So I was doing my daily roundup of reading basketball news from around the world when I stumbled across this shocking PR release featured on CNN.com. The title reads:

“American Basketball Association (ABA) Joins in $200 Million Global Expansion.”

I must admit, I thought that the ABA had died in 1976 when it officially merged with the NBA. When I think of the ABA, I think of the blue/red/white ‘money’ ball (used today in the NBA three point contest), of Julius Erving, and of afros and tight shorts. So I had to check out what this league was all about and headed over to their official site, www.abalive.com. The long domain name didn’t do much to settle my suspicions and upon witnessing the website, which ironically looks like it was made in 1976, I started thinking I must be on an episode of Punk’d.

I then began reading the latest news from their news feed to try to catch up with this mysterious league that had just dawned upon me. One recent news headline stated that two NBA players would be going head to head on opening night: Isaiah “JR” Rider (NBA dunk champ) and Anthony “Pig” Miller (a nobody). Another news was announcing that Troy “Escalade” Jackson (of And1 fame) was named the assistant coach of the Florida Thundercats. Then there was the news that 9 ABA teams would be playing games in China. I wanted to see one of the teams so I decided to check out the team page of the “Los Angeles SLAM” . The website look dodgy with a logo that seemed to be stolen from Slam Magazine and site design stolen from a MySpace teenager high on Mountain Dew, but regardless….the famous rapper “The Game” was on the team!

It seemed that this league was making things happen and well worth the attention. Finally I saw a big headline that was the biggest piece of linkbait I had ever seen:

“Owning a professional sports team is fun and profitable experience. Contact us for more info!”

All I had to do was fill in a simple form and I could own a pro sports team and be the next Mark Cuban?!

That was all I could take, I had to head over to Wikipedia and find out what in the world this was all about. Turns out, I wasn’t in the middle of a dream, this league really existed and the rights of the ABA were bought back from the NBA around 1999. However the league had seen its fair share of incidents and seemed more disorganized than the kindergarden basketball leagues where I first started playing. Teams didn’t show up to road games, left in the middle of season, and only around 35% of the games were actually played in the 2007-2008 seasons. Having said that, I was still interested in this China team participating in the league – but upon reading further, it would have probably been better to leave the matter alone:

“Another team that only played home games was Beijing Aoshen Olympic. This team was kicked out of the Chinese Basketball League and played home games in Singapore. Beijing would pay $3000 and fly teams to Singapore for a 2-game homestand. Early teams complained on Our Sports Central that they were forced to stay in a hotel that doubled as a brothel. Joe Newman CEO forced Beijing to find a new hotel on hearing this news. Later teams stayed in a Holiday Inn.”

(On a side note, Beijing Aoshen were kicked out of the CBA due to refusing to surrender their star point guard to the junior national squad in 2004.The player in question was Sun Yue who recently won a championship ring with the Los Angeles Lakers).

This brings us back to today and this CNN story of this 200 million $ global expansion that has just been announced (to me at least). 200 million is not a small amount, it’s around the same as what minority stakeholders Disney and Bank of China among others paid to acquire 11% of the NBA China entity back in January 2008. Who would part with such a large sum and take on this massive challenge of epic proportions was the new question brewing inside my head. The answer to that is none other than Paul Monozca, a Singapore-based Filipino sportsman-businessman who also holds the following lofty titles: investment banker, sports philanthropist, international fiancier, global kingpin..ok so the last one I made up. It’s no one I had heard of before, but someone that should be on any basketball enthusiasts’ to-follow list from this day on if his aspirations are anything to go by:

The ABA Global expansion initiatives will include a player exchange program, participation in a China-based league, the ABA USA League itself, and the ABA’s World Basketball Cup in Atlanta in 2011. Mr. Monzoca’s vision is certainly optimistic:

“The ABA Global program is timely. When countries see their very own players and teams play with the benchmark that is American basketball, it gives basketball a whole new meaning. This is global basketball with national pride worldwide.”

The key allure of this league is that it caters to smaller cities which NBA teams can’t target to in the US, and allows foreign teams to play against top global competition on an international level. If the management, organization, and marketing falls into place, it will mark an interesting global league that hasn’t really ever seen the light of day in basketball. Their first summit which will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada will feature big names such as Dr. J and George Gervin and should get them much needed publicity.

I’m never one to discount crazy and wild ideas, and I won’t make an exception this time regardless of the negative press this league has received in the past with many looking at it as somewhat of a joke. Fact is that basketball is on its way to becoming the most popular sport in the world and there hasn’t ever been a proper global initiative to make it a global competition. The NBA has such a plan many years down the road and they surely have their reasons for taking their time. So until then, I can only extend my best wishes to the rebirth of the ABA and will surely be keeping an eye out on them. I have a feeling I won’t be the only one.