Utah Rockies
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Utah Rockies was the name under which the Spirits of St. Louis were to play during the 1976-1977 American Basketball Association season.
The Spirits of St. Louis had some earlier connections to Utah. On November 29, 1975 the Spirits of St. Louis and the Utah Stars had discussed a merger of the two franchises. On December 1, 1975 the Spirits announced that they would remain in St. Louis after word leaked out that they were contemplating a merger with the Stars, with the resulting team playing in Utah. The Stars folded and on December 2, 1975 the Spirits of St. Louis obtained some of Utah's best players: Moses Malone, Ron Boone, Randy Denton and Steve Green.
At the end of the 1975-1976 ABA season, the Virginia Squires folded after being unable to make a league-mandated financial payment. Because the Baltimore Claws had folded in the preseason and the San Diego Sails and Utah Stars folded during the regular season, the ABA went from 10 teams in the preseason to only six at the end of the season. The six remaining teams were the Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets, New York Nets, Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis.
The Spirits of St. Louis (formerly the Carolina Cougars from 1969 through 1974 and the Houston Mavericks from 1967 through 1969) announced on May 19, 1976 that they were relocating to Salt Lake City, Utah to play as the Utah Rockies, and that negotiations were under way for the team to play at the Salt Palace there.
Merger discussions began between the ABA and NBA.
Daniel Silna and Ozzie Silna, the owners of the Spirits of St. Louis, proposed that they would sell the team to a group in Utah, purchase the Kentucky Colonels, and move the Colonels to Buffalo, New York to replace the Buffalo Braves, an NBA team that was contemplating moving to Florida. (Colonels owner John Y. Brown, Jr. ultimately sold the Colonels out as the ABA and NBA merged and used the money to help purchase the Buffalo Braves, which he moved to San Diego and rechristened as the San Diego Clippers.
On June 17, 1976 the ABA and NBA announced a merger deal that brought the Spurs, Pacers, Net and Nuggets into the NBA but left out the Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis/Utah Rockies clubs. Brown received $3 million in cash for the Colonels. The owners of the Spirits/Rockies received $2.2 million in cash and a one-seventh share of the four remaining ABA teams' television revenues in perpetuity. That deal is estimated to have been worth well over $250 million in the years since; the Utah Rockies' owners were made multimillionaires through NBA television revenue even though the team never played a single NBA game.
The Spirits/Rockies players were released to a dispersal draft, as were the Colonels' players. Marvin Barnes went to the Detroit Pistons. Moses Malone went to the Portland Trail Blazers. Randy Denton went to the New York Knicks. Ron Boone and Mike Barr went to the Kansas City Kings.
Professional basketball returned to Salt Lake City when the New Orleans Jazz moved there in 1979.
