The NBA franchises are closely monitoring the current tables as the Franchises of the NBA are playing it out to get a playoff place and to grip onto their prospect of acquiring the title. As the clubs battle it out on the floor many of the Franchises have a battle off it, with the active financial structure as it is, and the players contract demands ever growing some of the Franchises are finding it tough to endure in the existing sporting market place. In this column we will look into the Philadelphia 76ers, a team with a notable history and a huge followers basis. Plenty of the existing Franchises are fashioned from huge investment when the Franchise For Sale option were available to prospective shareholders. This is growing to be more important in the existing sporting market as Franchise For Sale options are extremely tough to find, particularly in the basketball area. Stacks of presidents are holding onto their investments throughout this downturn and are eager for a turn around in the market. During this point presidents will be controlling their Franchises as a Home Based Franchise, which means that they are slashing their expenditure and only paying out the pure minimum. A Home Based Franchise tributes itself on not having a great deal of expenses and therefore using the Franchises ability to make a turnover. The existing basketball Franchises are taking this lin, as they don’t want a Franchise For Sale sign shown outside their ground. During many of the Franchises history there has been important variations in presidents and finances as the Philadelphia 76ers column will state.
The initial Philadelphia 76ers were neither in Philadelphia nor called the 76ers. But the club did begin in a north-eastern city and did have a partisan name, the Syracuse Nationals. The Nats had been in the NBA since the league’s 1st year of existence and came to the City of Brotherly Love in 1963, just subesequent to the Warriors had abandoned Philadelphia for San Francisco. Thus started the Philadelphia 76ers, an organisation that has introduced one of the best NBA lineups ever to swagger onto the court (68-13 in 1966-67) and one of the worst to be blown off it (9-73 in 1972-73).
Six Franchises from the NBL, including Syracuse, were taken into the BAA for the 1949-50 season, and the new league grew into the National Basketball Association. (Philadelphia’s heritage in the new league is worth noting: the Philadelphia Warriors were one of 11 charter associates of the BAA and were in the original NBA.)
In the spring of 1963, Irv Kosloff and Ike Richman grouped up to purchase the Syracuse Nationals and moved the club to Philadelphia as the 76ers. In spite of the changes, the new Philadelphia 76ers didn’t seem all that different on the floor. In 1967 the 76ers overwhelmed the San Francisco Warriors in six games to take the championship. That 76ers team has since been known as one of the greatest ever. As part of the NBA’s 35th-anniversary festivities in 1980, the 1966-67 76ers were voted the best team in NBA history.
Fitz Eugene Dixon bought the franchise in May 1976 and soon gave Philadelphia a reputation as a team built on dollars. Dixon opened the vault right away, paying $6 million for Julius “Dr. J” Erving ($3 million to the ABA New Jersey Nets and $3 million to Erving’s personal bank) prior to the 1976-77 season.
Philadelphia, one of the country’s famous basketball cities, and its 76ers are an essential part of the league’s history and of its future.
