakeem Olajuwon in 1995 and LeBron James in 2023 respectively. As such, for his achievements, he has been an easy inductee to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. The only other Hall of Fame player to have been drafted by the ABA this year as of 2025 was Bob Dandridge, who was drafted by the Kentucky Colonels in one of the later rounds of the first five rounds (likely as early as the third round), but stayed with Alcindor in the NBA to play with the Milwaukee Bucks, winning a championship in 1971 alongside the 1978 NBA Finals while playing with the Washington Bullets. The most successful ABA player to have been drafted that year, Mack Calvin, has been vouching to also get himself into the Basketball Hall of Fame as well, but he has yet to succeed in getting his name in there properly for his achievements in the ABA.