When the NBA was founded on June 6, 1946, there were only 11 teams that played in the league. Today, that number has nearly tripled to 30. You would assume that with so many organizations, there would be at least one team whose name begins with F. However, when you actually look at each one on paper, you may notice something interesting. As of today, there are no NBA teams whose name starts with the letter F.
This is interesting because almost every other professional sport has at least one team whose name begins with the letter F. We’ve listed those teams below. There are no teams in the MLB with a name that begins with F, but phonetically speaking, the Philadelphia Phillies are right there.
National Hockey League (NHL)
- Philadelphia Flyers
- Calgary Flames
National Football League (NFL)
- Atlanta Falcons
Major League Soccer (MLS)
- Chicago Fire FC
Even though there are currently no NBA teams that start with F, that doesn’t mean this was always the case. After all, the league has been around for almost 80 years; there have been a number of teams that were created, have folded, and have changed. Below, we’ll take a look at the history of the NBA to see what we can find on teams that began with F.
Defunct NBA Teams That Began With F
The NBA was originally known as the Basketball Association of America. It changed its name to the NBA after its merger with the National Basketball League (NBL), which occurred in 1949. There was another merger in 1976, this time between the NBA and the American Basketball Association (ABA). So for the sake of this analysis, we will be looking at historical franchises of the NBA as well as the franchises of these three leagues prior to their mergers.
Separately, a cool article here details all of the defunct basketball leagues, their durations, and a summary about each. To include all of these in the analysis would be somewhat irrelevant since only three ended up making up what we know today as the NBA.
American Basketball Association (ABA)
Within the ABA, there was one team whose name began with the letter F. The Miami Floridians were a team that played in the ABA from 1968 – 1970 before being changed to just The Floridians (this was an attempt by their owner to make the team seem more “regional” and gain viewership outside of the city). Unfortunately, this did not help the team gain any more traction and the team was disbanded in June 1972.
National Basketball League (NBL)
This next team falls half in, half out of the criteria because the letter F is only in part of their name. The Chicago Studebaker Flyers only played from 1942 – 1943, but were one of the first teams to racially integrate in the NBL. Unfortunately, the team disbanded and did not have a successive team take it’s place.
Basketball Association of America (BAA)
This next team also had an extremely short life in its league. The Detroit Falcons existed only from 1946 – 1947, the inaugural year of the BAA, but had a specific purpose to serve in the league.
As it stands with most major US sports today, there is usually only one professional league. However, as we’ve seen from the information above, there used to be many professional leagues competing with each other for talent, fans, and money. The Detroit Falcons were created to rival the NBL’s Detroit Gems. Unfortunately, both teams only last a single season and were failures financially and on the court. The Falcons would get disbanded while the Gems would be relocated and renamed a number of times, eventually become today’s Los Angeles Lakers.
National Basketball Association (NBA)
Surprisingly, the NBA did not have any teams whose name started with the letter F after its formal inception in 1949. All teams mentioned above preceded their league’s merger with today’s NBA.