The brief rise and fall of the Northern Knights: Anchorage’s first professional sports team

Part of a continuing weekly series on local history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.

With the return of the NBA season, now is the time to remember Anchorage’s first professional sports team, one of the most unique and colorful teams in city history. The Anchorage Northern Knights operated here from 1977 to 1982. It was a minor league operation but featured athletes who had played for the NBA in the past or would play for the NBA in the future.

In 1977, team owners paid $10,000, roughly $42,500 in 2020, to join the Eastern Basketball Association (EBA). The EBA was a 10-team league then, otherwise located, as you could guess from the name, along the northern East Coast—places like Long Island and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Still, the Knights were Anchorage’s first professional sports team.

Some early details hinted at a lack of organization, that the endeavor wasn’t built to last. Local tryouts were held on Oct. 28-30, 1977, which led to training camp beginning on Oct. 31. The season started shortly thereafter on Nov. 19. The next closest team was over 5,000 miles away in a straight line. With Sullivan Arena still years away, there was nothing like a professional arena in town, so the Knights played at West High School.

Even the name selection was a bit of a train wreck. New teams often run naming contests. It’s a simple and inexpensive way to foster public intrigue and support. However, Knights’ ownership publicly declared they didn’t care for any of the entries and chose the name themselves.

Against all odds, this shakily constructed enterprise held together and even thrived for a time. The 1977-78 team went 24-7, a league-best record, though they lost in the playoff semifinals. Average Anchorage attendance was 2,500; the next highest rate in the league was 950 a game. The EBA was renamed the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) in 1978, and the Knights were league champions in 1980. After that, the team and attendance began to slowly decline before a disastrous, losing 1981-82 season.

Money was always an issue with the team. One early game was paused while a team employee ran to a gas station to buy a replacement fuse for the 24-second clock. When pregame dunks shattered both backboards, there was a two-hour delay to the game and a one-game, no-dunking rule instituted. Due to travel costs, the annual Northern Knights budget ran to around $300,000, roughly $1.2 million in 2020 dollars, several times the budgets of other league teams.

Travel was complicated. The Knights made one extended road trip a year. During the 1979-80 season, the Knights endured an exhausting stretch of 19 games in 35 days. In the 1980-81 season, players played games in Alaska and Pennsylvania on back to back days. During road trips, players and staff would typically pile into two vehicles total, driving through the night. Said one player to the Anchorage Times in 1991, “It was cold and wet and we’d be spinning 360s in the highway because of the ice. Then we’d get to Rochester and the coach would come up and say you got 10 minutes to get ready or you forfeit the game. We’d still have guys getting changed in the locker room when the game would start.”

These complications eventually sunk the team. The Knights never sold out the roughly 4,000 seat West High gym. The closest was likely Game 4 of the 1978 CBA championship series, when 3,121 people bought tickets to see the Knights versus the Rochester Zeniths.

For the team’s first two years, they paid for other teams to fly to Anchorage. “Yeah, every team that came to Alaska we footed the entire tab,” said a team official to the Anchorage Times, “air fare, hotels, per diem, everything.” Unsurprisingly, the team never made money, losing as much as $200,000 in the first year of operation alone, roughly $800,000 in 2020.

For the next three seasons, the league or other teams shared travel costs. But in the summer of 1982, other team owners tired of subsidizing the Knights and voted that the Anchorage team would have to pay for all travel from Seattle to Anchorage. Combined with the arrest of a team owner for his role in a pyramid scheme, the unexpected costs immediately crushed the team’s future. Within days, the team was sold back to the CBA for $100,000 (roughly $267,000 in 2020) and quickly disbanded.

Despite its short tenure, the Anchorage Northern Knights attracted national attention and was a mostly positive spotlight for rapidly growing Anchorage. Not only were the Knights the first professional team in town, but they also won the city’s first professional, national title.

The Northern Knights also marked an important turning point in the history of minor league basketball. When the Knights joined, the EBA was limited geographically and had no relationship with the NBA. The addition of the Knights was a calculated publicity stunt that, to a large degree, worked. Amidst a sudden rise of national news coverage, the CBA formed an official relationship with the NBA in 1980 that lasted until that iteration of the CBA ceased play and declared bankruptcy in 2001. That collapse lead directly to the creation of the NBA-owned developmental league, what evolved into the modern G League.

The most successful former Knight is, without a doubt, Brad Davis. A first-round Los Angeles Lakers draft pick in 1977, he struggled to establish himself, falling out of the NBA and playing in Anchorage for the 1979-80 season. By the end of 1980, he was on the Dallas Mavericks, playing with them until he retired in 1992, the last player left from their inaugural 1980-81 season. In 1992, his No. 15 was the first jersey number retired by the Mavericks.

Key sources:

Baldwin, J.R. “Door Remains Open for New CBA Team.” Anchorage Times, July 28, 1982, E1, E5.

Baldwin, J.R. “West High Roots.” Anchorage Times, March 18, 1988, D1.

Bingham, Charles. “Starry Knights.” Anchorage Times, April 8, 1991, D1-D2.

Buckley, Tim. “Will it be Long Trip or Death March?” Deseret News, December 22, 1999, deseret.com/1999/12/12/19480162/will-it-be-long-trip-or-death-march-br-jazz-will-play-seven-tough-road-games-in-11-days.

Chandonnet, Ann. “Plunging Popularity Disbanded Basketball Team.” Anchorage Times, April 5, 1986, C1,

“Northern Knights Need to Clear Another Hurdle.” Anchorage Times, November 8, 1977, 39.

Papanek, John. “North for Sure but Also East.” Sports Illustrated, February 27, 1978.

Smith, Rick. “Local Pro Basketball Team Selects Name, Hires Coach.” Anchorage Times, October 6, 1977, 27.