On December 30, 1967, Art Kim named Harry Dinnel as the new coach of the Anaheim Amigos. But Dinnel failed to the team around, guiding the Amigos to a 25-53 record in their one and only season in Anaheim. One of the many problems facing Kim’s team was his roster. Between injuries and Kim’s penchant for quickly releasing players, 20 different people suited up for the Amigos. Coincidentally, four of them had ties to BYU and one came from Utah State. Anyway, I want to quickly highlight five of these Amigos.
Ben Warley was a 6-foot-5 small forward who averaged 17.4 points and 8.6 rebounds per game, which was good enough to earn him a trip to the ABA’s inaugural All-Star Game. At 31 years old, he was the eldest Amigo and one of the few who actually had NBA experience. The Tennessee State star was drafted in the fourth round by the Minneapolis Lakers in 1960, but he failed to make the team and had to sign with the Cleveland Pipers instead. Warley thrived there and helped the Pipers win the 1961 National Industrial Basketball League championship. This caught the attention of the Syracuse Nationals, who drafted Warley with the sixth overall pick of the 1961 draft. But they didn’t call him up until 1963, giving Warley time to help the Pipers win the 1962 American Basketball League championship under head coach Bill Sharman (remember that name).
Warley joined Art Kim’s Long Beach Chiefs for the 1962-63 season, but the entire ABL abruptly folded on December 31, 1962. So he finally got to begin his NBA career in January 1963. Unfortunately, he didn’t make much of an impact for the Nationals (later renamed the Philadelphia 76ers). He averaged a career-high 8.2 points per game in 1963-64, but his contract was sold to Baltimore in 1965. In 1967, he was picked up by Seattle in the expansion draft, but he chose to return to Art Kim instead.
His one season in Anaheim was the best of his professional career, and he was one of the few Amigos to remain on the roster after they moved to Los Angeles (although he was traded away to Denver in January 1969). Warley was out of the ABA by 1970, but he did excel in the Eastern Basketball Association, making the 1971 All-EBA Team while playing for the Camden Bullets. He bounced around in the minor leagues until 1974, when he became an assistant coach for the Philadelphia Kings of the Continental Basketball Association. In 1980, a player shortage forced him to suit up for one final time and he scored four points in his last game as a semi-professional basketball player. In 2002, he died of liver cancer at the age of 65.
Larry Bunce was Anaheim’s second All-Star — a feat that’s less impressive when you factor in the fact that the league only had 11 teams at the time. And Bunce’s selection may have been more a factor of his size than his production (12.1 points and 8.3 rebounds per game). At 7 feet tall, Bunce was the tallest player in the ABA. And I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that ABA officials were desperate to show off at least one 7-footer in their first All-Star Game.
In 1966, Bunce transferred from Riverside City College to Utah State. In 1967, he was drafted in the fourth round by Seattle, but chose to follow Ben Warley down to Anaheim. Bunce was part of the purge when the Amigos moved to Anaheim, being traded to Denver for a draft pick. Denver sent him to Dallas after 23 games, and Dallas cut him after 24. Houston picked him up for the final 11 games of the season, and Bunce’s ABA career came to an end. He then apparently tried to use his massive size to earn money through illegal ways. He was arrested in 1970 for extortion and placed on five years probation. Once that ended, he tried to revive his basketball career in Sweden in 1975.
Les Selvage was one of professional basketball’s first 3-point specialists. He led the ABA in 3-pointers made (1.9 per game) and attempted (5.9 per game, for a .319 percentage). In one game against Denver, he attempted a dizzying 26 3-pointers, making 10 of them to finish with 38 points (while the Amigos lost 142-108).
Selvage was a standout point guard at Kirksville State Teachers College and made the First Team for the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association in 1963. But that wasn’t impressive enough for any pro teams to come calling, so Selvage got a job at Douglas Aircraft in California. He continued to play amateur ball on the side, and was discovered by the Amigos. He was waived as part of the Los Angeles purge, but the Stars re-signed him for four regular season games and one playoff game in 1970. In 1991, Selvage got sick and died at the young age of 48.
Dick Lee has perhaps the funniest story of this roster. Although this 6-foot-6 forward did play three seasons at the University of Washington, he was never good enough to play professional basketball and joined the Amigos as a public relations worker. But as the season progressed and injuries mounted, the cash-strapped Kim didn’t want to sign any more players. So he asked Lee to suit up just to give Anaheim the minimum required active players. Lee was never intended to actually play any minutes, but foul trouble forced him off the bench in two separate games. He recorded one rebound and one assist and zero points in his ABA career.
Bill Crow may have the saddest story of the Amigos. In 1961, he transferred from Cerritos College to BYU, but only played in five games for the Cougars and scored a total of 10 points. So he transferred to Westminster College in Salt Lake City. Like Dick Lee, Crow was never professional basketball material, but the 6-foot-1 point guard did prove useful on Art Kim’s Washington Generals, who were specifically designed to lose to the Harlem Globetrotters. It really shows how desperate Kim was to fill his roster that he called up some of his old Generals players.
Crow played in only one game for Anaheim, scoring three points of 1-for-8 shooting from the field and 1-for-4 from the free throw line in 16 minutes of action. Afterward, according to Crow, he was waived from the team but nobody told him. He showed up to the next game with his uniform on and everything. Just moments before tipoff, one of Kim’s staffers noticed him on the bench and told him he didn’t belong there since he was no longer a member of the team. The embarrassed crow allegedly begged to stay on the bench for the game since he had friends and family in the crowd, but the staffer wouldn’t relent.
This story should give you a good sense of the kind of franchise Art Kim was running. Although he had a co-owner, James Ackerman, he simply did not have enough funds to support a professional basketball franchise. Some players, like Crow, say they were never paid. Others had to sue Kim for their paycheck. When it was all said and done, Kim and Ackerman claimed the Anaheim Amigos had lost $500,000 in its first season. However, Kim luckily found a buyer to keep the team alive.
James J. Kirst purchased the Anaheim Amigos for $450,000 — a massive increase from the $30,000 that Kim and Ackerman paid just a year prior, but not quite enough to make up for the money they claim they lost. Kim apparently was under the impression that Kirst, who owned his own construction company, would keep the Amigos in Anaheim. Instead, Kirst relocated the franchise to Los Angeles and did everything he could to distance himself from the train wreck that had been the Amigos.
Jim Hardy was Kirst’s right-hand man and was promptly named the team’s general manager. He was tasked with cleaning house, from laying off the entire managerial staff, to waiving or trading away most of the players, to even (allegedly) burning the Amigos uniforms. To signify that this was a new franchise as much as possible, they changed the team colors from orange and black to red, white, and blue. Oh, and they picked a new name: the Los Angeles Stars.
The old Amigos logo used an orange basketball, which was rather ironic as the ABA distinguished itself by using a red, white, and blue ball. So on that alone, this logo is an upgrade. I also find a charming simplicity in the lettering. And, of course, the name is vastly better — referencing all the movie stars in and around L.A. It’s a redesign that brings a lot of optimism with it. And it was the right time to relocate.
The Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena had been home to the Lakers from 1960 to 1967. Once the Lakers moved to The Forum in Inglewood, Kirst was free to claim the 16,000-seat arena for himself. No longer would this franchise have to fight for dates at the Anaheim Convention Center.
Of course, the arena wasn’t the only reason for relocation. NBA superstar Wilt Chamberlain had grown so upset with Philadelphia that he demanded to be traded to Los Angeles (primarily so he could rub shoulders with celebrities). Chamberlain was so determined to move to L.A. that he even threatened to join the ABA. I’m not certain if Kirst ever extended an actual offer to Chamberlain, but I have no doubt it was in the back of his mind. Ultimately, though, the Lakers did make the trade and they rewarded Chamberlain with a record $250,000 contract — which Kirst never would have been able to match. He did, however, manage to land a big name for his head coach.
Bill Sharman was born in Texas but raised in Southern California, where he excelled at basically every sport he played and was named California’s Outstanding Athlete as a high school senior in 1944. After serving in the Navy for two years during World War II, Sharman played basketball and baseball at USC. He was decent at baseball, but better at basketball, where he was twice named to the All-Pacific Coast Conference First Team. In 1950, he was named a consensus first-team All-American before being drafted by the Washington Capitols in the second round. He also signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers and spent the next five years playing basketball in the winter and minor league baseball in the summer. He never got called up by the Dodgers and decided to quit baseball after he broke his hand in 1955.
Sharman only played 31 games for the Capitols before the franchise folded. Ironically, he may have played a small part in the destruction of that franchise. Since he had signed with the Dodgers first, he was able to negotiate for one of the highest rookie contracts in the NBA by threatening to become a full-time baseball player. After Washington collapsed, Sharman was picked up by Fort Wayne in the dispersal draft, then immediately traded to Boston where his career took off.
During his 10 years with the Celtics, Sharman won four championships, made eight All-Star Games (winning the game’s MVP in 1955), four All-NBA First Teams, and three All-NBA Second Teams. He was later named to the NBA’s 25th, 50th, and 75th Anniversary Teams. In other words, he was an all-time great.
Sharman retired from the NBA in 1961, but he wasn’t quite done with playing basketball yet. He returned home to Southern California, where he became a player/coach for the ABL’s Los Angeles Jets. But that franchise folded in January 1962. Sharman was quickly scooped up by the Cleveland Pipers, where he focused entirely on coaching and helped the Pipers win the ABL title. Before they folded, as well.
So Sharman went back home and coached the Los Angeles State basketball team for two seasons before trying his hand at broadcasting for a couple of years. In 1966, he finally returned to the NBA as head coach of the San Francisco Warriors. Rick Barry led that team to the Finals in Sharman’s first season, but they lost to Philadelphia. In Sharman’s second season, Barry abruptly joined the ABA over a contract dispute, which may have played a role in Sharman’s departure in 1968.
Sharman actually listed several reasons for why he left the Warriors. One, he really wanted to return home to Los Angeles (this won’t be the last time he made this choice). Two, General Manager Jim Hardy was an old college buddy of Sharman’s. Three, he genuinely believed the ABA and NBA would soon merge. As strange as it sounds, there was already a lot of talk about a merger. Jim Kirst went on the record saying that when the merger occurred, the new league would simply have to have two L.A. teams because he intended to keep the Stars there forever. Hardy also liked to refer to the Lakers as Inglewood’s team, arguing that the Stars would soon become the “true” basketball team of Los Angeles.
And finally, Sharman seems to have been quite optimistic about the future of the ABA. Although the league missed out on Wilt Chamberlain, Rick Barry did headline a trend of NBA stars switching leagues. And many people (Sharman included), believed it was highly likely that Lew Alcindor (later to be known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) would join the ABA. Of course, none of those hopes would pan out quite like Sharman had hoped. We’ll start exploring how and why things collapsed in our next post. But just remember: the struggles of the Amigos and the Stars were only good news for the dream of professional basketball in Utah.
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