The American Basketball Association (Wiki page) – in the past the American professional basketball league founded in 1967. Stopped the existence in 1976 in connection with merge to National basketball association.
In 1967 NBA included ten teams and rules of league were very rigid for persons interested to enter league, in particular the entrance fee made 1,5 million dollars, thus profits of teams were far from the present. As a result, businessmen in several cities decided to create alternative professional basketball league which could compete to NBA, with a view to merge of leagues after a while. The well-known player “Minneapolis Lakers” George Mikan became the first commissioner of ABA. Clubs of ABA managed to win against NBA fight for several high-quality players, and also to entice many judges.
In ABA, the rules other than rules NBA worked: on attack for teams it was allocated for 30 seconds instead of 24 in NBA, and in a season 1967/1968 the three-point zone which in NBA appeared only in twelve years was entered. Also in ABA, the multi-colored (red-white-blue) ball while played NBA a standard orange ball was officially used. Existence in ABA of regional teams, such as Carolina Cougars who played the home games on platforms of the different cities of the states was one more important difference from NBA.
Negotiations on merge of ABA and NBA began even in the summer of 1970, but as a result of Oscar Robertson’s claim against NBA in which he demanded more rights for players, the court postponed merge. Existence of ABA promoted growth of the competition between clubs and, as a result, salaries of players. In 1976 merge at last was carried out, but many clubs of ABA already stopped by this time the existence because of shortage of financing. Turned four clubs “New York Nets”, “Denver Nuggets”, “Indiana Pacers” and “San Antonio Spurs” into NBA.