The International Basketball Association (IBA) was founded by Alexandria, Minnesota entrepreneur Thomas Anderson in 1995. Anderson traveled the Upper Midwest searching for franchise owners for a couple of years before the league began play with five teams in the 1995-1996 season. The original owners of franchises in the league were George Daniel (Black Hills Posse-Rapid City, SD), John Korsmo, Al Gardner, and Al Hovland (Fargo Beez), Jeff McCarron (St. Cloud Rock 'n Rollers), Bill Sorenson (Dakota Wizards - Bismarck) and Earl Barish (Winnipeg Cyclones). Earl Barish of Winnipeg directed the IBA as League President and the league eventually grew to ten franchises. The founder, Thomas Anderson was granted a franchise along with partner Curt Zimbleman in Minot, North Dakota (Magic City Snowbears)for the 1996-1997 season. In the fall of 2001, CBA and IBL teams merged with the IBA and purchased the assets of the defunct CBA, including its name, logo and records from the bankruptcy court and re-started operations, calling itself the CBA. This group continues to operate today with the Dakota Wizards the only surviving founding member.
Read more about International Basketball Association: IBA League Membership, League Championship, Notable Players
Famous quotes containing the words basketball and/or association:
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)
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—French National Assembly. Declaration of the Rights of Man (drafted and discussed August 1789, published September 1791)