Growing up in the era of the red,white and blue ball was both an exciting and turbulent time as a fan.
Hair was big, the scores were bigger, and "The Doctor", "Ice Man" and "Skywalker" became household names and magazine cover material.

Of course, in your hometown, you may have had slightly less less memorable players like "Goose", "Chico" and "Troooper".

Alas, it seemed that the odds of your favorite team making the playoffs were often much better than making payroll and finishing the season.

If only they had a few super-stars to fill the arena and keep the lights on for another season or two...

If only you had been the GM, you could have saved the franchise and set the course for their place in the modern NBA !
(with a bit of help from Wilt, MJ or Lebron, perhaps)

And thus begins the Challenge of the Lost Franchises, where your GM skills are tested by taking a "Lost Franchise" (from basketball-reference.com's defunct category) and bringing it back to glory (possibly for the first time)

Your team will be made of up from

• players from the WIS database, for seasons they played with the Lost Franchise (no clones)
• 2 "exclusive superstars" (subject to special per franchise cap which ranges from $12M - 18M)
• $48M  total salary

The Draft has 3 rounds, ABA style (naturally)

• Round #1 - select a franchise from the "Lost Franchise pool"
• Round #2 - select first exclusive superstar
• Round #3 - select second exclusive superstar

There are 10 eligible Lost Franchises.

Since Lost Franchises have diverse talent (or lack of talent) pool, each has it's own superstar salary cap, which ranges from $12 - 18M

All players are eligible for draft, except for those that played for one of the Lost Franchises (like "Dr J" and Moses).

Each Lost Franchise has limited entries available for drafting (2 or 3)

All the info is summarized in the following table.

FRANCHISE	YEARS	AVAILABLE ENTRIES	SUPERSTAR CAP (MILLIONS)
Kentucky Colonels	67 - 75	2	12
Utah Stars	67 - 75	2	12
Virginia Squires	67 - 75	2	12
Pittsburgh Condors	67 - 72	3	16
San Diego Sails	72 - 75	3	16
Spirit of St. Louis	67 - 75	2	14
Memphis Sounds	67 - 74	2	14
The Floridians	67 - 71	2	14
Baltimore Bullets	51 - 53	3	18
Indianapolis Olympians	51 - 52	3	18

Willing to continue refine this concept based on feedback 

 

The owners with the last two picks have a huge advantage as they can have LeBron or Wilt, plus 2 extra superstars. And I am pretty sure everyone will take one of the unlimited teams so they can have 3 superstars. There won't be much variability and I don't know how you could change that.

put a cap on superstar salaries ?

all teams get two picks, with 12, 15 and 18M caps (or something like that)

I am in.