Buffalo Braves

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Buffalo Braves
1976
)

The Buffalo Braves were an American professional basketball franchise based in Buffalo, New York. The Braves competed in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member club of the league's Eastern Conference Atlantic Division from 1970 until 1978. In 1978, Braves owner John Y. Brown Jr. swapped franchises with then-Boston Celtics owner Irv Levin, who then moved the team to San Diego, where it was renamed the San Diego Clippers. The franchise relocated to Los Angeles in 1984, becoming the Los Angeles Clippers.

History

Play begins

The Braves were one of three NBA

Syracuse Nationals (who are now known as the Sacramento Kings and Philadelphia 76ers, respectively). As of 2022, the Braves are the last New York State-based NBA team to be based somewhere other than New York City, where the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets
play.

Initial hiring

The team's first

NBA Eastern Conference
All-Star team.

Season-by-season summary

1971–72 season

The Braves repeated their 22–60 record in the 1971–72 season, but did make good acquisitions that would make the club better. Buffalo drafted

Buffalo State College. Johnny McCarthy
replaced Schayes one game into the season as the team's head coach.

1972–73 & 1973–74 seasons

Ernie DiGregorio was named NBA Rookie of the Year in 1973–74 after leading the NBA in assists and free throw percentage.

The team did slightly worse in the 1972–73 season, as it went 21–61 under new head coach

points and 15.1 rebounds; this is the last time any player has averaged at least 30 points and 15 rebounds in the same NBA season. Also, that season, the Braves rookie Ernie DiGregorio won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award
.

1974–75 & 1975–76 seasons

Bob McAdoo (11) was the NBA MVP in the 1974–75 season after averaging 34.5 points per game and 14.1 rebounds per game.

In 1974–75, McAdoo was awarded the NBA Most Valuable Player Award, averaging 34.5 points, 14.1 rebounds. and 2.12 blocks per game, while shooting 51.2% from the field and 80.5% from the free-throw line. The Braves made trips to the playoffs in both 1974–75 and 1975–76, the latter of which would be their last playoff berth playing in Buffalo.

1976–77 season

The Braves by this point were a modest success, both on the court and off; the team was drawing close to the league average in fans, had solid broadcasting ratings and was turning a consistent profit. Even so, by 1976 Snyder was facing severe pressure to sell the team and get it out of Buffalo. As a result of the Braves only getting the third choice of dates at the Aud, the entire NBA was unable to finalize a schedule and hammer out television contracts until the Sabres and Griffins finalized their schedules. The NBA considered this untenable, and gave Snyder five years to resolve the problem. In a 2016 interview with The Buffalo News as part of a retrospective on the Braves, Snyder laid particular blame on Canisius president Father James Demske for making it difficult to get good home dates at the Aud. Snyder recalled offering Demske $125,000 per game to give up some Saturday night dates to the Braves. However, Demske turned the offer down, believing that the Braves posed a threat to the Little Three rivalry in college basketball. When the five-year deadline expired without a resolution, Snyder found himself with two options–build a new arena or sell the team. Building a new arena wasn't financially realistic at the time, leaving Snyder with no option but to sell the team. Had the dispute been resolved, the Braves would have likely been able to stay in Buffalo, especially since Canisius basketball went into what would be permanent decline in the early 1980s.[4]

At the time, Snyder's more public feuds were with the Sabres, whose owners, Northrup and Seymour Knox, represented Buffalo's old money circuit while Snyder had nouveau riche status. Years later, Snyder attributed these feuds to his own inexperience with sports ownership and now speaks in more conciliatory tones regarding his hockey competition.[7]

The June 15, 1976 issue of Buffalo's

Miami, Florida. However, the city of Buffalo filed a $10 million damage suit to block the move. The sale eventually fell through and the Braves and the city signed a new 15-year Memorial Auditorium lease in July with a provision that the lease could be voided if the team did not sell 5,000 season tickets in any season. Later that summer, Snyder finally sold 50% of the franchise to businessman John Y. Brown Jr., who had previously owned the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association (ABA). Brown later acquired the remaining half from Snyder sometime in the 1976–77 season and resold that share to another businessman, Harry T. Mangurian Jr.

Brown and Mangurian proceeded to dismantle the Braves. Ramsay, unwilling to have his career hurt by the change in ownership, left for the Portland Trail Blazers, who would win the NBA championship in the upcoming 1976–77 season.[8] A provision in the team sale agreement stipulated that if Brown sold the contract of any Braves player, then the money would go to Snyder and the purchase price would be reduced. This subsequently occurred when the Braves sent McAdoo to the New York Knicks for players and cash midway through the season. Before the first game of the season, the Braves also managed to acquire eventual Hall-of-Fame center Moses Malone from Portland. However, after just two games in which he played a total of six minutes, he too was traded; he was sent to Houston for two draft picks. He would finish the season in Houston averaging 13 points and 13 rebounds while only two years later winning his first of three MVP Awards. The Braves would go through four head coaches in the next two seasons: Tates Locke, Bob MacKinnon, Joe Mullaney (formerly coach of the Colonels) and Cotton Fitzsimmons.

1977–78 season

The team's poor play in its final two years (30–52 in 1976–77 and 27–55 in 1977–78) and the overt attempts to break the lease on Memorial Auditorium drove attendance down below the threshold that would have been needed to break the lease.[4] John Y. Brown met with Irv Levin, who then owned the Celtics, and negotiated a deal in which the owners would swap franchises, with Brown taking control of the Celtics and Levin getting the Braves. Levin was a California businessman, and wanted to own an NBA team in his native state. However, he knew the NBA would not even consider letting him move the Celtics. He was therefore very receptive to Brown's offer. The deal was brokered by then NBA general counsel David Stern, who became the league's commissioner in 1984. Following what would be the Braves' final season in Western New York, the NBA owners voted 21–1 to let the team move. As Levin wanted, he became owner of a team in San Diego after the 1977–78 season, which became the San Diego (now Los Angeles) Clippers.[9][10] As part of the transaction, the teams traded most of the players on their rosters.[10]

Team colors

For the franchise's first season (1970–71) team colors were blue, red & gold; home white uniforms featured lettering and striping in only red & gold, with road uniforms being blue, also with red & gold lettering and striping. In the second season, (1971–72) the team adopted the colors of the Baltimore Orioles. This was with the heavy influence of the local uniform supplier, James (Jim) Ludtka. Ludtka, was a former pro baseball player with the New York Yankees and was scouting for the Orioles organization. The new color scheme was white, orange and black, with the now familiar "feather B" logo featured on uniforms that had diagonal stripes across both jerseys and shorts (predominant color on the road being orange). This scheme was kept one more season (1972–73) and, with the 1973–74 season, the team adopted another new color scheme of Columbia blue and white, with uniforms including black accents outlining the lettering and also striping on jerseys and shorts; they continued with these uniforms until the team was moved to California. (Despite the new color scheme, the logo – which no longer appeared on the uniforms – remained the black and orange "feather B").

Clippers acknowledgement and naming issues

Since

Buffalo Rapids.[13]

Basketball Hall of Famers

Buffalo Braves Hall of Famers
Players
No. Name Position Tenure Inducted
11 Bob McAdoo
F/C
 1972–1976 2000
20 Moses Malone
F
 1976 2001
44 Adrian Dantley F/G 1976–1977 2008
Coaches
Name Position Tenure Inducted
Jack Ramsay Head coach 1972–1976 1992
Contributors
Cotton Fitzsimmons Head coach 1977–1978 2021

Individual awards

NBA Most Valuable Player Award

NBA Rookie of the Year

NBA Executive of the Year

All-NBA First Team

All-NBA Second Team

NBA All-Rookie First Team

NBA All-Star Weekend

NBA All-Star selections

NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player

Broadcasting

For most of the team's existence, WBEN (930 AM) was the radio home of the Buffalo Braves, with Van Miller on play-by-play. Miller also called play-by-play on the team's telecasts over WBEN-TV (channel 4, now WIVB-TV), the local CBS television affiliate. Snyder claimed that the Braves broadcasts were drawing far higher ratings than the Sabres at the time and insisted that if he had managed to keep the Braves in Buffalo, the Sabres would have been the team eventually forced to move out of the city.[4]

Season-by-season records

League Champions Conference Champions Division Champions Playoff Berth
Season Team League Conference Division Regular Season
Post-season
results
Conf. Finish Div. Finish Wins Losses Win% GB
1970–71 1970–71 NBA Eastern Atlantic 7th 4th 22 60 .268 30
1971–72 1971–72 NBA Eastern Atlantic 8th 4th 22 60 .268 34
1972–73 1972–73 NBA Eastern Atlantic 7th 3rd 21 61 .256 47
1973–74 1973–74 NBA Eastern Atlantic 4th 3rd 42 40 .512 14 Lost
conference semifinals to Boston Celtics
, 2–4
1974–75 1974–75 NBA Eastern Atlantic 3rd 2nd 49 33 .598 11 Lost
Washington Bullets
, 3–4
1975–76 1975–76 NBA Eastern Atlantic 5th 2nd 46 36 .561 8 Won
conference semifinals to Boston Celtics
, 2–4
1976–77 1976–77 NBA Eastern Atlantic 10th 4th 30 52 .366 20
1977–78 1977–78 NBA Eastern Atlantic 10th 4th 27 55 .329 28

References

  1. ^ "History: Team by Team" (PDF). 2019-20 Official NBA Guide. NBA Properties, Inc. October 17, 2019. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  2. ^ "NBA.com/Stats–LA Clippers seasons". Stats.NBA.com. NBA Media Ventures, LLC. Archived from the original on September 15, 2017. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  3. ^ "Braves Quick Facts". Clippers.com. NBA Media Ventures, LLC. Archived from the original on September 6, 2017. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
  4. ^ a b c d Gleason, Bucky (April 22, 2016). "How the Braves came to Buffalo -- and why they left". The Buffalo News. Archived from the original on April 22, 2016. Retrieved April 22, 2016.
  5. ^ Buffery, Steve (2004-11-03). "The road was paved". Toronto Sun. Archived from the original on October 8, 2013. Retrieved 2013-10-08.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  6. ^ "Buffalo Braves 1971–72 game log and Scores". Archived from the original on 2006-05-24. Retrieved 2008-02-28.
  7. ^ Kulyk, Andrew (April 24, 2016). The Buffalo Braves Saga: Do Not Lionize Paul Snyder. Artvoice. Retrieved April 24, 2016.
  8. ^ Fink, James (April 28, 2014). Paul Snyder remembers ex-Braves coach Ramsey. Business First. Retrieved April 28, 2014.
  9. ISBN 978-981-4313-90-2
    . Retrieved December 24, 2019.
  10. ^ a b Peter May (22 May 2012). "Freaky Friday, N.B.A. Style: When the Clippers Were the Celtics". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 May 2013.
  11. ^ Anstey, Evan (8 November 2019). "BUFFALO LA Clippers win Thursday game wearing throwback Buffalo Braves jerseys". WIVB-TV, Buffalo. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  12. ^ Brady, Erik (14 July 2020). "Column: Braves' first, and worst, mistake came when the NBA club was named". The Buffalo News. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  13. ^ McKissic, Rodney (February 12, 2005). "BUFFALO RAPIDS SEEK HOME NEWLY NAMED ABA TEAM MAY PLAY ON SEVERAL COURTS". Buffalo News. Retrieved December 26, 2023.

External links

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