Keep Your Franchise, ABA, We Deserve the Real Thing

Chances are the ABA isn’t coming to Orange County.

Thank goodness.

The people who were pouring into the Pond Tuesday night by the ones and twos and sometimes even in huge groups of three to see the most famous basketball team in the world, had two questions about the ABA.

What is it? And why would we want it?

Answer No. 1 is easy. It is a minor-league attempt to bring an alleged version of pro basketball to arenas with empty dates in January. Answer No. 2 is easy also. We don’t.

Hey, the Pond wasn’t close to being full for the Los Angeles Lakers against the Phoenix Suns. Kobe, Shaq--the blase fans of O.C. couldn’t be drawn from their big-screen TVs to see the best one-two punch any team can put on a basketball floor. This was an exhibition game. Get real.

And get that ABA stuff out of here.

“Huh?”

That’s what the first couple answered when asked about their disappointment in hearing that Anaheim probably won’t have an ABA team this season.

It turns out Gerhard and Henryetta Bildtsen were from Frankfurt, Germany, and on vacation with their two children. They had come to Anaheim to see Disneyland, the Pacific Ocean and Shaquille O’Neal. Not necessarily in that order. The children were with a friend back at the hotel.

Gerhard and Henryetta had gotten game tickets from their hotel concierge two months ago. They had planned their vacation around this game. They didn’t much care about the ABA.

“But if we lived here,” Gerhard said, “we would come to this building to see basketball. Would Shaq play?”

Not exactly.

What the Pond doesn’t need, and what Orange County shouldn’t support, is some minor-league franchise.

Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit are getting ABA franchises. It’s OK to take the ABA if you already have the NBA. Heck, the Chicago ABA team might even beat the Bulls. That could be interesting.

But the Pond needs to think big first, think small second.

“I’ve never heard of the ABA,” Mack Wilson of Stanton said, “and I don’t want to hear about it. I wouldn’t pay a dime to see a bunch of guys who nobody’s ever heard and never will hear of.

“If the Clippers play [at the Pond], if the Lakers play, I’ll be here. But I’m not paying for junk.”

The Pond is not a minor-league arena. The ABA belongs in places like the Quad Cities or Las Vegas, Chattanooga or Louisville or Boise. The ABA needs to take its baby version of the big time to places where major league sports will never go.

The people of the Pond need to keep pushing for the Clippers or the Rockets or the Spurs or any NBA team that is unhappy with its lease, dissatisfied with its building.

Of course this means the Pond and its people will be used. It is the way sports business is done now. It’s not pleasant being used but those without must take their chances.

It is discouraging when some billionaire businessman manipulates the system, makes you look like a boob, acts as if he is appreciative of the overtures and then says, ‘No thanks, I’ll stay in (San Antonio or Houston or as the third-rate tenant at the Staples Center), but your gracious offer to come to Anaheim means 20 extra luxury boxes and 50 percent more of the parking revenues in my new arena for me.”

Yet Donald Sterling can’t own the Clippers forever, can he?

“Why would I take the trouble to come here to see some ABA team when I could stay home and watch real pro basketball on TV,” said Bud Webster, a computer technician from Orange. “I can’t imagine there would be someone dumb enough to write a check so that Anaheim can have an ABA team. They wouldn’t draw 2,000 people for that. Not here. Bring the Clippers, I’ll come then.”

This is a major league place. Major league moguls live in Orange County. Major league educators, writers, artists, dot.com geniuses. No major-league kid is going to beg mom and dad to see an ABA game.

Are you disappointed to hear the ABA isn’t coming to the Pond, Shaq?

“Uh, what?” Shaq asked.

And Shaq’s hearing is fine.

If Shaq hasn’t heard of it, we don’t want it.

With 4 minutes, 26 seconds left in the second quarter, Shaq slammed, the basket shook, the fans stomped their feet and yelled in full roar. The score was 47-30 in favor of the Suns, the game had been horribly ragged and interminably slow-moving.

But with that one, powerful, earthshaking move, every fan in the Pond knew he or she had gotten what he or she paid for. As a bonus there were the Laker Girls, who also got a standing ovation.

The ABA doesn’t offer the Laker Girls.

All of Orange County’s wealthy basketball lovers should be applauded for not signing over a check to the ABA. Those wealthy basketball lovers should save their money until a big-league owner comes calling.

When the Lakers left the Pond Tuesday night, the sound of standing ovations lingered. The sound of the ABA in January would have been much different. It would have been sad and silent.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com