Yes, I started a pro basketball blog in the middle of a lockout.It'll be awhile until Christmas. My first article is the first entry in a four part series about the only division ever dissolved by the NBA: the Midwest Division. Enjoy.
Because of the lockout, we've all been given a chance to reminisce about some of yesterday's players, teams, and coaches. But I'm here to bring back memories of a part of the league bigger then any one team. Because I'm talking about seven teams, all in one place.
Ladies and gentlemen, I bring to your attention the Midwest Division.
Yeah, it never had MJ or Magic winning it's titles, but to discount a division that housed legends such as Kareem, Gervin, Hakeem, as well as modern stars like Dirk, Garnett, and Duncan is unfair. If you were a NBA team not named the Chicago Bulls in the 90's, you weren't winning the title unless you came from the Midwest Division. The Rockets had their twin titles in '94 and '95, and Tim Duncan began his Larry O'Brien Trophy collection in the delayed '99 season with the Spurs.* There's some pro roundball history in this lost division that was parceled out seven years ago.
The Midwest Division began in 1970 when the NBA swelled it's ranks to 17 with the addition of Buffalo, Cleveland(the club charter is typed in Comic Sans, if you wanted to know) and Portland. Since the Association had 17 teams, the league could no longer do it's favorite method of conference organization: putting every team south of the Mason-Dixon Line in the West. A change was in order. So, the NBA made four divisions, placing three heartland hoops teams, the Milwaukee Bucks, Chicago Bulls, Detroit Pistons, and a Phoenix Suns squad who got crowded out of the Pacific into our protagonist: the Midwest Division. The first year of the new format was capped off by the crowning of division member Milwaukee, with all-time greats Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson, as NBA Champions.
The first decade of the Midwest Division would be ruled by the Bucks, who won six division titles in that span. But there would be no more Midwest titles for Milwaukee. By 1980, the addition of four ABA teams and the league's expansion to Dallas meant another shift in members. Detroit and Phoenix had left for the Central and Pacific, respectively. The Indiana Pacers had came and left the Midwest in three years. Two relocated franchises in Utah and Kansas City, as well as Denver from the ABA, joined into the divison's fold.
So in 1980, the last remaining founders Chicago and Milwaukee were flipped into the Central for the league's Lone Star State representatives, established San Antonio and Houston, as well as the start-up Dallas Mavericks. The Great Lakes had given way to the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, as the division morphed from the original four to a more prairie flavored half dozen with Denver, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Kansas City, and Utah.
In the next post in this series about the NBA's lost division, we go into the '80's, exploring two promising Texas teams, an under .500 NBA Finals contestant, 186-184, and why the geographers at NBA headquarters thought North Carolina and Florida are midwestern states.
*As a Redskins fan who hoped that the lockout would take games away because the 'Skins have won a Super Bowl in both years that labor issues have taken regular season games away, I wonder how South Texans feel about their beloved Spurs chances in a potential shortened season.
