Anaheim Not in Race for Expansion Team, NBA Spokesman Says

Anaheim will not be one of the cities in the race for a National Basketball Assn. expansion team when Commissioner David Stern this week officially names the four favorites in the running, a league spokesman said Wednesday.

NBA public relations spokesman Brian McIntyre said Stern will announce today or Friday that the top applicants are Miami, Minneapolis, Orlando, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C., where sporting arenas are scheduled to be built within two years.

The NBA Board of Governors is scheduled to meet April 22 in New York to award at least one and possibly up to three franchises for the 1988-89 and 1990-91 seasons.

No Guarantee of Arena

Anaheim was not given serious consideration because it cannot guarantee a place for a team to play and because developers who have proposed building a $40-million indoor arena have not been able to secure financial backing, McIntyre said.

McIntyre added that when members of the NBA expansion committee were visiting cities that sought expansion franchises, they canceled a trip to Anaheim because the city was not even close to building the proposed Westdome arena.

But backers of the 20,000-seat Westdome arena proposed for an area southwest of Anaheim Stadium said Wednesday that they have not given up hope that the NBA will reconsider their plan sometime this year, once a financial package is completed for the project.

Allan Durkovic, one of the developers in the four-man Westdome Partnership that is proposing the arena, said he believes that the NBA will give Anaheim “serious consideration” once it can guarantee the team a place to play because of the area’s large television market.

“Even if (Westdome) does not meet the April 22 deadline, the NBA will give (its application) serious consideration because of their high opinion of Anaheim and Orange County as a (TV) market place.”

But Durkovic added that even if Anaheim is bypassed for an expansion team, the developers will continue with their 3 1/2-year-old quest to build a sporting arena in Orange County.

Durkovic said a sporting arena could also be used for other events such as concerts and that relocating an ailing NBA franchise was always a “possibility.”

Westdome developers, however, still were hoping to make the April 22 deadline to submit a financial package to the NBA board. Durkovic said the developers were working to secure financing for a bond issue but declined to say which banks were involved.

Anaheim Assistant City Manager Ron Bates said the city does not expect Westdome to make the April 22 deadline but does hope that the NBA eventually will consider Anaheim for an expansion team.

“We anticipate that Anaheim will not be officially in the running for April 22,” Bates said.

“We are confident that if we can get a financial arrangement in place, we can get an arena. And we are confident that the NBA will then give Anaheim serious consideration, if not in this round maybe in another,” Bates said.

The last time the league expanded was in 1980, when the Dallas Mavericks joined the NBA.