 Pittsburgh Pipers 1967-68  Minnesota Pipers 1968-69   Pittsburgh Pipers 1969-70   Pittsburgh Condors 1970-72 |
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Player info Numbers Roster and Photos | Team info Minnesota Pipers Pittsburgh Condors Pittsburgh Pipers Standings | Stats Head-to-Head |
Quick facts:
Founded: 1967
Folded: 1972
Arena: Pittsburgh Civic Arena (1967–68, 1969–1972)
Metropolitan Sports Center (1968–69)
Titles: 1 (1968)
Playoffs: 2
The 1968 Pittsburgh Pipers won the first ABA championship, and the cities only pro-basketball title
Strange Re-relocation:
Usually when a professional sports team relocates it is over for them in that city. They have burnt every bridge and like Taylor Swift says, they're never ever getting back together. Yeah sometimes a city gets an expansion team that takes on the old name like with the Cleveland Browns, or Charlotte Hornets; or a team is forced to change their name and goes back to an old nostalgic name like what happened with the Denver Nuggets. But only one time has a team left a city for another city, and than came back to that original city. That one time being the Pittsburgh Pipers of the ABA.
On the court the Pipers were about as successful as a team could be, winning the first ABA championship in 1968, but off the court they struggled. Steel City fans would rather watch the Steelers or Penguins play than a new basketball team, so attendance struggled. This caused the team to move to Minnesota, who had just lost their ABA team to Miami, just weeks after winning the ABA title.
And as they say "The grass isn't always greener on the other side". The Minnesota Pipers struggled mightily. Fans in Bloomington didn't care about the ABA and didn't show up, and the team was not very good - though they did make the playoffs. On top of that the United States Supreme Court sided with Connie Hawkins in his suit vs the NBA which paved the road for Hawkins to join the NBA. So after one mediocre season the Pipers came limping back to Pittsburgh.
But the Pipers had lost that championship luster. The team was terrible and soon became the Condors and they too were terrible. After just 5 years of existence the franchise folded and Pittsburgh has never had another top tier professional basketball team again.
Mike Lewis of the Condors vs Stars
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The Baltimore Claws were one of the shortest-lived franchises in professional basketball history. The team existed during the turbulent final months of the American Basketball Association and played only three preseason exhibition games before being expelled from the league in October 1975. The collapse of the Claws was not an isolated event. It was an early warning of the financial disaster that overwhelmed the ABA during its final season. Within weeks, the San Diego Sails and Utah Stars also ceased operations. The Virginia Squires barely completed the regular season before folding, leaving only six teams to finish the ABA's final campaign. By the summer of 1976, the struggling league could no longer survive independently. Four ABA franchises joined the NBA, two others folded during the merger negotiations, and the original ABA disappeared after nine seasons
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On October sixth, the NBA lost one of the great pioneers in league history. Connie Hawkins was a four time NBA all-star and former ABA MVP, who's legal battle with the ABA and NBA helped change the landscape of professional basketball. Few athletes in American history have ever been as victimized by the system as Hawkins was. In 1961, while Hawkins was a freshman at Iowa and ineligible to play on the Hawkeyes varsity team due to NCAA regulations at the time, a humongous college betting scandal erupted and Hawkins was kicked out of school. The scandal involved 22 different schools and 37 players, but Hawkins was not implicated. The scandal mostly focused on players associated with Jack Molinas, who had escaped the CCNY betting scandal a decade and a half earlier. Hawkins, growing up in New York City, knew many of the players involved and had borrowed $2,000 for school expenses from Jack Molinas, but Hawkins brother had paid Molinas back before the scandal erupted.
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Connie Hawkins holding up his MVP trophy
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