Basketball
The Jacksonville Giants began play in the new American Basketball Association (ABA) in 2010. They play their home games in the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena.
Jacksonville previously has had a number of other basketball teams. The Floridians of the original American Basketball Association played some of their home games in Jacksonville in 1970 and 1971. Originally called the Miami Floridians, the team became a regional franchise for the 1970–1971 season, playing home games across the state in Jacksonville, South Florida, and the Tampa Bay area. Poor attendance caused the Floridians to drop Jacksonville and other cities from their schedule; due to their recurring financial issues the league disbanded the team in 1972, prior to the ABA–NBA merger of 1976.
Jacksonville has had a number of minor league-level basketball teams as well. Teams playing in Jacksonville have included the Jacksonville Jets (Continental Basketball Association, 1987); the Jacksonville Hooters, later the "Jacksonville Shooters", (United States Basketball League, 1990–1995); the Jacksonville Barracudas (USBL, 1996–1998), and the Jacksonville JAM (2006–2008). The Jacksonville Jam played one season in the American Basketball Association, from 2006–2007, and transferred to the rival Premier Basketball League the following season, where they were briefly known as the Jacksonville SLAM; however, they did not survive the transfer and folded before the end of the season.
Read more about this topic: Sports In Jacksonville, Professional Sports
Famous quotes containing the word basketball:
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)