Columnist Dean Juipe: Homeless teams find IBL refuge

Dean Juipe

Monday, Feb. 12, 2001 | 10:38 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Picture yourself as a young person just getting started in the world, yet you're a dollar in debt.

You have a woman you would like to marry, but she's a dollar in debt too.

While you feel your outlook is bright, others aren't so sure. The same could be said for your fiancee.

So, which path to choose? Do you struggle through the formative years somewhat independently, hoping to make it on your own before adding a partner? Or do you marry and merge your energies and your bank accounts, which, for immediacy's sake, has the net effect of doubling your debt?

Problems such as these confront -- and confound -- people every day. In fact, so common is the problem that there's now a parallel in the sports world, where two minor professional basketball leagues are mixing and matching in an effort to fend off calamity and, perhaps, survive.

Over the weekend three teams from the failing Continental Basketball Association requested admission into the financially strapped International Basketball League, which includes the Las Vegas Bandits.

The Sioux Falls (S.D.) Skyforce, the Rockford (Ill.) Lightning and the Gary (Ind.) Steelheads have abandoned the CBA, which apparently is going out of business after missing its payroll last week. The league as a whole, which once served a niche as a feeder to the NBA and as a source of entertainment for basketball fans in many an out-of-the-way American city, is $1.5 million in debt and ready to close its doors.

The oddity is that the three forementioned franchises want to carry on and have found an ally in the IBL.

Reduced to a mere six teams for its second season after two franchises withdrew and an announced merger with the American Basketball Association fell through, the IBL gives every appearance of being on its last legs. None of its teams is drawing well and, barring an infusion of cash from some as-yet-unidentified source, the league might very well succumb this year.

But, in a scenario that follows a misery-loves-company storyline, the IBL is picking up wayward CBA franchises in what might be a mutually desperate attempt to stave off the Grim Reaper. Adding Sioux Falls, Rockford and Gary brings some badly needed diversity to the IBL, yet the bottom line is that the league now has nine (instead of six) teams hanging on by a thread.

If the IBL's actions seem curious in that it could be argued it should strengthen its six existing franchises before taking on three other cripples, think of it as going to the hospital. Once you get there and see all the sick people, you don't feel quite so bad.

If the analogy holds true, the IBL may be feeling better today by virtue of the fact it outlasted the CBA, if nothing else.

Personally, upstart sports leagues don't do much for me, and, more specifically, the IBL's product is pretty watered down. Yet there's nothing really offensive about the Bandits, and if they manage to find a greater audience and success that's fine with me.

But their chances for survival weren't improved by their league's decision to throw out the welcome mat and bring in the homeless. Well-meaning or not, the gesture added to the IBL's burden.

Some would say it should have left Sioux Falls, Rockford and Gary at the altar.