The ABA's Miami Floridians team started off the 1970-71 season 14-15 under Hal Blitman but when they won only 4 of their next 19 games, Owner Ned Doyle decided to fire the coach. So it soon became a whole new team and a new coach.
Ned Doyle had bought the team for $1,000,000 in May 1970. An advertising wizard, Doyle was the man behind the popular Avis “We Try Harder” and Volkswagen campaigns. Remember the commercial where they tried to fit Wilt Chamberlain into a Volkswagen Beetle?
Blitman was replaced by Bob Bass, the Texas Tech coach.
Bass had coached the Denver Rockets for two seasons and would later become a successful general manager for the San Antonio Spurs and Charlotte Hornets, twice winning NBA Executive of the Year awards.
Though they made the playoffs, the team still couldn’t draw any fans. Financial problems continued under the new owner. Paychecks bounced on more than a few occasions.
Doyle promised the people of Florida a contender, so he knew that a fresh start was needed. His first move was to get rid of all the players on the team but keep Coach Blitman, and then he made the unusual maneuver the team’s marketing slogan, putting full-page ads in Florida newspapers that read:
“Instead of Firing the Coach, We Fired the Team.”
Doyle knew he had to get more people in the stands in order to meet the payroll, so the advertising whiz was always promoting.
There were go-go dancing competitions and free pantyhose for the first 500 ladies. Live turkeys were given away at Thanksgiving. Fifteen pounds of smoked fish went to one lucky fan while another filled his trunk with 57 pounds of Irish potatoes. Fans went home with vats of gefilte fish and kegs of beer. Bagels were tossed into the stands during timeouts. Dolphin’s placekicker Garo Yepremian tried to kick footballs into a basket during halftime. The overhead scoreboard at the Miami Beach Convention Center blew out smoke every time a Floridan made a three-point shot. The Floridians even had their own fight song, “Get That Ball,” performed by popular singer Teresa Brewer.
There were basketball-boxing doubleheaders featuring former heavyweight champion Jimmy Ellis. Muhammad Ali gave boxing exhibitions.
“The mistake they made was that they had Ali give a two or three round exhibition before the game and when it was over, half the people would leave,” player Mack Calvin said.
And of course, there were the ball girls in bikinis.
The novel idea came from the team’s new public relations guy – Ken Small, a former Miami sportswriter and magazine publisher. The girls wore red, white, and blue bikinis and white boots. They stood on the end lines behind the baskets and retrieved balls if they went out of bounds. Except for participating in ice cream and cake-eating contests at halftime, the girls really didn’t do much except look good.
Eventually, the girls did put in a little dance routine. Calvin recalled, “The girls were pretty and attractive, but half of them couldn’t really dance. It was more like a wiggle. It was entertainment, no one in professional sports at the time had anything like it. It was the Miami Floridians who paved the way for the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and the dance teams that everybody in the NBA has today.”
The ball girls were a big hit throughout the league. They took their show on the road, going to Madison Square Garden in New York for an ABA doubleheader around Christmastime. Before the game, three of the girls popped out of a Santa Claus bag and the crowd went nuts. The next-day headline in a New York newspaper read: “Ball Girls Invade Garden.”
One of the job hazards for the girls was dodging the many advances from men that came their way. Surprisingly, it was the referees who were the worst offenders. One young blonde beauty told the Orlando Sentinel, “Oh those referees, they are always asking us for dates, even more than the fans and visiting players. But of course, it is strictly against the rules.”
Under the category of things that would never happen today, two of the ball girls were under the age of 18.
Doyle also made some big personnel gaffes. He was a great promoter, but he wasn’t a great judge of talent.
When Rick Barry was jumping from team to team, Doyle didn’t even make an attempt to get him, saying that Barry “wasn’t a team player and had bad knees.”
The 1971-72 season would be the last for the Floridians.
There had been rumors throughout the season that the club was on the auction block, and when an attempt to sell the team and move it to Cincinnati fell through, Ned Doyle disbanded the franchise in June 1972.
The players were disbursed throughout the league. Mack Calvin went to Carolina, Warren Jabali and Willie Long to Denver, Ron Franz to Memphis, and Larry Jones to Utah.
When it was over, the Floridians had lost $2 million in the four years of their existence.
“I really enjoyed my days in Miami. It’s one of my favorite cities,” Mack Calvin reminisced. “I lived in Coral Gables. My daughter was born in Miami. It was a great time. We just didn’t have a great team.”
