The NBA franchises are closely monitoring the current tables as the Franchises of the NBA are fighting it out to win a playoff place and to hold onto their prospect of acquiring the title. As the teams fight it out on the floor many of the Franchises have a fight off it, with the active financial structure as it is, and the players contract demands ever increasing some of the Franchises are finding it tough to endure in the existing sporting market place. In this column we will look into the Philadelphia 76ers, a franchise with a notable history and a huge followers basis. Plenty of the existing Franchises are fashioned from huge investment when the Franchise For Sale option were available to potential shareholders. This is growing to be more important in the existing sporting market as Franchise For Sale options are extremely tough to find, particularly in the basketball area. Stacks of presidents are holding onto their investments through this downturn and are eager for a turn around in the market. During this point presidents will be controlling their Franchises as a Home Based Franchise, which means that they are slashing their expenditure and only spending the pure minimum. A Home Based Franchise tributes itself on not having a large amount of expenses and consequently using the Franchises ability to make a turnover. The existing basketball Franchises are taking this tactic, as they don’t want a Franchise For Sale sign shown outside their ground. During many of the Franchises history there has been important variations in presidents and finances as the Philadelphia 76ers column will state.
The initial Philadelphia 76ers were neither in Philadelphia nor called the 76ers. But the club did start in a north-eastern city and did have a patriotic name, the Syracuse Nationals. The Nats had been in the NBA since the league's first year of existence and came to the City of Brotherly Love in 1963, just after the Warriors had abandoned Philadelphia for San Francisco. Thus begun the Philadelphia 76ers, an organisation that has featured one of the best NBA squads ever to strut onto the court (68-13 in 1966-67) and one of the worst to be beaten on it (9-73 in 1972-73).
Six Franchises from the NBL, including Syracuse, were passed into the BAA for the 1949-50 season, and the new league turned out to be the National Basketball Association. (Philadelphia's legacy in the new league is worth noting: the Philadelphia Warriors were one of 11 charter associates of the BAA and were in the initial NBA.)
In the spring of 1963, Irv Kosloff and Ike Richman grouped up to acquire the Syracuse Nationals and moved the club to Philadelphia as the 76ers. Despite the changes, the new Philadelphia 76ers didn't appear all that different on the floor. In 1967 the 76ers overwhelmed the San Francisco Warriors in six games to take the cup. That 76ers squad has since been recognised as one of the greatest ever. As part of the NBA's 35th-anniversary festivities in 1980, the 1966-67 76ers were voted the best squad in NBA history.
Fitz Eugene Dixon purchased the team in May 1976 and soon gave Philadelphia a standing as a team built on dollars. Dixon opened the vault instantly, paying $6 million for Julius "Dr. J" Erving ($3 million to the ABA New Jersey Nets and $3 million to Erving's bank account) previous to the 1976-77 season.
Philadelphia, one of the country's celebrated basketball cities, and its 76ers are an important part of the league's history and of its future.
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