If a new arena and entertainment district is built in the Potomac Yard section of Alexandria for the Washington Wizards and Capitals, that won’t be the first time a professional sports team moved from D.C. to Virginia.
In 1969, the two-year-old American Basketball Association came to the nation’s capital with the Washington Caps, and its star, forward Rick Barry, who had jumped leagues from the NBA’s San Francisco Warriors.
“He was the marquee guy,” said D.C.-area sportscaster Johnny Holliday. “And maybe he could convince other guys in the NBA, ‘Hey this isn’t bad — they’re paying good money.'”
With its trademark red, white and blue basketball, and the exciting 3-point-shot, Holliday said the ABA’s Washington Caps were hampered by their home arena — the Washington Coliseum, also called Uline Arena in Northeast, D.C., where The Beatles played their first U.S. Concert.
“It was dingy, low-lit, down there by the railroad yards. And I don’t recall one game being sold out. There could be a couple thousand people, maybe, for a ballgame. Or, there could be 500 people for a ballgame,” Holliday recalled.
Although the Washington Caps made the playoffs, team owner Earl Foreman — a D.C. lawyer and professional sports investor who had bought the Oakland Oaks, which became the Caps — envisioned a more regional team based in the 757 area code, in the Norfolk area.
“I think he explored, ‘If we move them down to Virginia, that’s territory that’s been untapped, and they’re just absolutely crazy about basketball in that part of the state,'” Holliday said.
Moving from DC to Virginia
By the 1970-1971 season, the Washington Caps had moved to become the Virginia Squires. Holliday recalled no outrage or angst from fans in the D.C. area: “Their just wasn’t enough fans to support the ABA.”
Not everyone was so understanding.
“Rick Barry did not want to go,” Holliday said. “When he said, ‘I don’t want my kids to grow up with a southern accent, if I go down to Virginia,’ well, that did not sit well, with anybody.”
When the Washington Caps relocated to Virginia to become the Squires going into the 70-71 season, their star Rick Barry, famously said he didn’t want his kids growing up with Southern accents.
He was traded to the NY Nets. In the 71 playoffs, the Nets lost to the Squires in 6. pic.twitter.com/CTI4XluGVX
— Dime Dropper (@DimeDropperPod) June 15, 2022
Holliday has been close friends with Barry since Holliday was the public address announcer for the Warriors when the forward was drafted in 1965.
“He knew, that by making this statement, that it would rub people the wrong way, and he would probably be traded away from Virginia,” Holliday said.
Barry was right: he was traded to the New York Nets before the 1970 season started.
Meanwhile, Foreman’s vision of a regional team came to pass: In their first year, the Virginia Squires played home games in Norfolk, Hampton, Richmond and Roanoke.
The next year, the Squires signed Julius Erving from the University of Massachusetts.
“He basically put that franchise on the map,” Holliday said. “Dr. J’s style was like no other. He could shoot, he could jump, he could play defense. He just had everything going for that made him, to this very day, one of the all-time great players in the history of the game.”
In 1973, Abe Pollin moved his NBA Baltimore Bullets to the Washington, D.C. market, to play at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland.
“When he did, it just took off like crazy,” Holliday said. “Stars like Oscar Robertson, and Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and all the guys in the NBA that fans would love to go watch play now had the chance to do that.”
The ABA-NBA merger in 1976 resulted in four ABA teams being absorbed into the NBA: the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New York Nets and San Antonio Spurs.
Pollin moved the NBA’s Washington Wizards and NHL’s Washington Capitals to their current home in Chinatown in 1997, when it was known as MCI Center.
In December of 2023, current Capitals and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis announced plans to build an arena and entertainment district in Potomac Yard, where he hopes to move the two teams.
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