The team colors of green and gold were retained, but the logo was a red, white and blue rendition of the United States Capitol. lawyer Earl Foreman, who moved the team to Washington for the 1969–70 season as the Washington Caps. At one point they only drew 2,500 fans per game.įacing foreclosure on a loan from Bank of America, Boone sold the team to Washington, D.C. Despite winning the ABA championship, the Oaks were an abysmal failure at the box office, due in large part to the proximity of the NBA Warriors who at the time were also playing some home games in Oakland (and would eventually move to Oakland in 1971). However, even with Barry the team proved to be a very poor investment for Boone and his co-owners. He was a former NBA Rookie of the Year who had led the Warriors to the NBA finals in the same year the Oaks had formed, but due to being angered by management's failure to pay him certain incentive awards he felt he was due, he sat out the 1967–68 season, and the following season he joined the Oaks, leading the franchise to its one and only ABA championship in 1969. There was a major contract dispute with the cross-bay San Francisco Warriors of the established National Basketball Association over the rights to star player Rick Barry. The Oaks were owned in part by pop singer Pat Boone. (The short-lived league folded on December 31, 1962.) An earlier Oakland Oaks basketball team played in the American Basketball League (1961–62) in 1962. The Squires were founded in 1967 as the Oakland Oaks, a charter member of the ABA. The team folded in 1976, just a month before the ABA–NBA merger. A regional team, they played home games in Richmond, Hampton, and Roanoke as well as Norfolk. ![]() as the Washington Caps in 1969 but moved to Norfolk the following year, becoming the Squires. The team originated in 1967 as the Oakland Oaks, an ABA charter franchise based in Oakland, California.
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