1) Spirits of St. Louis (formerly Houston Mavericks, Carolina Cougars)

They called it a merger in 1976 but it was really more of an absorption of the ABA by the NBA. Only four ABA franchises were included, added to the 18 existing NBA teams, while the Spirits of St. Louis were one of the three squads shunted aside. But before you feel any sympathy for their owners, brothers Ozzie and Daniel Silna, consider that in their agreement to fold, they negotiated a small piece of NBA television revenue in perpetuity. That was chump change in 1976 but ultimately netted the Silnas over $800 million, if you include the lump sum the NBA finally bought them out with in 2014. A charter member of the ABA as the Houston Mavericks in 1967, they became the Carolina Cougars just two years later, then the Spirits of St. Louis when the Silnas purchased the team in 1974. The Silnas pretty quickly discovered why the Hawks had ditched the city of St. Louis a few years prior. A fan base failed to materialize even as the Spirits reached the Division Finals in 1975 and sported an entertaining roster, centered around Marvin “Bad News” Barnes and teenage phenom Moses Malone. When merger negotiations started, the Silnas were planning a relocation to Salt Lake City to become the Utah Rockies. Instead, they shut down operations, but the Spirits still lived on in the NBA in various capacities. Coach Rod Thorn eventually became vice president of the NBA league office, local affiliate broadcaster Bob Costas later became the television voice of the NBA, and Malone developed into an all-time legend of the game.

2) Virginia Squires (formerly Oakland Oaks, Washington Capitols)

Originally founded by an ownership group that included ’50s pop singer Pat Boone, the Oakland Oaks were an ABA charter member in 1967 and made the league’s first big headlines when they signed local NBA superstar Rick Barry. Initially ineligible to play due to a lawsuit from the Warriors, Barry joined the team in ’68-’69 and the Oaks went from a last place finisher to ABA champs. But fans, especially embittered Warriors fans, didn’t seem to care and the Oaks were sold in 1969 and relocated to Washington, D.C., becoming the Capitols. In addition to the franchise itself, that sale included a major debt that would haunt the team for its remaining existence. After just one season in D.C., they moved again to Hampton Roads, Virginia and rebranded as the Squires. Barry had thus far remained with the team through all of this turmoil, but apparently a move into the U.S. South was a step too far and he defected back to the NBA. The Squires actually were successful, both in the standings and in drawing fans, thanks largely to their acquisitions of Julius Erving and George Gervin. But hamstrung by prior debt, the Squires couldn’t break even monetarily and were eventually forced to sell all their star players. The NBA declared the franchise insolvent in 1976, meaning that their ownership didn’t receive a compensation package for being left out of the merger. Despite the failed ABA experiment, the Hampton Roads area has remained a popular potential destination spot for NBA expansion or relocation to this day.

3) Pittsburgh Condors (formerly Pittsburgh Pipers, Minnesota Pipers)

The city of Pittsburgh has seen plenty of NFL, MLB, and NHL championships in the last half century but only one pro basketball title, courtesy of the Pipers. Led by Connie Hawkins, who had been unfairly blackballed by the NBA, the Pipers won the inaugural ABA Finals in 1968, a dramatic seven-game affair against the New Orleans Bucs. Hawkins was named league MVP and Playoffs MVP, and with the Steelers and Pirates in prolonged slumps, Pittsburgh fans flocked to the Pipers. But owner Gabe Rubin inexplicably moved the franchise to Minneapolis just weeks after winning the title. Then, when the Minnesota Pipers failed to reach the playoffs in ’68-’69, Rubin moved them again, this time back to Pittsburgh. But with Hawkins departed for the NBA and scorned Steel City fans disinterested, the Pipers’ days were numbered. A new ownership group attempted to drum up interest with a 1970 rebrand. They changed the team name to Condors, a vulture species that is not indigenous to nor connected to the area in any way. Basically, another lazy “fuck you” to Pittsburgh fans. By the end of ’71-’72, the Condors were missing the playoffs for a third straight year and drawing barely 1,000 fans per game. The desperate ownership group had even staged neutral site games in locations as far flung as Tucson, Arizona (where, it could be noted, condors are an actual endemic species). But it made no difference, as the ABA league office put the franchise out of its misery in 1972, forcing a fold four years before the merger.

4) The Floridians (formerly Minnesota Muskies, Miami Floridians)

It was an unspoken understanding that George Mikan would be the first commissioner of the ABA only if his hometown of Minneapolis got a charter franchise. Thus, seven years after the Lakers skipped town, the Minnesota Muskies began play in ’67-’68. Named after a popular local fish and coached by Mikan’s longtime teammate Jim Pollard, the Muskies won 50 games in their first season and reached the brink of the ABA Finals, But Twin Cities fan were apathetic and history repeated itself in 1968, with another Minnesota basketball team packing up and departing for a sunnier denizen. The Muskies became the Miami Floridians and new owner Ned Doyle pulled out all the stops to draw South Beach fans. That included alligator wrestling as halftime shows, double bills with boxing events, and giveaways as varied as a live turkey, beer kegs, pantyhose, and 40 pounds of gefilte fish. There was also the infamous Floridians ball girls, a scantily-clad group who predated the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. This would all eventually inspire the Will Ferrell film Semi-Pro but didn’t pay dividends in attendance or financials. Doyle changed the team name to just Floridians in ’70-’71 and scheduled games all across the Sunshine state. This included an notorious double overtime contest against the Virginia Squires that took place in a West Palm Beach aircraft hangar with a broken AC unit. The Floridians shut down operations in 1972 and Florida didn’t have a major pro team again until the Heat and Magic joined the NBA in 1988.

5) San Diego Sails (formerly San Diego Conquistadors)

Conceived in a rush to fill the void when the NBA’s Rockets moved to Houston, the San Diego Conquistadors immediately became the epicenter of the ABA’s biggest ownership dispute. The league awarded its first and only expansion franchise to local sports magnate Leonard Bloom over San Diego Sports Arena owner Peter Graham. An embittered Graham refused to allow Bloom to use his arena, by far the largest in the city, forcing the Qs to play home games instead in the nearby Peterson Gym, capacity 3,200. Bloom had no one but himself to blame however for his biggest boondoggle. He granted a massive player-coach contract to Wilt Chamberlain, who was immediately blocked from playing by a Lakers lawsuit. Chamberlain instead became just an overpaid head coach and an apathetic one at that, often skipping games to promote his autobiography. Unable to secure a new arena agreement, Bloom gave up in 1975 and sold the Qs to former Nuggets co-owner Goldberg. In the spirit of making the franchise more appealing for the impending merger, Goldberg changed the team name to Sails, refreshed the jerseys and colors, and brokered peace with Graham to use his arena. In the end it didn’t matter what Goldberg did, as Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke soon after announced he would block any merger that included a Southern California franchise. An increasingly apathetic Goldberg made it just 11 games into the ’75-’76 season before folding. The league office was forced to quickly reshuffle the schedule and disperse the Sails’ roster.

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A visual history of folded ABA franchises

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6) Utah Stars (formerly Anaheim Amigos, Los Angeles Stars)

In 1967, the ABA and NBA both added teams in Southern California. The NBA had the San Diego Rockets and the ABA had the Anaheim Amigos, a charter franchise of the new league. Neither lasted more than three years in the area, each finding it near impossible to draw fans away from the Lakers and UCLA. Playing at the Anaheim Convention Center, just across the street from Disneyland, the Amigos’ owner Art Kim tried some clever marketing to pull fans away from Jerry West and Mickey Mouse. This included a mascot dressed up as a bandit that would fire blanks into the air during games, often frightening players. But the Amigos were awful, finishing just shy of dead last in the league, and Kim sold them to James Kirst, who made the bold move of relocating to Los Angeles. Kirst rebranded his team as the L.A. Stars, overhauled the entire roster, and brought in Celtics legend Bill Sharman as coach. Their second season in Los Angeles was a perfect microcosm of not just the team itself but the ABA at large. When Sharman led a young roster to a surprising 1970 ABA Finals appearance, Kirst was so unprepared for the possibility that he had failed to book their home arena, forcing them to host the games back in Anaheim at the Convention Center.

After that debacle, Kirst sold the Stars to cable television pioneer Bill Daniels, who moved the franchise to Salt Lake City and envisioned them as the “Green Bay Packers of basketball.” His divination came true in at least one respect, in that the local fans fell in love with their first major pro franchise. It helped that the Stars were the league’s best team that year, winning the ’70-’71 ABA title while their fans set the league’s attendance record. It was a definitive peak for the franchise, as Sharman left that summer to coach the Lakers and Daniels began splitting his attention with a vanity campaign for governor in his native Colorado. Through it all, the Stars did manage to stay competitive, even returning to the ABA Finals in 1974. As the merger started to become imminent, an increasingly destitute Daniels attempted to sell the franchise, but the deal fell apart and the Stars folded. Their players were mostly redistributed to the Spirits of St. Louis (including a young Moses Malone), their 1971 championship trophy was supposedly auctioned off to a fan, and their season ticket holders were left without refunds. In fairness to Daniels, he later tracked down as many of those season ticket holders as he could and repaid them, plus interest. Although the team didn’t make it to the merger, it certainly proved that pro basketball was viable in Salt Lake City and the Jazz moved there from New Orleans in 1979.

7) Baltimore Claws (formerly New Orleans Buccaneers, Memphis Pros, Memphis Tams, Memphis Sounds)

Two relocations, four name changes, six ownership transfers, one Finals appearance, and an ignominious pre-merger ending. In many ways, this franchise truly embodied the ABA. It started life as the New Orleans Buccaneers, a charter franchise in 1967 with an ownership group that included controversial radio personality Morton Downey, Jr. Led by Doug Moe, who was banned from the NBA due to his involvement in a point shaving scandal, the Bucs reached the inaugural ABA Finals and lost to the Pittsburgh Pipers. They would never reach that far in the postseason again and ultimately ended their time in the ABA with six consecutive non-winning seasons. As losses piled up and ticket sales dwindled, ownership hatched a plan to become the Louisiana Buccaneers with home games across the state, but sold the team instead to P.W. Blake, who relocated it to Memphis. They became the Memphis Pros, a generic name supposedly chosen by the miserly Blake to save costs on sewing over the existing jerseys. Blake also failed to secure rights at the newly built Mid-South Coliseum, with the much more popular Memphis University team getting priority.

Despite all the obstacles, the Pros were quite beloved by the Memphis faithful. So beloved in fact, that when Blake stepped down and turned the team over the ABA league office, an enterprising group of fans raised enough money to purchase the team and keep it afloat. That only lasted for one season after which the ABA stepped in again and sold the team to Charlie Finley, owner of the Oakland A’s. The team name changed to the Tams and the color scheme changed to green-and-gold, but the reign of capricious ownership remained. Finley basically approached the Tams as a flipping operation, cutting costs and then seeking new buyers, which he found in a group of local businessmen that included music legend Isaac Hayes. Perhaps owing to Hayes’ involvement, the team name was changed to Memphis Sounds but, again, the financial troubles persisted. One year later, the franchise was sold again, this time to a group of investors who relocated it to Baltimore. Originally called the Baltimore Hustlers, the team name was changed to Claws after the ABA league office objected. It didn’t matter either way as the Claws never played a regular season game, folding during the ’75-’76 preseason.

8) Kentucky Colonels

In stark contrast to the other franchises on this list with their fluid ownership, frequent relocations, and a constant threat of financial insolvency, the Kentucky Colonels were a paragon of consistency. Founded by married couple Joe and Mamie Gregory, who were successful dog breeders, the Colonels played their home games in the basketball hotbed of Louisville. Their unofficial mascot (and rumored actual team owner) was Ziggy, a prized show dog owned by the Gregorys who could regularly be found court side for home games, often in elaborate outfits. Beyond their fabulist owners, famed canine, bright chartreuse uniforms, and publicity stunts like signing the first female pro player, the Colonels were consistently one of the ABA’s best teams. Led by future Hall of Famers Louie Dampier, Dan Issel, and Artis Gilmore, the Colonels played in all nine ABA postseasons, reached the ABA Finals three times, and won the championship in 1975. They were also one of just two ABA franchises, alongside the Pacers, to play in every season without ever relocating or changing names. Team ownership did change hands once, with the Gregorys selling to John Y. Brown in 1973.

A local Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise magnate, Brown swooped in and bought the Colonels to prevent a rumored move to Cincinnati. (This seems as good a place as any to note that the Kentucky Colonels were not named after the KFC mascot, rather the honorary title bestowed on the governor of Kentucky). Brown invested heavily in the franchise while also giving much of the control to his wife Ellie, who helmed an all-female board of directors. The Colonels won their 1975 title under Brown’s ownership and entered the ’75-’76 season as arguably the ABA’s most stable franchise, even more so than the Pacers or Nuggets. But the NBA was disinterested in Louisville, or really any city south of Washington, D.C. at that point, and opted not to include the Colonels in the merger. Brown was bought out by the NBA for approximately three million dollars and did soon get to try his hand at ownership in the bigger league, eventually purchasing the Buffalo Braves. While Salt Lake City, Memphis, Miami, Minneapolis, and New Orleans all eventually received NBA franchises to replace their departed ABA teams, the city of Louisville has been void of major pro basketball for 42 years and counting.