American Basketball Association

Inside a Maywood gymnasium, two basketball teams competed before mostly empty stands. It would have been easy to mistake the game for a local league contest or even a friendly scrimmage if not for the television camera crews and massive banners advertising Chinese telecommunications and furniture companies. Not many people in Maywood cared who won or lost the game.

Fueled by memories of the American Basketball Assn. and its long-ago stars Julius Erving and Moses Malone, investor Duane Hughes happily paid $10,000 a year ago to buy a franchise in the revived league. Hughes, a former New York City rapper, secured a 10,000-seat arena for his ABA team, the Charlotte Krunk. He booked rap artist Mike Jones for postgame entertainment. He paid for jerseys, basketballs and $30,000 worth of TV commercials.

Roughly once a month, the NBA cuts 31 checks to NBA teams as revenue from its multibillion-dollar national television contract. There are only 30 NBA franchises, so who gets the extra check? The money goes to brothers Ozzie and Dan Silna, co-owners of the long-forgotten ABA team, the Spirits of St. Louis. Thirty years ago, Ozzie Silna, with attorney Donald Schupak, negotiated a deal that cleared the way for the ABA to merge with the NBA.

John Salley, the wisecracking former NBA center, the TV host, the guy who wore goofy oversize glasses in "Bad Boys," wanted to talk business. Basketball business. He's the new commissioner of the new American Basketball Assn. Seriously. No punch line. "As soon as you get a job, you should be looking toward your next job," Salley said. "Being a performer and being someone who's in charge of performers are two different lives."

Hours after storming the court and firing her coach, Nashville Rhythm co-owner Sally Anthony was rushed to a hospital after a 911 call by a relative who said she had tried to "hurt herself." A relative called 911 about 6 a.m. CST Sunday to report that Anthony was hurting herself, according to a 911 tape obtained by Associated Press on Tuesday.

You want high-flying basketball but at low-end prices. You want to be able to yell at a referee and have him hear you. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the American Basketball Assn. -- minor-league hoops at its scrappiest. I mean, where else but the playground can players not foul out of a game? The ABA-leading Long Beach Jam's season is near the end, and while it's not to be confused with March Madness, here are 10 reasons to check out this weekend's games against the Las Vegas Rattlers: 10.

Ronnie Coleman has been a professional basketball player for 13 years, but he has never played in an NBA regular-season game. From one international league to another, Coleman has witnessed many strange things, but he experienced something new last month while playing for the Long Beach Jam. The Las Vegas Rattlers, one of the financially challenged franchises in the American Basketball Assn., did not have uniforms.

In the beginning, no one's watching and you play because you love the game. At the end, no one's watching and you play because you love the game. It's in the middle, when the crowds swell and the money is stacked to the sky, that things can get confusing as the Bryants, father and son, could tell you. Kobe's dad, Joe, a veteran of eight NBA seasons and until last week a retiree, returned Tuesday night as coach of the Las Vegas Rattlers of the American Basketball Assn.

In a 1993 interview, during the Women's Final Four in Atlanta, when Sheryl Swoopes and Texas Tech had sold out the Omni, NBA Commissioner David Stern was asked about women's professional basketball. "I think a women's pro league is an idea that should not be scoffed at," he said. "In fact, I have some staff in Atlanta now, studying those crowds." Fast forward to September 1995. At a news conference in Palo Alto, nine members of the 1996 U.S.