Holding Court : Van Nuys TV Repairman, a Self-Styled Basketball Freak, Preaches the Gospel of Franchise Ownership

Bobby Ray McMahon looks like any normal TV repairman who makes $19.50 house calls, chain-smokes Dr. Grabow pipes and owns a custom pool cue inlaid with pearl letters that spell The Ice Man. But as soon as a basketball game emerges on the darkened Sony and the Boston Celtics suddenly materialize, McMahon changes into a self-described “basketball freak.” Which means he repacks Dr. Grabow and goes into a trance for three hours, snapping out of it occasionally to present his theories for the sorry state of the National Basketball Assn.

McMahon, who moved to Van Nuys three months ago from his hometown of Decatur, Ill., has been certified all his life as a genuine sports nut, but it is basketball that has always sent him even farther out of orbit. “My wife woke me up one morning and said it was fifteen to eight and I asked her who was winning,” McMahon says in a deadpan country twang. Then he pulls in a breath of imported blend tobacco and says with certainty, “Yep, no doubt about it, I live and breathe basketball.”

So it is no wonder he remembers 1972 as “the happiest year of my life.” He was the owner of the Decatur team in the original Continental Basketball Assn. (CBA), a collection of NBA castoffs, former college All-Americans and not-ready-for-prime-time players like George Gervin, all of whom played for a measly $50 a game. As their owner, McMahon had real power, which meant that as a fan he had total access. It was like a 10-year old let loose in Disneyland.

“Going to heaven and meeting St. Peter at the gate couldn’t have been any better,” McMahon says reverently. He was living out every fan’s fantasy: complete control of a team, with its perks and fringe benefits, including write-ups in the local paper and hobnobbing with celebrities like the fire chief. But what McMahon liked the most was the camaraderie, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be one of the gang in the world of sports.

“I was traveling,” he says wistfully, “with basketball players. Cutting up on the road. Watching people gasp when you walk in with a seven-footer. And the stories those players could tell. I sat around for hours listening. It was great.”

McMahon was an owner for only a year, but he never forgot those feelings, and now he’s trying to sell the experience to Southern Californians. McMahon, 47, is looking for prospective owners for his newly formed Southern California Basketball Assn. (SCBA). By November, he plans to field eight teams, including one in the Valley. Other franchises would be in Los Angeles, Pasadena, Santa Barbara, Anaheim, Long Beach, San Bernardino County and San Diego. The price to own your own team is $5,500.

“As an owner,” McMahon says, “you get to play a George Steinbrenner or a Jack Kent Cooke,” not to mention a Jerry Buss. “You get to call your own shots.”

McMahon won’t get paid as commissioner the first year (“If the league flies,” he says, “I hope to get a salary the second season.”) He wants to run a league with NBA rules, top-notch officials, 24-second clock and high-scoring games that start on time. “Seven-footers. Slam-jams. Three-pointers. Just like the NBA,” he says.

But McMahon is not talking about an upstart rival to the NBA. There will be differences aside from the absence of Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. Players are not going to be getting big bucks. They’re hardly going to make small bucks. The league-wide salary cap is $1,000 a game. Per team. Most players will be making less than $100 a game, which doesn’t seem like the kind of money that will attract anybody but playground hot dogs and church-league gunners.

But McMahon disagrees. “You don’t have to spend much to get quality players,” he says. In Decatur, McMahon’s players included ex-NBA players as well as Ron Bonham (Cincinnati) and Jimmy Rayl (Indiana), former college legends in the Midwest. McMahon says Southern California, particularly the L. A. area, is swarming with stars from college and high school who were either near misses and last cuts in the pros or former pros clinging to a dream. Like young movie stars-to-be, they’re hanging around town, hoping for a break, looking to showcase their talent.

“They want to play so bad, they’d almost pay you,” says McMahon, who sees the league becoming a feeder system for NBA teams.

Coaches, McMahon says, are also looking to get exposure or just stay involved in the game. “Coaches almost find you,” he says, mentioning that both Sidney Wicks and Jamaal Wilkes are the kind of former players who have expressed an interest in coaching. When McMahon owned the Bullets, former NBA great Clyde Lovellette, a 6-9, 270-pound center known as the Whopper, drove 60 miles from Charleston, Ill., to coach the team for $100 a game. Part of his job was entertaining McMahon with countless stories about his on-the-court battles with Wilt Chamberlain.

Players in the SCBA will be required to sign a one-year contract with an option for a second year, meaning that NBA teams will have to negotiate with a player’s owner for the rights to him. Numerous CBA players went on to the pros; the money the American Basketball Assn.’s Virginia Squires paid for George Gervin was enough to cover the Pontiac Chaparral’s expenses for an entire season, McMahon says.

The CBA, McMahon says, was on a par with the ABA, which played with a red, white and blue ball and claimed to be as good as the NBA. In the SCBA, McMahon insists, the quality of play will be lower-level NBA. “The best of our teams could give the Nets and Clippers a game, no doubt about it,” he promises, shaking his head sadly and saying, “Can you believe how unbalanced the NBA is these days?”

SCBA teams will play a 30-game schedule, half at home, but they will not share gate receipts, which means that every owner will be on his own. Including the $5,500 entry fee and $30,000 in player salaries, an owner can expect to spend nearly $63,000 the first year, according to projections by McMahon and his attorney, Dave Richards of Canoga Park. Potential income, based on average attendance of 1,300 at $5 a head and revenue from concessions, is estimated at $182,500. The break-even point is about 700 fans a game.

“It’s possible to make money,” McMahon says, “but a person should want to go into this because he loves sports.”

McMahon’s own love of sports came from his father, a Decatur pipe fitter who was well-known in the town of 95,000 as a former Golden Gloves champion. There were 50 students in McMahon’s class at St. Teresa High. As a 5-10 guard, he started for two years on the varsity. When he graduated in 1957, he went into the Army as an infantryman. After his discharge, he took a mail-order course in electronics and opened his own TV repair and sales shop.

The Decatur team in the CBA was first owned and coached by a mailman named Ted Campbell, who bought the Bullets in 1969. When he went broke after three years, McMahon took over the franchise by paying $4,000 to the league, which had only four other teams, two in Illinois and two in Michigan. McMahon’s first move was to call a press conference (you can do that if you’re an owner) at the local Sheraton to announce the hiring of the popular Lovellette. It made for good publicity.

“I learned a lot from my one year,” McMahon says, “and one of the important things is to promote.” He certainly knew all the right moves. “I smooched up to the press,” he says. Steak dinners got him pre-opening-game publicity in the Herald and Review newspaper and on WAND, Channel 17. He also put up a billboard and took out advertising that hyped the presence of Lovellette, former Millikin College star Jesse Price and “beautiful ballgirls.”

The Bullets played on Sunday nights in 5,200-seat Kintner Gym on the Millikin campus. McMahon packed it only once, for the opening game, which supplied him with some of his best, and worst, memories.

“Being there on opening night, with the place filled to the rafters, the national anthem playing, that was a thrill,” he said. “Of course, it hurt bad when Rockford beat us. At least we didn’t get blown out.”

A problem in the CBA was the weather. Snow and ice storms often prevented teams from showing up on time for games--which undermined credibility--and the league did not have a policy of making teams arrive a day early. McMahon’s team also had to travel as many as 800 miles to get to a game. Neither inclement weather nor long distances will be a problem in the Southland, he points out.

McMahon likes to think that SCBA teams have the potential to be as successful as the Grand Rapids Tackers. Even during the depths of winter, the Tackers filled a 6,000-seat arena, McMahon says. The Tackers had the advantage of being led by former Toledo star Steve Mix, who went on to play with the Philadelphia 76ers, and an owner who also owned a printing company.

“He got fliers out all over town,” McMahon says.

The happiest year in McMahon’s life ended after that first season when he folded the team. McMahon says “I probably made a little money.” But money was not a factor in getting out. McMahon learned that ownership brought responsibility and commitment. It was consuming him. Ultimately, he says, it helped break up his marriage.

So he got out of the business, but he could not get the business out of his system. When his ex-wife moved to L. A. with the two children five years ago, McMahon started coming out to visit them for extended periods of time, working as a TV repairman. Three months ago, he decided to live here permanently and put together a plan that had been brewing in his mind for the past 10 years:

He will let others worry about finances and running teams. He will be the commissioner. Then he can relax and hang out with coaches and players.

“I’m not in it for the money,” he insists. “I’m doing it for a high.”