The Aba-nba Merger Finally Take Place

The summer of 1976 saw the ABA-NBA merger finally take place

. As part of the merger agreement, four teams from the ABAthe Nets, Nuggets, Pacers and San Antonio Spursjoined the NBA. The Nets and Nuggets had actually applied to join the NBA in 1975, but were forced to play a lame-duck season in the ABA by court order.[9] Prior to their first NBA season, the Nets traded two draft picks to the Kansas City Kings for guard Nate Archibald. The Nets appeared to be poised to pick up where they left off in the ABA.

However, they got a rude surprise when the NBA forced the Nets to pay an additional $4.8 million directly to the Knicks for "invading" the New York area. Coming on the heels of the $3.2 million that the team had to pay for joining the NBA, this left Boe short of cash, and he was forced to renege on a promised pay raise for Erving. Erving refused to play for the Nets under these conditions and refused to report to camp.The Nets offered Erving's contract to the Knicks in return for waiving the indemnity, wholesale jerseys but the Knicks turned it down.[10] When the Philadelphia 76ers offered to acquire Erving for $3 millionroughly the same amount they had to pay for NBA membership--Boe had little choice but to accept. In essence, the Nets were forced to trade their franchise player for a berth in the NBA.The Nets continued their winning ways in the 197576 seasonthe final season for the ABAwith Erving leading them to a successful 55-win season; he also was named MVP again that year. After a grueling series with the Denver Nuggets, the Nets won the last ABA championship series in league history in six games,[8] giving the Nets their second championship in three years.

Without Erving, the Nets wrote off the season as a lost cause. However, they lost all semblance of respectability when Archibald broke his foot in January. The team finished at 2260, the worst record in the league. The team did set one record of sorts; in February 1977, they became the first NBA team ever to have an all-left-handed starting lineup,[11] with Tim Bassett, Al Skinner, Bubbles Hawkins, Dave Wohl, and Kim Hughes.Prior to the 197778 season, Boe moved the franchise back to New Jersey, and renamed the team the New Jersey Nets. While the team awaited the completion of a new arena at the Meadowlands Sports Complex, Soccer jerseys they played four seasons at the Rutgers Athletic Center (later renamed the Louis Brown Athletic Center) on the Kilmer Campus (now "Livingston" Campus) of Rutgers University in Piscataway, NJ. In 1978, Boe sold the team to a group of seven local businessmen (led by Joe Taub and Alan N. Cohen) who became known as the "Secaucus Seven". (The name was a reference to the John Sayles movie Return of the Secaucus 7, which itself was a pun on the 60s radical group the Chicago Seven.) The first four years in New Jersey were disappointing, as the Nets failed to post a winning season.

by: bettywhite

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