Continental Basketball Association, what would you like on your tombstone?

That question might have been pondered in recent weeks as the CBA, the longest-running professional basketball league in the U.S., has had trouble paying its players, and announced Thursday it has temporarily suspended play 21 games into its 56-game season. Throughout its 55-year history -- and especially within the past decade -- the league seemingly had more turnover in its offices than turnovers on the court.

MAKING ENDS MEET

If there's any doubt that the CBA is sick, just take a look at one of the patients. In the nine games played this year at home, the Quad City Thunder have averaged 942 fans per game. Assuming the players get paid an average of $446 per game and the roster has 11 players on it, Quad City has a player budget of $4,906 per game. If 942 fans show up, paying an average of $10 a ticket, the team nets approximately $4,500 per game. And that's before other costs are factored in. Across the league, the average attendance was 2,784 fans -- a decline of 8.4 percent from the 1999-2000 season. -- Darren Rovell

But there is something different about this change of possession. There's no reason to believe that anyone with strong business acumen would want to buy the single-entity league that was created in the tumultuous tenure under owner Isiah Thomas. There's also little reason beyond nostalgic preservation for the NBA to help out the CBA with the NBA's National Basketball Developmental League debut in November.

Ivan Thornton, the sole trustee of the Isiah Thomas blind trust, said he "is confident that the transaction (of selling the teams back) will be completed" and that every effort is being made to do that "as expediently as possible."

"Selling the teams back to local ownership is the best for the local communities and best for all parties concerned," he said. "The concept (of a single entity) makes sense conceptually, but when you don't have someone like Isiah to drive that system, then execution becomes a challenge."

In the meantime, others are pondering: What happens if there are no buyers?

Former Quad Cities coach Dan Panaggio, a nine-year veteran of the CBA whose 313 victories ranks second all-time to his father, Mauro, said he is crushed by the potential loss of the league.

"There's a character to the CBA that you cannot duplicate," Panaggio said. "From when it grew from the Eastern (Pennsylvania Basketball) League to the CBA, when it moved from a weekend league to full-time league, from vans to buses to planes. And it was second to none in quality of coaching as in the golden years with Flip Saunders, Phil Jackson, the late Bill Musselman, George Karl, Henry Bibby, (Indiana assistant coach) John Treloar, my father and myself."

While the league produced coaches who moved on to successful careers in college and the NBA, Panaggio said the CBA's shortcomings were obvious. He remembers how the league was "losing money every year" and that it could never maintain a steady fan base. "The league doesn't draw anybody," he said. He recalled some games played in front of crowds as small as 20 people in Pensacola, Fla., and Birmingham, Ala. "At Indiana, people love their school and people that don't know anything about basketball root for the team. In the NBA, that's the highest level of basketball in the world. But when it comes to the minor leagues, no one really identifies with the team, and on a cold winter night, it finds itself competing with a college or an NBA team on the television."

Terdema Ussery was commissioner of the CBA when Panaggio began coaching in the CBA. Ussery, now president of the Dallas Mavericks, said it was well known that differing ideologies among the owners had been the league's biggest problem. "We had some people who were willing to accept the league as a minor league in cities with small populations playing in smaller venues and understood the value of that niche," said Ussery, who held the league's highest position from 1990 to 1993. "But then you had another set who kept thinking expansion and wanted to take on the NBA and weren't realistically helping to capitalize on the unique places that we played in."

Ussery said the owners' insistence on having teams stretch across the country -- such as from Yakima, Wash., to Hartford, Conn. -- hinged upon securing a sizeable television contract. But Ussery also said that travel across country by plane required the owners to fund the rising operating budget.

Aaaahhhhhh.

No, that's not a sigh or a scream. It's the sound of minor-league basketball in America, as it stands right now, collectively sucking in its last breaths of air. The International Basketball League -- which plays in major cities -- folded two of its eight teams after its inaugural season last year and is struggling at the gate once again this year. ABA2000, which began play in eight major cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit, on Dec. 26, is also having trouble making ends meet. Financing player salaries ranging from $50,000-$60,000 is proving difficult with some 3,000 fans in the stands per game. The United States Basketball League and the International Basketball Association have feebly managed longevity of 15 and six years, respectively, by paying players an average of $300 to $400 a week. And then come the carcasses: the College Professional Basketball League, which never managed to get to tipoff last year, the Global Basketball Association, which survived for half a season, and the women's American Basketball League, which folded in 1999 after three seasons.

	“	Why one would anyone (associated with the CBA) kill themselves to go forward with the NBA developmental league coming? In the electronic age with media contracts and media contacts, with sponsorship relationships equaling hundreds of millions of dollars and billions of dollars in revenue, how can you possibly directly compete with the polished marketing muscle of the NBA? ”
		— Terdema Ussery, Dallas Mavericks president and former CBA commissioner

"Inexperience and lack of capital has hurt the impression of minor league basketball over time," said Dan Meisenheimer, founder and commissioner of the USBL, a professional summer league that has had 126 players on its rosters play in the NBA. Meisenheimer said only three of the league's 11 teams made at least a small profit last year.

"Some of these teams in the IBL and the ABA(2000) are probably talking about seven-figure losses," he said. "You'd think that if the owners were that rich, to lose that much money they would have probably have been smarter to buy a piece of an NBA team. If we were to pay $1,000 a week to our guys, we would have been gone a long time ago."

The CBA reportedly had lost more than $5 million between 1997-99. According to the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal-Gazette, the CBA is nearly $1.5 million in debt.

Meisenheimer, whose teams pay a franchise fee, cited the CBA's move to a single-entity as the potential nail in the coffin. That happened when Isiah Thomas, in principle, bought out the league's individual owners in the fall of 1999.

Meisenheimer said he is surprised the CBA has lasted this long.

"Running these businesses from one location is an absolute nightmare," Meisenheimer said. "There's too many things that have to be monitored more closely from a corporate office."

Panaggio agrees, adding that the single-entity also drained the league of its underlying competitive force. "When each local owner had his own team, it was all about ego," he said. "Competition was fierce, as the owner from Quad Cities wanted to beat the owner from Sioux Falls."

While the league his "underachieving" in several markets, ABA2000 co-founder Joe Newman said the league is not in jeopardy of folding. He cites betting lines on Internet sites and a national television contract, which will be announced next week, as evidence his league remains solvent. And while he's a competitor of the CBA, he isn't necessary rooting for its downfall. "Although our league is also fighting for our existence, I think it would be a God-awful shame if it goes under."

Paul McMann's College Professional Basketball League never got off the ground last year after its chief financier, Broadcast.com's Mark Cuban, bought the NBA's Dallas Mavericks in the eleventh hour.

McMann's idea was to pay top-notch Division I college basketball players between $30,000 and $100,000, to skip college for his league -- which also included a required educational component. Although his league never tipped off, he thinks he knows one of the reasons why minor-league basketball can't compare to its baseball equivalent.

"Minor-league baseball teams play 60-plus dates in the summer and with basketball, you just can't get that," he said. "So off the bat, it makes it harder to cover your operating expenses."

McMann predicts that two highest paying minor league basketball organizations, the IBL and ABA2000, will be out of business within the next two years.

CBA ATTENDANCE FIGURES
Team	Total	Avg.	Capacity	+/- from '99-2000
Sioux Falls	45,846	4,585	75 percent	-9.3 percent
Ft. Wayne	34,124	4,266	76 percent	11.1 percent
Idaho	46,018	3,540	65 percent	-8.6 percent
Yakima	47,693	3,407	63 percent	22.7 percent
La Crosse	29,966	2,724	46 percent	-1.2 percent
Rockford	40,758	2,717	31 percent	-17.0 percent
Gary	34,473	2,652	40 percent	DNP
Grand Rapids	26,325	2,194	23 percent	-7.4 percent
Connecticut	11,998	1,000	33 percent	-28.9 percent
Quad City	8,476	942	17 percent	-56.4 percent

Rick Burton, director of the University of Oregon's Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, says that the problem is that minor-league basketball has another competitor that a minor-league baseball team truly doesn't have -- the college sport. "They're fighting a two-front war in terms of player talent and interest with the NBA and the NCAA and they simply haven't differentiated themselves enough from their competition. People watch the NBA because of the talent and watch college basketball because of the love of alma mater at the amateur level."

Cuban says that in small markets, high school basketball also factors into the mix.

"Just saying (that the league) is professional when people have their choice of going to college or high school is not enough," Cuban wrote in an e-mail response to questions. "You have to make it part of the community, and you have to create ownership of the team in the community, and that is a lot of hard work that also takes money and creativity."

Al Lorenzen, a former McDonald's All-America who went on to the University of Iowa, played in the CBA in the early '90s. Now the IBA's executive director, Lorenzen said he isn't so sad about CBA's impending demise. Because the NBDL is coming.

"If you call it something else, that's fine," Lorenzen said. "I'm no so hung up on the semantics of it all as long as there continues to be an opportunity for players, coaches and front-office executives to get to the NBA." The NBDL reportedly will pay its players slightly more than the CBA average of $25,000. The league also will have an established tutoring program for its executives.

Ussery thinks Newman's ABA2000 and the IBL soon will be a thing of the past. But that's a couple more hours than the former commissioner believes the CBA has.

"Why one would anyone (associated with the CBA) kill themselves to go forward with the NBA developmental league coming?" Ussery said. "In the electronic age with media contracts and media contacts, with sponsorship relationships equaling hundreds of millions of dollars and billions of dollars in revenue, how can you possibly directly compete with the polished marketing muscle of the NBA?"

Darren Rovell, who covers sports business for ESPN.com, can be reached at darren.rovell@espn.com.