Not sure anyone actually noticed, but Baltimore briefly had a team in the new American Basketball Association in 2005. They were called the Baltimore Pearls. They played at Coppin. They didn't last. The CEO of the ABA, Baltimore-born Joe Newman, said yesterday that another ownership group is going to take a stab at launching a minor-league team in Baltimore this fall, and this time with a better plan. Local tryouts would be held for players, and the team would likely play at a community college.
This ABA is interesting.

Check out its web site.

Newman formed the league in 1999. It apparently suspended operations for a year and resumed play in 2003. There are now 56 teams scattered all over the continent – from Vermont to Tijuana -- and 11 more may compete in ther ABA’s sixth season this fall-winter. With few exceptions, ABA teams play in small venues.  “You wouldn’t open a 100-seat restaurant if you knew you’d only have 10 customers at first,” Newman says. “We have a philosophy of profitability – start small, don’t pay much rent, make a profit and build a foundation for the future. You want to create a hard-ticket mentality – that is, a ticket that has value, that becomes hard to get."
You can invest in the company that runs the ABA. "It appears they came public in late 2006," a trader-friend said yesterday, after taking a look. "The stock reached an all- time high of $2.71 in January 2007 and it dropped like a rock to its current price of $.14. It trades at a very low volume of a couple thousand shares if it trades at all."