Pittsburgh Condors
professional basketball team in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The Pittsburgh Condors were a professional basketball team in the original American Basketball Association (ABA). Originally called the Pittsburgh Pipers, they were a charter franchise of the ABA and captured the first league title. The team played their home games in Pittsburgh's Civic Arena.
History
Pittsburgh Pipers - First ABA Champions (1967–68)
The Pipers were one of the ABA's inaugural franchises in 1967. There had been an interest in potentially having an expansion team play in Pittsburgh in 1967 for the National Basketball Association (NBA), but the league ultimately went with Seattle. The team was co-owned by Jason Shapiro (of National Record Mart) and Gabe Rubin, who had partnered with Lenny Litman to run the downtown Penn Theater.
On June 13, 1967, team president Gabe Rubin selected the name of the team to be "Pipers" while signing a three-year deal to play games in the Civic Arena. Rubin stated in the press that he picked the name because he "liked the way it sounded" and wanted to eschew a long process for a name selection.
The team had great success on the court, posting the league's best record during the regular season (54–24, .692) and winning the league's first ABA Championship. The Pipers were led by their star player, ABA MVP and future Hall-of-Famer Connie Hawkins, who led the ABA in scoring at 26.8 ppg.
The public source identifies “Pittsburgh Condors” as professional basketball team in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Pittsburgh, Condors and professional.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1546693. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pittsburgh Condors” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.