Pittsburgh Condors
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Pittsburgh Condors (previously Pittsburgh Pipers) were a professional basketball team in the original American Basketball Association. The team played their home games in what is now Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Pipers started life as one of the ABA's inaugural franchises in 1967, and won the league's first championship at the end of the 1967-68 season. They shared the Arena with the city's expansion National Hockey League team, the Pittsburgh Penguins.
However, the Pipers were less successful at the gate than they were on the court, and after their first season they were relocated to Minnesota to play as the Minnesota Pipers. The team was not financially successful there, either, and returned to Pittsburgh after one season in Minnesota, albeit with almost none of their former on-court success. For the first season back in Pittsburgh the team retained the "Pipers" nickname. However, the team failed to achieve any further on-court success, and after a struggling season the owners decided that a name change was in order. The new name chosen was Condors, and the team competed under this name for two additional seasons (1970-71 and 1971-72) before eventually folding, having failed to regain the championship level of their debut season.
