Crazy Basketball Association (Continental Basketball Association or CBA nickname)
The Continental Basketball Association (CBA) was the unofficial minor league of the National Basketball Association (NBA); it operated under the CBA name from 1978 until its end in 2009. The CBA was nicknamed the “Crazy Basketball Association” since at least 1987.
The CBA was also nicknamed “Come Back Again.”
Wikipedia: Continental Basketball Association
The Continental Basketball Association (CBA) was a professional men’s basketball minor league in the United States.
History
The Continental Basketball Association was a professional basketball minor league from 1946 to 2009. It billed itself as the “World’s Oldest Pro Basketball League”, since its founding on April 23, 1946, pre-dated (by two months) the founding of the National Basketball Association. The league’s original name was the Eastern Pennsylvania Basketball League; it fielded six franchises – five in Pennsylvania (Wilkes-Barre, Hazleton, Allentown, Lancaster, and Reading) – with a sixth team in New York (Binghamton, which moved in mid-season to Pottsville, Pennsylvania). In 1948, the league was renamed the Eastern Professional Basketball League. Over the years it would add franchises in several other Pennsylvania cities, including Williamsport, Scranton, and Sunbury, as well as teams in New Jersey (Trenton, Camden, Asbury Park), Connecticut (New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport), Delaware (Wilmington) and Massachusetts (Springfield).
For the 1970-71 season the league rebranded itself the Eastern Basketball Association, operating both as a professional northeastern regional league and as an unofficial feeder system to the NBA and ABA. The CBA’s first commissioner was Harry Rudolph (father of Mendy Rudolph, one of the first referees in the NBA). Steve A. Kauffman, currently a prominent basketball agent, succeeded Rudolph as Commissioner in 1975. Kauffman executed a plan to bring the Anchorage Northern Knights into the league beginning with the 1977-78 season. Kauffman kept the league name because he felt having a team in the Eastern league from Alaska might get the league additional notice and recognition. The establishment of the Anchorage franchise garnered national media attention, including a feature story in Sports Illustrated. The league was renamed the Continental Basketball Association the following season, eventually leading to expansion across the country. Kauffman served as Commissioner until 1978, when his Deputy Commissioner, Jim Drucker, took the reins.
22 April 1987, Rockford (IL) Register-Star, “Rockford fans created ‘time-capsule’ season in Lightning’s first year” by Judy Emerson, pg. 11A, col. 4:
“We sometimes call the CBA the Crazy Basketball Association or the Come Back Again league.”
(Steve Warshaw, general manager of the Rockford Lightning.—ed.)
Google Books
Life on the Rim:
A Year in the Continental Basketball Association
By David Levine
New York, NY: Macmillan
1989
Pg. 142:
... he calls the CBA the Crazy Basketball Association.
Google Books
More Than a Game
By Phil Jackson and Charley Rosen
New York, NY: Seven Stories Press
2001
Pg. 14:
Eventually, Phil wound up as head coach of the Albany Patroons in the Continental Basketball Association. Among the league’s hard-bitten veterans, the CBA was also known as “Come Back Again” or the “Crazy Basketball Association.”
OCLC WorldCat record
Underbelly hoops:/ adventures in the CBA a.k.a the crazy basketball association
Author: Carson Cunningham
Publisher: New York, NY: Diversion Pub. Corp., 2012.
Edition/Format: Book : English
Database: WorldCat
Summary:
Carson writes honestly, hilariously and often touchingly of his running and gunning days as a CBA also-ran, with flash backs to his college days where the future seemed brighter than a new pair of Nikes. A top recruit with superior ballhanding and shooting skills along with a sixth basketball sense, in 1997 Carson was a freshman Sporting News All-American who broke Gary Payton’s freshman scoring record at Oregon State and a few years later helped his team at Purdue get within a game of the Final Four.