YAKIMA -- If the Sun Kings still have a pulse, it's faint at best.
But it's possible they're not alone in intensive care, because the Continental Basketball Association itself may be on life support.
There's been no change in the team's inactive status in the three-plus months since the Yakama Nation's April 10 announcement that it was walking away from its ownership commitment and handing the franchise back to the league.
While there was some early faint hope that a new local investor would step forward, those efforts appear to have hit a dead end. Former owner Otis Harlan stated that he is no longer interested, and there has been no word from a second potential group since its initial inquiries to the league.
"My advisors said that would not be the direction to go," Harlan said last week when asked if he was still pursuing a spot in the CBA, which Harlan called a shell of what it was when he was involved in the late 1990s. "A first-class operation -- that's what Yakima wants."
Then again, even if someone still intends to step up and resurrect the Sun Kings, there's no guarantee they'd have a place to play.
While Yakima fans have focussed on the fate of the Sun Kings, the broader fate of the CBA is murky, although that's hard to gauge because there has been virtually no information about the upcoming season -- even basics like the number of teams and a schedule -- offered by the league.
In fact, the most recent post on the league's Web side (www.cbahoopsonline.com) is a May 28 listing for their Caribbean Summit (which, by most reports, was canceled or postponed).
Making that lack of information more troubling is that May 31 was the supposed deadline for teams to have posted their $150,000 line of credit to operate for the upcoming season and yet there is still no official word on which teams are returning.
Even more telling is that CBA officials have been nearly impossible to contact.
In the past, deputy commissioner Dennis Truax has always made himself accessible to the media, returning messages in quick fashion. Since late May, however, Truax has not returned any messages requesting updates on potential Sun Kings investors and the league in general.
Acting commissioner Jim Coyne also had failed to respond to messages, although, in his dual role with the Albany Patroons, he has made it clear to the fans in that town that the team needs to sell 600 season tickets by Aug. 1 or the franchise won't play this season. As of late last week, the Patroons hadn't reached 100 sold.
Worse still, the CBA's lack of contact extends beyond a media blackout.
Even a potential owner like Harlan has been unable to make contact with league officials. Since his initial inquiries about returning to the league, he said no one from the CBA has bothered to follow up.
"For what it's worth, no one from their offices has tried to contact me. I would've thought they would have," he said. "I asked them (early on) how they could help Yakima make this come to fruition.
"We needed some encouragement, but I haven't heard back from anyone in the league."
The CBA and its teams have always struggled for survival -- most notably its shutdown by Isiah Thomas' trust midway through 2000-01 that led to the Sun Kings sitting out the '01-02 season when the league was revived. But things have taken a noted downturn since the spring of 2006, when the NBA's Developmental League siphoned off three of the top franchises -- the Idaho Stampede, Sioux Falls Skyforce and Dakota Wizards -- and the NBA made it easier for its teams to send players to and from the D-League, all but eliminating NBA call-ups from the CBA.
Those franchise losses sent the CBA scrambling for new owners and new cities the past two seasons, with poor results.
Two seasons ago, only the Sun Kings and Patroons survived from the '05-06 season, joined by six expansion teams, two of which, Utah and Indiana, folded either during the season or right after.
This past season saw four more new teams -- Atlanta, East Kentucky, Oklahoma (now Lawton-Fort Sill) and Rio Grande Valley, joining Yakama, Albany, Minot, Great Falls and Butte. Atlanta, Butte and Great Falls, struggled mightily, with Great Falls not making it to the finish, and the other two barely getting there.
With the Sun Kings shutdown less than a month after the season ended, and the lack of league information coming out since, it's no wonder that speculation on the fate of the CBA has run rampant on message boards at such sites as www.oursportscentral.com, a site devoted to minor league sports.
One person who has been able to glean some information about the league's status is Scott Livingston, Lawton-Fort Sill Cavalry beat writer for the Lawton (Okla.) Constitution. Writing in an e-mail Thursday, he said he expects the CBA to play this season, but added that he's been given no details from either Cavalry or league personnel about the plan of attack.
If Livingston's assessment is correct, here is a best guess as to how the league would take shape for '08-09:
The CBA would have, most likely, six returning teams -- Lawton-Fort Sill, Albany, Minot, East Kentucky, Pittsburgh, and Rio Grande Valley -- although the Patroons status is known to be up in the air based on Coyne's remarks.
Atlanta moved to Augusta, Ga., and promptly bolted to the Premier Basketball League, another minor league that started last season and has teams primarily in the Northeast and upper Midwest. Butte and Great Falls, both with serious financial and ownership issues, are not expected back.
In his e-mail, Livingston said that both the Cavalry and East Kentucky decided to stay put in the CBA after initially exploring a jump to the PBL. He also said that despite its financial losses, Rio Grande Valley, which is located in McAllen, Texas, and shares the market with a D-League team, intends to play, but possibly in a new city.
The CBA remains active in pursuing expansion franchises, Livingston said, indicating that former CBA city Wichita Falls, Texas, is one of the possible destinations. But again, he had no solid information on the status of those efforts or how many teams the league hopes to bring on board this season.
Truax, in one of his earlier conversations, about 2 1/2 months ago, indicated that Columbus, Ohio, was being explored.
Even if the league manages to get set for '08-09, the lengthy delay in finalizing those plans will undoubtedly put a marketing and sales strain on any returning team, and make it increasingly difficult for an expansion franchise to get its operation up and running effectively.
Then again, the lack of news doesn't necessarily mean a lack of progress -- and let's face it, many people have shoveled dirt on the CBA's grave before.
Should the CBA manage to get back on its feet this time, just don't expect the Sun Kings to come along for the ride.
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