Distinctly Montana Magazine

36 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 6 averaged about $700 per game, plus a five percent concessions commission. Additionally, each team was responsible for its own travel costs to away games. Fan excitement quickly fizzled, and by the end of the regular season the Golden Nuggets were draw- ing less than 1,000 fans per night. Montana breezed to the 1981 CBA Finals, but the series almost didn't happen. A retrospective 1983 article in the Great Falls Tribune reported that Karl paid out of his own pocket during the season to help get the team across the finish line and that he gathered the players prior to leaving for the finals in Roch- ester, New York, and informed them that he wasn't sure "if or when" they would be paid for the games. He left it up to the team whether or not they wanted to play. They decided to make the trip, but were swept, 4-0, by the Rochester Zeniths. Iverson sold the team in July of 1981 after just one season. "I lost $165,000," he recalls flatly. Former gubernatorial candidate Dick Dzivi stepped in as team president. He, along with the other members of the new own- ership group, negotiated financial concessions from the league including airfare for western division teams. The group also sold stock in the team to the public, and the NBA agreed to contribute $200,000 to the CBA during the 1981-1982 season as part of a player development contract. But life in the CBA was still bumpy. No team's payroll surpassed $45,300. Players shared apartments, cars, and hotel rooms. On the road, adversity and un- foreseen circumstances were almost a given. On a trip to Alberta, the Golden Nuggets arrived at the Canada Games Sportsplex to find that the guest locker room was unbearably frigid. The players turned on all of the showers to create hot steam. As an article from the Kansas City Times in 1982 noted, the players got ready "like fishermen readying their nets in an early morning fog." On a different Golden Nuggets trip to Canada, the team arrived at the arena to find a note on the door that the game was being moved. The new location was a middle school gym where one of the rims was badly bent. It was decided that, as the hosts, Alber- ta would play the entire game shooting on the warped basket. "We didn't switch at halftime," remembers Montana forward Rob Spear. "That was an interesting trip." Spear was a roster anomaly in that he was homegrown. After becoming a schoolboy legend during his high school career at Butte Central, Spear moved on to play for College of Great Falls (now University of Providence). Almost none of the other players who signed to play in Billings and Great Falls had ever even visited Montana before. The winters were an adjustment. Johnson bought a 1969 Buick LeSabre for $350 upon arriving in Billings and quickly learned to park the car as close to his apart- ment as possible each night. "You run out there with a long extension cord, pop your hood, stick that dipstick thing down in the heater so tomorrow your car would start," he recalls. "If you didn't do that, it wouldn't start." U.S. Reed grew up in Arkansas and stayed home to play college ball for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks. After being draft- ed in the fifth round in 1981, he failed to make an NBA roster and instead signed with Montana. "It was beautiful country," he remembers of arriving in Great Falls. "You're riding through the country, you see bald eagles and pheasant and all that kind of stuff. Man, it was an experience." For trips to the east coast and Alaska, the teams flew. For trips to Alberta, they took a bus. To play each other, they piled into multiple personal vehicles and caravanned across the state. "First time I was in a blizzard," remembers Reed of one such trip. "In George Karl's station wagon." Some players like Carl Nicks, who played for the Volcanos during the 1982-1983 season, arrived after already having ex- U. S. Rd

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