They didn't fire the coach. They fired the team.
After the Miami Floridians stumbled to dreadful 23-61 record in the ABA in 1969-70, the natural inclination would have been to say goodbye to coach Harold Blitman, who had gone 18-46 after taking over early in the season. But, no, the Floridians instead decided to trade every single player on the team and turn it into a marketing scheme.
The team had just been purchased by the innovative Ned Doyle, a co-founder of Doyle Dane Bernback, a New York advertising agency best known as DDB. He acquired all new players, and told Blitman his job was safe and that his photo would be used in ad running in newspapers throughout Florida.
"Instead of firing the coach, we fired the team," read the ad, which encouraged fans to support "The New Floridians." The team had dropped Miami from its name because it also had scheduled games for 1970-71 in Jacksonville and Tampa-St. Petersburg in addition to Miami.
"I'd never heard anything like it," recalls Mack Calvin, then one of the new players on the Floridians. "It was a wacky league but whoever heard of trading all your players and keeping the coach?"
That wasn't all that was new for 1970-71. Using his advertising ties, Doyle had funky new uniforms designed. They were black at home and white on the road with magenta and orange stripes running up the right side.
The uniforms had the names of the players on the back written in a futuristic font. But there was no team name on the front, with the only designation of "Floridians" having been inscribed on the shorts.
"I've never heard of a (basketball) jersey that doesn't have the team's name on the front," said Denver-based Arthur Hundhausen, an ABA historian who runs the website www.remembertheaba.com and calls the Floridians jerseys the best in the league's history. "But they were really cool colors and they thought everybody would instantly know that they were the Floridians."
Well, time does dull memories a bit. The Miami Heat for six games this season are wearing retro Floridians jerseys from the 1970-71 and 1971-72 seasons. But the one change is Miami is written across the front.
But that's OK with former Floridians guard Warren Jabali, who lives in Miramar and teaches physical education at a Miami Lakes elementary school. When he saw Heat guard Mario Chalmers wearing a No. 15 retro jersey in games two weeks ago against Philadelphia and Milwaukee, it brought back plenty of memories.
"I got a feeling of déjà vu when I saw that because that was my number," said Jabali, who figures to have similar feelings when the Heat again wear Floridians jerseys for games Sunday against Toronto and Tuesday vs. Cleveland and March 6 vs. New Jersey and March 7 against Atlanta. "They're nice. Normally, you don't think of magenta as color that's machismo but when you wear them combined with the other colors, they turned out pretty good."
That's more than can be said about the quality of basketball the Floridians ended up playing in those jerseys. Yes, they were better in 1970-71 with an overall record of 37-47. But Blitman was fired midway through the season and replaced by Bob Bass.
But Blitman wasn't all that easy to get rid of. Sam Robinson, then a Floridians guard, said Blitman would continue to go to games after he had been fired. He would sit in the stands smoking a cigar and offer instructions to Robinson.
"Bob Bass didn't like it," Robinson said from his home in Long Beach, Calif. "He said, 'He's the old coach. I'm the coach now.' "
Bass also coached the team in its final season of 1971-72, going 36-48. Then the Floridians, beset by money problems and low attendance, folded, ending the team's four-year run in Florida. Four years after the Floridians played their last game, the ABA would fold, with four teams — the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New Jersey Nets and San Antonio Spurs — being absorbed into the NBA.
The ABA was known for its craziness. Many observers believe the Floridians were the wackiest gang of all.
When he took over as owner, Doyle also unveiled the Floridians ball girls. He hired five young women who wore bikinis during games to excite the crowd and distract opponents.
"They used to stand underneath the basket when the other team would shoot free throws," Calvin, who led the Floridians in scoring with a 27.2 average in 1970-71 and a 21.0 average in 1971-72, said from his home in New Orleans. "They'd turn their butt around and wiggle any part of the body. And it worked."
Robinson, a Floridians guard from 1970-72, remembers foes launching plenty of bricks from the foul line.
"Guys would shoot the ball and their eyes weren't going up," Robinson said of opponents looking instead at the girls. "That messed up their concentration a bit. Guys were always asking me, 'Where you get those ball girls from?"'
Two of the girls, twin sisters Sandy and Cindy Acker, were then high school students in South Florida and would go on to play the Doublemint Twins in commercials for the gum. When reached Friday, Sandy Acker, a businesswoman who still lives in South Florida, said neither she nor her sister wanted to comment on their days with the Floridians.
The ball girls would make trips with the team. One was to a game at Dec. 23, 1971 game against the Carolina Cougars at New York's Madison Square Garden, where the girls got far more publicity than either of the teams. Newspapers ran photos of them and one paper's headline screamed, "Ball girls invade Garden."
"When we went to New York, seeing these tanned bikini-clad blondes just caused so much excitement," Cindy said in a 1978 interview about the trip just before Christmas, which featured three of the girls popping out of Santa Claus' bag before the game.
That wasn't the only unique visit by the Floridians to Madison Square Garden. When they faced the Utah Stars there March 17, 1971, Doyle wanted to pay tribute to St. Patrick's Day.
The Floridians already had a guard named Fran O'Hanlon. So Doyle had every other player on the team wear on the back of his jersey a name starting with O'. There was O'Calvin, O'Robinson, etc.
"There was always some kind of gimmick going on," Robinson said.
At home games, the Floridians had promotions in which they gave away pairs of pantyhouse to the first 500 women attendance. At Thanksgiving, fans could win live turkeys. There also were giveaways of 15 pounds of smoked fish, 57 pounds of Irish potatoes and 53 pumpkin pies.
Promotions included cow-milking and snake-handling contests and a man wrestling a bear. Miami Dolphins kicker Garo Yepremian was brought in to try to kick a ball through the hoop.
But it didn't help attendance much. With South Florida games being played at the Miami Beach Convention Center or at Miami College, the team was lucky to get 2,000 fans. Some crowds were below 1,000.
"It was sparse," Ira Harge, a rugged center for the Floridians, said from his home in Albuquerque, N.M. "But one of the good things was you could just go up and interact with the fans."
The attendance was so miserable at Miami Dade College for a televised playoff game against the Virginia Squires in 1972 that action had to be taken.
"We played the Virginia Squires when they had Dr. J.," said Calvin, referring to Julius Erving's gang sweeping a first-round series 4-0 in what would turn out to be final games in Floridians' history. "They wanted to make it look like it was a full house so had all the fans sit one on one side."
As for Doyle, Calvin said he always would be at the same place for game.
"He stayed drunk," Calvin said. "He would sit at the scorer's table and drink his scotch."
Doyle, who died in 1989 at the age of 86, was in his late 60s when he owned the Floridians. Calvin said his wife, Margaret, was in her 40s and would flirt with the players.
"If any of the guys flirted back, they would get traded," Calvin sad. "After a while, whenever she came around, guys would run away from her because they didn't want to get traded (by Doyle)."
Harge was dealt midway through the 1971-72 season. But it didn't have anything to do with the owner's wife.
"I was making too much money," said Harge, who said he was then pulling down about $80,000. "And (Doyle) wanted to get rid of their big salaries… I remember guys were always running to the bank when they got their checks to make sure they didn't bounce."
With the team losing money, the end came with that playoff sweep by the Squires. The series is notable only for what Erving did, grabbing at least 30 rebounds in three of the four games and scoring 53 points in Game 3 on April 4, 1972, two days before the Floridians played their final game ever.
"I did whatever I could do," said Jabali, who averaged 19.9 points in his only Floridians season of 1971-72 but had the unenviable task of trying to guard Erving. "But Dr. J would just palm the palm with his big hands and loop it over me or under me. At least the people were able to see a good show."
Two months later, the team folded and every player was gone from the Floridians. That time, though, there was no newspaper ad to make mention of it.
Chris Tomasson can be reached at christomasson@hotmail.com or on Twitter @christomasson
