NBA Group Backs Charlotte, Minneapolis, One Florida City

Charlotte, N.C., Minneapolis and either Miami or Orlando, Fla., were recommended as sites for new NBA franchises Thursday in a proposal by the league’s expansion committee that would increase the number of teams to 26 by the 1989-90 season.

In a decision that has to be ratified by the league’s Board of Governors, which will meet in New York April 22, the five-member committee recommended that Charlotte begin play in 1988 and Minneapolis the next year. Which Florida city and whether it will enter the league in 1988 or 1989 will be decided in October.

Each of the three new franchises would have to pay a $32.5-million entry fee.

The committee designated Charlotte and Florida for the Eastern Conference and Minneapolis for the Midwest Division of the Western Conference.

It also recommended expansion drafts in 1988 and 1989 with each of the existing teams being permitted to protect eight players each of those years. No existing team, however, could lose more than one player.

Miami and Minneapolis, a city deserted 30 years ago by the Lakers, had been considered the front-runners, and even the sponsors of the Charlotte franchise had thought themselves outsiders.

“We were such a longshot candidate,” said Dan Lohwasser, a spokesman for the Charlotte group, which plans to name its team the Spirit. “People even locally didn’t give us much of a chance, much less coming out No. 1.”

The Miami group was just as shocked--the other way.

“Clearly this is a surprise, but one thing I’ve learned is that with the NBA, there are no surprises,” said Lewis Schaffel, a former general manager of the New Jersey Nets, now associated with the Miami group.

The 23-team league had voted last October to expand by between one and three teams over the next four years and appointed a committee headed by Richard Bloch, owner of the Phoenix Suns. Seven applicants emerged--the four designated cities plus Anaheim, Toronto and St. Petersburg, Fla.

“We felt these four cities rose to the top,” said Russell Granik, the NBA’s executive vice president, who said the three eliminated sites all had problems of one kind or another with arenas. Bloch said in a statement issued by the league that he felt “any of these seven markets could, at some point, successfully support an NBA franchise.”

Granik said the Minneapolis franchise could play in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in its first season, then move to an arena in downtown Minneapolis. He said that if construction had not begun on the new site by sometime in 1988, the franchise could be withdrawn because the Metrodome’s two-day conversion time from football or baseball configuration to basketball was not acceptable over the long term.

Minneapolis officials said, however, that because their proposed starting date would be in 1989, they expected to be able to play in the new arena.