Buffalo Braves

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 20th of October 1972, the Buffalo Braves trailed the Boston Celtics 103-60 at the start of the fourth quarter. They poured in 58 points in that period, setting an NBA record for points in a single quarter that still stands. They outscored Boston 58-23. They still lost the game 126-118.

  The Braves spent eight seasons in the NBA, from 1970 to 1978. They produced an NBA Most Valuable Player and three Rookies of the Year. They set a statistical benchmark no player has equaled since. They were drawing close to the league average in attendance and turning a consistent profit when they vanished from western New York. How does a viable, growing franchise disappear? And why does a direct descendant of the Buffalo Braves now play in Los Angeles under a different name?

• 2. A House Not Their Own

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  Paul Snyder was 33 years old and had recently sold his Freezer Queen business when he bought the Buffalo Braves for $4 million. The original ownership group was a New York City investment firm called Neuberger Loeb. It made enough missteps that the league took control of the team before it played a single preseason game.

  Snyder inherited a team with no priority claim to its own arena. Buffalo Memorial Auditorium was shared with two other organizations. The NHL's Buffalo Sabres, also debuting in 1970, had first choice of available dates. Canisius College had second choice. The Braves got what remained.

  From 1971 to 1975, this arrangement forced the Braves to play 16 home games at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The strategy was partly a deliberate effort to grow the fan base into the Greater Toronto Area. But the fundamental problem was that they could not get enough dates in Buffalo.

  The NBA could not finalize its schedule until the Sabres and Canisius Griffins had set their own dates. Television contracts were also held up by the same bottleneck. The league eventually gave Snyder five years to fix the problem.

  In a 2016 interview with the Buffalo News, Snyder recalled his attempt to buy a solution. He offered Canisius president Father James Demske $125,000 per game to surrender some Saturday night dates. Father Demske refused. He believed the Braves posed a threat to the Little Three rivalry among local college basketball programs.

  When the five-year deadline passed without a resolution, Snyder's choices narrowed to two: build a new arena or sell the team. Building was not financially viable.

  On the 15th of June 1976, the Courier-Express ran the headline "Braves Go to Florida, Leaving 'Hockey Town'." Snyder had a handshake deal to sell the franchise for $6.1 million to hotel owner Irving Cowan. Cowan planned to move the Braves to the Hollywood Sportatorium outside Miami. The city of Buffalo filed a $10 million damage suit to block the move. The sale fell through. The Braves and the city then signed a new 15-year lease on Memorial Auditorium. If the team sold fewer than 5,000 season tickets in any season, the lease could be voided.

  That summer, Snyder sold 50 percent of the franchise to businessman John Y. Brown Jr. Brown had previously owned the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association.

• 3. Thirty Points and Fifteen Rebounds

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  In the 1970 NBA draft, Buffalo passed on a 5-foot-9 point guard from Niagara University named Calvin Murphy. The team selected Princeton graduate John Hummer with its first-round pick instead. Murphy was considered a hometown hero. He would eventually be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

  Bob Kauffman and Don May came aboard through the expansion draft, and Kauffman quickly became Buffalo's first credible star. He had averaged just 4.3 points per game the previous season with the Chicago Bulls. In Buffalo, he averaged 20.4 and was named to the 1971 NBA Eastern Conference All-Star team.

  The 1972-73 season brought the most consequential draft pick in franchise history. Bob McAdoo came from the University of North Carolina. He won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award that first season.

  In his second year, McAdoo carried the Braves to their first playoff appearance, a six-game loss to the Boston Celtics in 1973-74. That same season, McAdoo averaged 30.6 points and 15.1 rebounds per game. No NBA player since has reached those combined averages in the same season. Ernie DiGregorio, a rookie guard, won the Rookie of the Year Award that same 1973-74 season. The Braves had now produced back-to-back holders of that honor.

  The following year, McAdoo won the NBA Most Valuable Player Award. He averaged 34.5 points per game, along with 14.1 rebounds and 2.12 blocks. He shot 51.2 percent from the field and 80.5 percent from the free-throw line. The Braves made the playoffs in 1974-75 and again in 1975-76.

  Adrian Dantley, a forward who arrived in 1976, won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1977. New ownership was already dismantling everything the team had built.

• 4. Six Minutes

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  Before their first game of the 1976-77 season, the Braves acquired center Moses Malone from the Portland Trail Blazers. Malone played in two games as a Brave. His total time on the court was six minutes. The team then traded him to the Houston Rockets for two draft picks.

  In Houston, Malone averaged 13 points and 13 rebounds for the remainder of that season. Just two years after leaving Buffalo, he won the first of what would eventually become three NBA Most Valuable Player Awards. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001.

  The Braves finished that 1976-77 season at 30-52, their worst record since the early expansion years of the franchise.

• 5. The Sell-Off

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  Jack Ramsay had coached the Braves since the 1972-73 season. When John Y. Brown Jr. took full ownership during 1976-77, Ramsay left rather than remain under the new management. He joined the Portland Trail Blazers, who won the NBA championship that same season.

  Brown had originally purchased half the franchise from Paul Snyder with a specific goal: to move the Braves to Louisville. The plan was to effectively revive his old Kentucky Colonels team from the American Basketball Association. Unable to find a co-owner for such a venture, he sold the remaining stake to Harry T. Mangurian Jr.

  Under Brown and Mangurian, the team's most valuable players were traded away. Bob McAdoo was sent to the New York Knicks mid-season for players and cash. A provision in the original sale agreement required any cash from player sales to go back to Snyder and reduce the purchase price. That clause was triggered by the McAdoo deal. The franchise cycled through four head coaches in its final two seasons: Tates Locke, Bob MacKinnon, Joe Mullaney, and Cotton Fitzsimmons.

  Fitzsimmons later joked that he was personally responsible for the Braves' departure. He also acknowledged that the NBA had given Buffalo a "raw deal." Fitzsimmons faced a nearly identical situation seven years later when his next team, the Kansas City Kings, relocated to Sacramento.

  Guard Randy Smith won the NBA All-Star Game Most Valuable Player Award in 1978, during the Braves' final season. The team went 27-55 that year. The ownership's overt attempts to break the Memorial Auditorium lease had driven attendance down below the 5,000 season-ticket threshold that could void it.

• 6. The Franchise Swap

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  Irv Levin was a California businessman who owned the Boston Celtics. He wanted to own an NBA team in his home state but knew the league would never allow him to move the Celtics. When John Y. Brown Jr. proposed trading entire franchises, Levin was immediately receptive.

  David Stern, then serving as the NBA's general counsel, brokered the deal. Stern would become the league's commissioner in 1984. Following the 1977-78 season, the NBA's other owners voted 21-1 to approve the move. As part of the transaction, the two franchises also traded most of their players. The Braves became the San Diego Clippers. The team relocated again to Los Angeles in 1984. Brown sold his newly acquired Celtics in 1979.

  Five people connected to the Buffalo Braves have been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Bob McAdoo was inducted in 2000. Adrian Dantley, who won the Rookie of the Year Award while playing for Buffalo, was inducted in 2008. Head coach Jack Ramsay received the honor in 1992, and Cotton Fitzsimmons in 2021. Moses Malone, whose Buffalo tenure lasted just six minutes of playing time, is among them as well.

  The team's name, the Braves, was said to be a tribute to the Seneca Nation of Indians. The controversy over Native American names in sports had not yet emerged when the franchise was founded in 1970. The nickname has since been described as a "curse" upon the franchise from the beginning.

  Since Steve Ballmer purchased the Los Angeles Clippers, the franchise has recognized its Buffalo heritage through occasional throwback uniforms and merchandise. Any explicit Native American references beyond the Braves name and the feather B logo have been de-emphasized. The original feather sunburst logo remains unused.

  In 2005, the Clippers refused to surrender the Braves trademark when an expansion American Basketball Association franchise wanted to use it. That team became the Buffalo Rapids instead.

  Paul Snyder, speaking years after the franchise had moved, made one final claim. He argued the Braves had been drawing higher broadcast ratings than the Sabres. If the Braves had stayed, he insisted, it would have been the Sabres who eventually left Buffalo.