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The Continental Basketball Association (CBA) was a professional men's basketball minor league in the United States. == History == The Continental Basketball Association was a professional basketball minor league from 1946 to 2009. It billed itself as the "World's Oldest Professional Basketball League", since its founding on April 23, 1946 pre-dated the founding of the National Basketball Association by two months. The league's original name was the Eastern Pennsylvania Basketball League; it fielded six franchises – five in Pennsylvania (Wilkes-Barre, Hazleton, Allentown, Lancaster, and Reading) – with a sixth team in New York (Binghamton, which moved in mid-season to Pottsville, Pennsylvania). In 1948, the league was renamed the Eastern Professional Basketball League. Over the years it would add franchises in several other Pennsylvania cities, including Williamsport, Scranton, and Sunbury, as well as teams in New Jersey (Trenton, Camden, Asbury Park), Connecticut (New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport), Delaware (Wilmington) and Massachusetts (Springfield). For the 1970-71 season the league rebranded itself the Eastern Basketball Association, operating both as a professional northeastern regional league and as an unofficial feeder system to the NBA and ABA. The CBA's first commissioner was Harry Rudolph (father of Mendy Rudolph, one of the first referees in the NBA). Steve A. Kauffman, currently a prominent basketball agent, succeeded Rudolph as Commissioner in 1975. Kauffman executed a plan to bring the Anchorage Northern Knights into the league beginning with the 1977-78 season. Kauffman kept the league name because he felt having a team in the Eastern league from Alaska might get the league additional notice and recognition. The establishment of the Anchorage franchise garnered national media attention, including a feature story in Sports Illustrated. The league was renamed the Continental Basketball Association the following season, eventually leading to expansion across the country. Kauffman served as Commissioner until 1978, when his Deputy Commissioner, Jim Drucker, took the reins. Kauffman remained the League's legal counsel for two years. Drucker (son of Norm Drucker, another top NBA referee) continued his 12-year association with the CBA until 1986 as Commissioner and general counsel. From 1986 to 1989 he supervised the production of CBA telecasts on ESPN as President of CBA Properties. During Drucker's term the league expanded from 8 to 14 teams, landed its first national TV contract (with BET) and saw franchise values increase from $5,000 to $500,000. The league also instituted a series of novel rule changes including sudden-death overtime, a no foul-out rule and a change in the way league standings were determined. Under the "7-Point System", seven points were awarded each game: three points for winning a game and one point for every quarter a team won. As a result, a winning team would wind up with four to seven points in the standings, while a losing team could collect from zero to three points. This made for at least some fan interest even in the late stages of games which were otherwise blowouts; the trailing team could still get a standings point by winning the final quarter, especially if the team which was leading chose to rest some or all of its starters. The league used this method to calculate division standings from its implementation in 1983 until the league's end in 2009. Also during this time, the CBA created a series of spectacular (for that time) halftime promotions. The most successful was the "1 Million Dollar CBA Supershot". In an era where the typical basketball halftime promotion, even in NCAA Division I and the NBA, would feature a winning prize worth less than $100, the CBA's Supershot (created in 1983) offered a grand prize of one million dollars if a randomly selected fan could hit one shot from the far foul line, . No one won the (insured) prize, but the shot attracted national media coverage for the league in ''Sports Illustrated'', ''The New York Times'' and ''The Sporting News''. In 1985, the CBA followed with the "Ton-of-Money Free Throw", which featured a prize of of pennies ($5,000) if a randomly selected fan could make one free throw. Two of fourteen contestants were successful. The next year, the league featured the "Easy Street Shootout". In that contest, 14 contestants were selected (one from each city), and the person making the longest shot was awarded a $1,000,000 zero-coupon bond. The winner was Don Mattingly (no relation to the New York Yankee baseball player), representing the Evansville (Indiana) Thunder. After the league's 1985 All-Star Game in Casper, Wyoming, the CBA invited fans to make a paper airplane from the centerfold of their game program (each identified with a unique serial number) and attempt to throw the paper airplane through the moon roof of a new Ford Thunderbird parked mid-court. Four fans were successful and a tie-breaker determined the winner, who drove home with the new $17,000 personal luxury car. In 1984, 17 years before the television program ''American Idol'' made it common to find an "unknown" and make them a star, the league created the "CBA Sportscaster Contest" to select a color commentator for its weekly game of the week televised on BET. With tryouts in cities nationwide, the promotion gained the league national attention on the ''NBC Nightly News'', ''Entertainment Tonight'', in ''Sports Illustrated'' and other media. The contest was won by a NJ high school basketball coach, Bill Lange, who won the Philadelphia regional contest and then went on to win the national tryout. In an interesting twist, Lange went on to coach the Philadelphia Spirit in the USBL. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Continental Basketball Association」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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