Tag: Paul Cohen

Pittsburgh Rens American Basketball League

Pittsburgh Rens

August 17, 2019

The Pittsburgh Rens – short for Renaissance – were one of eight franchises in Abe Saperstein’s American Basketball League that debuted in the autumn of 1961. The team was notable for signing teenage center Connie Hawkins to his first pro contract after the future Hall of Famer was expelled from college and blackballed by the NBA over dubious insinuations of point-shaving. Hawkins dominated the ABL and won the league’s MVP award as a rookie in 1962. The Rens and the rest of the ABL folded midway through the league’s second season in January 1962.

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Washington Tapers American Basketball League

Washington Tapers

January 20, 2017

Doomed entry in Abe Saperstein’s short-lived American Basketball League of the early 1960’s. The team took its odd name from owner Paul Cohen’s Technical Tape Company. Gene Conley, a two-sport star who previously played Major League Baseball for the Milwaukee Braves and pro basketball for the Boston Celtics, was the Tapers’ big name player. The club lasted just two months in the nation’s capital before bolting town for Long Island midway through the 1961-62 ABL season.

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