Manchester Giants
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Manchester Giants | |
 |
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| League | British Basketball League |
| Founded | 1975 |
| Folded | 2001 |
| Team History | Stockport Belgrade 1975-1981 Warrington Vikings 1981-1983 Manchester United 1983-1988 Manchester Eagles 1988-1990 Manchester Giants 1990-2001 |
| Arena | MEN Arena |
| City | Manchester, Greater Manchester |
| Team Colours | Green and White |
The Manchester Giants were a team in the British Basketball League (BBL) from 1990 to 2001.
During its existence, the team won the Trophy in 1999 and the BBL Championship in 2000. The tenure of coach Nick Nurse, which included these two seasons, was the most successful period in the club's history.
However, due to financial difficulties stemming from, among other things, the cost of playing at the Manchester Evening News Arena (a problem which also beset the ice hockey team Manchester Storm), the team was forced to move some of its home games to the Manchester Velodrome towards the end of the 2000/01 season. In the 2001/02 season, all home games were played at the Velodrome. However, the team continued to struggle financially and disbanded before the end of 2001.
[edit] Franchise history
Playing in front of thousands of fans at the 17,500-seat state-of-the-art Manchester Evening News arena - the best in Europe - the Giants had come a long way from the start of their journey in British basketball, as a National League Division Two team in 1975.
The original Giants were not even Giants at all. Based at Peel Moat in Heaton Moor, they played under the name of Stockport Belgrade but, more significantly, they had, in Bill Beswick, one of the best coaches in the history of the sport in this country.
After finishing second in that inaugural season, Coach Beswick led the Giants to promotion in 1977, compiling an impressive 18-2 record in the process, still the best in franchise history.
The next four years proved to be a period of consolidation for the team in the top division of British basketball with a first trip into Europe, in the Korac Cup, part of that learning curve.
But by the 1981-82 season, the Giants took an important step by moving to the new Spectrum Arena in Warrington and signing an American guard called Jeff Jones, whose name would figure prominently in the history of both the Giants and British basketball in the seasons to come.
During the 1982-83 season, Coach Beswick left the club, replaced on an interim basis by Craig Lynch, who was still prominent in the Budweiser League in the late 1990s as coach of the Newcastle Eagles. But it was the arrival of Joe Whelton at the start of the following season that proved the turning point in the team's history. With players like Jones, Wil Brown, Ed Bona, David Lloyd - an assistant on the '97-98 team - and Kevin Penny, the team, now the Warrington Vikings, finished third in the League and lost the Championship Final 70-64 to Solent.
Halfway through the following season, another major turning point occurred in the Giants' eventful history when Manchester United bought the team, aiming to establish themselves as a major sports club, along the lines of some of the major continental clubs in Italy and Spain. Coach Whelton also played a part in Manchester's sudden upturn in fortunes, making the shrewd signing of Colin Irish who was brilliant in the 1985 Championship Final win over Kingston, scoring 47 points in a 109-97 victory. Players of the calibre of Tom Brown and Dave Gardner, who started the '98-99 season as an assistant to Coach Nurse, were added to the roster for the start of the 1985-86 season in which a club record 23 straight wins helped Manchester United recover from a shaky start to storm to the National League title.
Sadly for the Giants who, by this stage were playing at Stretford Leisure Centre, this was to be the last trophy won by the organisation to date - something Coach Nurse and his talented team are keen to put right.
But although successes have been limited in the intervening years, there have been a number of close calls and some entertaining players to support.
The United experiment having failed, the franchise was bought by a group of local businessmen in 1988, who changed the team name to the Manchester Eagles. Jeff Jones returned to coach the team, the start of a reign (1988-94) that would make him the longest-serving coaching in Giants history.
Coach Jones finished fifth in his first season as well as taking the team to the National Cup Final where they lost 87-75 to Bracknell.
A year later, he led Manchester to a second placed finish in the League and the Final of the Trophy. On both occasions, the all-conquering Kingston team edged out Manchester.
That 1989-90 team included memorable players such as Jason Fogerty, Tony Penny, Jerry Johnson, Gardner, Kris Kearney, Keith Ramsey and Kevin St. Kitts - the last four of whom are among the dozen players to have hit 1,000 career points for the franchise over the past 14 years. By that season Manchester had also gone through another name change and was by now known as the Giants although, apart from another Trophy Final defeat by Kingston in 1991, the new name did not appear to bring any new luck with it.
By 1993, the Giants had been purchased by current owners Cook Group Inc, an American medical devices company, at the start of another exciting new chapter in the team's history. There were moves to the Armitage Centre, the new Velodrome and, most significant of all, to the Manchester Evening News arena for the start of the 1995-96 season.
There was a great influx of American talent due to new league rules and the club utilised its American ties through the Cook Group to bring in Indiana University graduates Joe Hillman and Mark Robinson as well as ex-NBA players such as Robert Churchwell and Brian Rowsom in the 1997-98 season.
The new owners were putting together a new look team and brought in respected US college coach Mike Hanks for the start of the '94-95 season. Although they only finished fourth and fifth in Coach Hanks' two seasons, the Giants were Play-off runners-up, losing the Wembley Championship Final to Worthing by a narrow 77-73 scoreline.
However, the Giants did make it into the record books in their first year at the Arena when they attracted an amazing 14,251 fans to their season opener against the London Leopards - still the biggest crowd to ever watch a basketball match in Britain. By the end of that season, Coach Hanks was out and the coach with the winningest record in club history was back - Joe Whelton. Unfortunately, he could not recapture the success of yesteryear in his one season and made way for Jim Brandon in 1997-98. However, he too found the task difficult although there was the consolation of a spirited end to the season and a run to the Wembley Championships where the Giants put up a good performance before losing their semi-final with Birmingham 91-80.
Brandon did win his final game as Giants' head coach as they defeated London in the third-place game--more significantly Brandon started an all-English team (Matt Hogarth, Michael Bernard, Jason Swaine, Danny Craven and Ronnie Baker).
The start of the 1998-99 season saw the beginning of an exciting new era for the Manchester Giants, one of the biggest names in the history of British basketball.
After several disappointing years in which the Giants struggled to live up to the expectations of their huge support, Nick Nurse was brought back to British basketball to try and end the team's 12-year wait for a trophy. It worked as the Giants claimed the inaugural Dairylea Dunkers Championship and Northern Conference title in 2000, plus the 1999 uni-ball Trophy championship. Manchester won 87 of its 106 games in the last two seasons, winning a BBL record 45 in 1999-2000.
American Nurse, who coached the Birmingham Bullets to the Wembley Championship two years earlier, had also made his mark in European basketball with top Belgian team Oostende before taking the helm at the new-look Giants. Nurse's brief was simple - restore the Manchester Giants to their winning ways and reward their thousands of loyal fans by taking them to the top of the table. Coach Nurse wasted no time in shooting for that goal and quickly assembled a star-studded cast of proven Budweiser League players. He moved to secure the services of Tony Dorsey whom he had coached in his Birmingham days, before looking south to sign Greater London Leopards' pair John White and Makeba Perry, who had been with the Giants two seasons earlier, along with Thames Valley Tigers' Tony Holley. White, Dorsey and Holley had all been selected to the end of season All-Star team and played in the League All-Star Games, while Dorsey (95-96) and White (96-97) also came to Manchester with League MVP awards to their names. Dorsey and White would both be selected to the end of season All-Star team in 1998-99.
Nurse had the players in place and the season got off to a roaring start with the Giants at the top of the table within the opening months, a major improvement over recent seasons. He has continued this run of success with a franchise-record 45-7 win-loss record, winning the inaugural Dairylea Dunkers Northern Conference Championship, reaching the National Cup, uni-ball Trophy and Dairylea Dunkers championship games in 1999-2000. Only Kingston (1990, 1992) and London Towers (1996) have reached all three championship games in the same BBL season.
