Forgotten Champs: Pittsburgh Pipers' Championship Glory

On May fourth, nineteen sixty eight, American Basketball Association better known as the ABA had their very first champion in the Pittsburgh Pipers, a team you've probably never heard of, made basketball history today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history. Pittsburgh is often considered one of the most premier sports cities in America, having multiple champions and one of the most unique experiences where the Pittsburgh Penguins of hockey, Pirates of baseball, and Steelers of football all share common colors in black and yellow. But there was another team back in the nineteen sixties that was also a champion, the Pittsburgh Pipers. Now back in nineteen sixty seven, the American Basketball Association, better known as the ABA, first started trying to take advantage of how popular basketball was, as the NBA had been around for over twenty years but yet hadn't expanded to cities that loved the sport, and that first year in the East, they had the Pittsburgh Pipers, the Minnesota Muskies, the Indiana Pacers, the Kentucky Colonels, and the New Jersey Americans and in the West they had the New Orleans Buccaneers, the Dallas Tabars, the Dinver Rockets, the Houston Mavericks, the Anaheim Amigos, and the Oakland Oaks. And with these eleven teams, they sought to challenge the NBA as they even had legendary superstar center George Miken of the Minnesota Lakers as their commissioner that very first year, and they had great innovations such as the iconic red, white, and Blue ball that many players said was an upgrade over the standard brown ball used in the NBA as it was easier to track while in the air. They also added a three point line from the very beginning and had the Dunk contest, which both have been adopted by the NBA after the merger. In that first year, the ABA was able to draw a respectable amount of attendance to their games, as each team played seventy eight games and they had over one point two million attendants that first year. That same year, though, the NBA almost had three million, but they were a more established brand, and some teams like the Indiana Pacers actually had attendance on par with the NBA. But the ABA needed some stars, and they got one in Connie Hawkins, who was a member of the Pittsburgh Pipers and was the ABA's very first most valuable player and had an interesting way of why he made it to the ABA. See in college at Iowa, there was a lot of suspicion around him being involved in a point shaving scandal which caused him to get blackballed by the NBA, meaning no team would sign him and no other school would allow him to transfer. So he made his professional debut with the American Basketball League, which folded after a few years, and then he was able to work his way onto the Harlem Globetrotters for a few years, as still no NBA team would sign him until he made it to the ABA and showed how great he was on the court, averaging almost twenty seven points a game and thirteen and a half rebounds. And this was before Julius Irving had made it to the ABA and Connie Hawkins many called the original Doctor J as he had some of the most electrifying dunks at the time. As he had played over four seasons with the Harlem Globetrotters learning a lot of ways how to dazzle and the head coach Vince Cazzetta, who had a great mind for basketball, and every single player said he was like a father to them and knew the game of basketball inside and out. The team had its struggles, as many teams in the ABA did that first year, and they traded most of their players except for Connie Hawkins, who led the team through all the changes to the personnel and despite having a leg injury halfway through the season, he led them in that last thirty games of the season, he averaged almost thirty one points a game, which helped secure the MVP and led them into the playoffs with the best record in the entire league. In the Eastern Division playoffs, they beat the Minnesota Muskies and the Indiana Pacers to make it to the finals to face off against the number one seed in the Western Division, the New Orleans Buccaneers, who had Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown as their point guard. But this is when things started to take off for Pittsburgh as the crowds started to join in and they started to fill their arena more than they had ever done before, and they actually felt support from the city as previously they're playing to a few hundred people a night. Now they were playing to a sold out crowd. Every single game in that first game held in Pittsburgh was a shootout all the way to the end, where the Pipers pulled it out, beating the Buccaneers one twenty to one twenty one and Connie Hawkins had thirty nine points. But the next game, the New Orleans Buccaneers came back with a vengeance and was able to even the series with a one oh nine to one hundred victory. Then the games went down to New Orleans where the Buccaneers took the lead in the series, and then the next game, Connie Hawkins took over and in overtime they tied the series with a one oh six to one oh five victory with Connie Hawkins scoring forty seven points. But New Orleans would not back down despite the series going back to Pittsburgh. They won the next game, taking a three to two lead with putting the Pipers on their backs, and they would not back down, winning the game six one eighteen to one twelve and finishing the final game with the highest core of the series one hundred and twenty two to one thirteen, capturing the very first American and basketball Association title, but there was no parades, no rallies. After the game was over, the players packed up and went home, and the Pittsburgh Pipers packed up as well as the Minnesota Muskies folded. Minnesota wanted another team, as the commissioner, George Michn lived to Minnesota wanted a team there, and the Pittsburgh Pipers moved there with a new owner, Gabe Rubin, but they couldn't continue their success as Conny Hawkins got injured that next year and only played in forty seven games. They couldn't keep attendance up, so they moved back the following year to Pittsburgh, but the fandom had died down, and despite a name change in nineteen seventy one to the Pittsburgh Condors, the following year, in nineteen seventy two, the team would fold and not ever make it to the chance to be merged with the NBA, but Pittsburgh would not be a part of that team. Their coach, Vince Gazetta, would never coach again. He went into the business world after not moving with the team to Minnesota, and Connie Hawkings would actually make his way into the NBA, being part of the Phoenix Suns, who would later retire his jersey number forty two and be enshrined in the NBA Hall of Fame. The Pittsburgh Pipers are an afterthought when it comes to Pittsburgh sports. In fact, they're an afterthought about the NBA, as the Basketball Hall of Fame does not even include even a photo of the first ABA championship team. And though things can be forgotten in time, it doesn't mean they're not meaningful in the moment. If the Pipers may have never moved away after their first championship, maybe we'd be talking about the Pittsburgh Pipers in the NBA and Connie Hawkins could have been as well known as doctor j Is. Now though he had great successes in the NBA, he's often forgotten about. But we can't forget about the great moments in sports history because people put their sweat and time into everything they did, and we put our fandom into all these teams, and these moments should always be remembered because we want to be remembered as well, so we can make our memories fly forever and not just be a pipe tree. And if you have a topic that you would love for us to talk about on one of our episodes. Please send us an email at Daily Sportshistory at gmail dot com, or connect with us on all our socials and come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports history