Miami Floridians
The Miami Floridians, from 1970 The Floridians were a basketball franchise from Miami, Florida, who played in the American Basketball Association from 1968 to 1972. The team had two different team colors: original orange and blue, later black, magenta and orange.
The Miami Floridians were the new name of the predecessor Minnesota Muskies team that played in Bloomington, Minnesota. The team achieved in the two years under that name once the playoffs. The 1968/69 season was the successful first season with 43 wins and 35 defeats. In the Division semifinals could defeat the Minnesota Pipers 4-3 before the Indiana Pacers defeated in the Division Finals with 1:4.
The season 1969/70 was largely disappointing for the Miami Floridians. The team missed the playoffs and was forced to play its home games in different cities: Miami at Miami Beach Convention Hall, Tampa -St. Petersburg in the Curtis Hixon Hall and the Bayfront Arena, Jacksonville in Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum and in West Palm Beach in Dinner Key Auditorium. The original owner sold the team at the end of this season. From then on the team as The Floridians was known.
The 1970/71 season was better than the previous year, but it was obvious that a slight change of name, new colors and jerseys and promotions made as ball girls in bikinis South Florida to no basketball stronghold. The team finished the season with 37 wins and 47 defeats and qualified as yet for the playoffs. They lost in the first round with 2:4 against the Kentucky Colonels. In her last ABA season, the team had more defeats than victories again ( 36:48 ), but managed to return to the playoffs. The Floridians were thrown in the first round with 0:4 of the stronger Virginia Squires led by Julius Erving in the championship race.
The lack of success on both sides of the square sealed the decline of Floridians. At the end of the 1971/72 season offered a group that was led by lawyer Ron Grinker of Cincinnati, for the team in the hope that they filled the gap after the Cincinnati Royals had moved to Kansas City. The plan was to sell shares in the team to the public. Grinker supposed to have said that if they had 5000 owner, they could also have 5000 spectators.
Instead, the owner Ned Doyle disbanded the team. The professional basketball only returned to Florida in 1977, back when the Miami Heat began to play in the NBA. A year later, the Orlando Magic. The Heat wore replicas of the Floridian jerseys from the season 1970/71 in seven matches in 2005/ 06 as part of the " Hardwood Classics " program of the NBA. During these games, the dancers of the Heat wore bikinis with white go-go boots as their predecessors of Floridians.