Oklahoma Cavalry Basketball.

[Bobby H]

Go Cavs!

Just got back home a little while ago after watching the Oklahoma Cavalry CBA basketball team win their 2nd game in a row at the Great Plains Coliseum in Lawton. The Cavs won their first home game in Lawton on Tuesday night. The team played the East Kentucky Miners for both games.

A pretty good crowd showed up for the first game, filling 2/3 of Great Plains Coliseum. The crowd was smaller for the Wednesday night game, but that's not much of a surprise being the day before Thanksgiving. Still, the folks who were there loudly cheered on the Cavalry as they came back twice from 10 or more points to eventually beat the Miners at the very end of regulation. Quite a few local businesses in Lawton have done a great deal to support the team.

The ticket prices might seem a little steep at first glance (they start at $15 and go up from there significantly for floor seats). OTOH, these players are just one step away from the NBA. You see them much closer and they are more accessible (autographs from the players and attractive cheerleaders are easy to get after the game). The concessions prices are also quite a bit less than what you find at a NBA game. A 16 oz. Budweiser (in the aluminum bottle) is $3. Merchandise is also reasonably priced.

[John]

OTOH, these players are just one step away from the NBA.

Two steps, actually.

The D-League is one step away.

[Stan Silliman]

I used to follow the Cavs when they were in OKC.
It was before the D League days and they had some good players, enough that once you started going to games expecting to see a favorite player, the player was called up. Ryan Minor played a little.
The North Carolina State center who caught the jump shot and dunked in the winner against Houston for Jim Valvano's NCAA Championship was on the Cavs. Richard Dumas, OSU, and one of the most talented players ever to come out of Tulsa was on the Cavs before heading off and sticking with the Phoenix Suns. Or rather, he stuck until drinking and weed got him kicked.

Who is on the current team?

[Kerry]

The best thing about the CBA is the point system for quarters and wins. The NBA should adopt this. It made the game much more exciting and rewarded teams for competing. It was kind of like getting 4 games for the price of 1.

[OKCMann]

I don't think the CBA is what it used to be. I think when the CBA essentially served as the NBA's minor league it was a better deal. Today, IMO it doesn't have the prestige it had in the past. All this being said I think the CBA is still a positive development for Lawton. Thanks for the update Bobby! I'll be interested to see how this flies in the long term.

[Bobby H]

There has been some interesting drama over the past couple of weeks regarding the Oklahoma Cavalry.

A group of local businessmen had a press conference over this past weekend to announce they were buying the team. The CBA still has to approve the sale.

The former owner, a Dallas-based businessman, apparently wasn't paying his bills or paying many of the team's employees and even the players. He was at least dragging his feet on paying many of these people. Then he fired head coach Michael Ray Richardson. That move backfired. A good deal of important staff members and some players quit the team. That left the team in a pretty bad jam for one of their recent road trips.

Four well-heeled local business people have formed an entity to bail out the team and make it a locally owned property. They also hired back Michael Ray Richardson (he also appeared at the press conference).

You can find out more about the Cavs at their website:
<< OKLAHOMA CAVALRY CBA BASKETBALL >>

[OKCMann]

I can certainly see if I had intentions of eventually placing this team in OKC how I might have lost interest lately with all the Sonics news!! LOL!!!

[OKCMann]

FYI, here is the new ownership story from KSWO...

LAWTON - Oklahoma Cavalry fans coming to the game Thursday will see the same coach as when the team hit the road two weeks ago.

That's because the new owners of the Cavs have re-hired head coach Michael Ray Richardson after he was let go last week by the former owner Baron Hopgood. The team had started out the season with a winning record under Richardson, going 6-3 before their coach was dismissed for what Hopgood had called a "conflict of interest with ownership."

The new ownership group is comprised entirely of local businessmen led by John Zelbst, Mike Brown, Phil Kennedy and Hossein Moini. The four say that there will not be one majority owner and that decisions regarding team personnel will be left up to Otis Birdsong, the team general manager who was retained in the ownership change.

The 6 players who had left the team coinciding with Richardson's dismissal, including Lawton native Malcolm Johnson, are expected to rejoin the team this Thursday at home against Great Falls

[Bobby H]

This is quite a turn-around for a team that was on the verge of folding in December.

Three months later: The Lawton-Fort Sill Cavalry are 2008 CBA Champions.

The Cavs beat the Yakama Sun Kings in the semi-finals of the CBA playoffs. The Sun Kings had the best record in the CBA by a really wide margin. The Cavs went on to face the Minot Skyrockets in the CBA finals. The two teams split the first two games of the series played in Lawton at Great Plains Coliseum. The final three games were played in Minot, ND. The Cavs won games 3 and 5 of the series. They won game 5 by a score of 86-76.

The Cavs are reported to be snowed in at Minot currently but will return to Lawton late Sunday night or very early Monday Morning.