Pro basketball team would enrich city, bring 60 jobs

HOLDING COURT: Abdur Shabazz, owner of the new Providence Anchors, said he sees the ABA team as a chance to showcase the area’s “greatness.” / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE
HOLDING COURT: Abdur Shabazz, owner of the new Providence Anchors, said he sees the ABA team as a chance to showcase the area’s “greatness.” / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE

Abdur Shabazz’s winding career path has led him from school athletics through jewelry design and, by way of an unexpected connection, to designing jewelry for an American Basketball Association project. Now he’s taking a jump into a new profession as owner and CEO of the new Providence Anchors ABA team.
Shabazz figures the Rhode Island sports landscape will be enriched with a professional basketball team and so will the economy, with 60 jobs in sight as the team moves toward the first games in fall 2014 (The ABA – a separate entity from the league that merged with the National Basketball Association in 1976 – is a professional basketball league that was founded in 1999. The league does use the original’s renowned red, white and blue basketball in games.)
Community work is also part of the vision. Shabazz is already working with an afterschool program at the John Hope Settlement House in Providence.

PBN: How did you get from playing college basketball in Florida to Roger Williams in Rhode Island?
SHABAZZ: My best friend at the time went to Brown and the assistant coach at Brown got a job at Roger Williams. That was the connection. I wasn’t too happy about 100-degree days in Florida [at Central Florida University]. So when the assistant coach at Roger Williams became head coach and asked me if I was interested, well, I was. I got a basketball scholarship to Roger Williams, but at a certain point I had to stop playing.
PBN: Why did you have to stop playing college basketball?
SHABAZZ: You’re only allowed four years of college basketball and I had two years in Florida and then two years at Roger Williams, so I exceeded my eligibility.

PBN: So you left college before you graduated? SHABAZZ: Yes. Once I wasn’t on a scholarship and had to start paying for college, I couldn’t afford it – it was very expensive. And I was offered a good-paying job designing jewelry in Rhode Island.

PBN: That must have been quite a change from basketball. How did you feel about that?
SHABAZZ: When you’re playing at a high level in high school, everyone wants to play professional basketball. When I stopped playing collegiate basketball in 1999, it was a huge change. If you’re a good athlete and you start playing sports at 11 or 12 years old, you have coaches coming to pick you up, everything is scheduled for you. When you get to high school, the coaches control everything. When I was out of college and sitting in my apartment in Pawtucket, no one was calling me to go eat, to go anywhere. You don’t have the fans. You don’t have the boosters. You don’t have the coaches. All the people I’d grown up with for the past 15 years, I didn’t have around anymore.

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PBN: How did jewelry design come about?
SHABAZZ: My mother was a model, so there was always an interest in fashion in my family. I saw an ad in the paper – it was 1999 and we still looked in the paper to get jobs and there were jobs – designing jewelry for the Monet company in Pawtucket. A few months after I got hired, they shut down. Then I worked for a few other small jewelry manufacturers. I designed a lot of accessories.

PBN: How did you make the connection with the American Basketball Association?
SHABAZZ: Someone called me a few months ago when they were looking for someone to design lapel pins for the ABA-affiliated company called Proud to Serve. The money they raise goes to the military, teachers, firefighters – public servants.

PBN: Designing jewelry is a long way from owning a basketball team. How did that connect?
SHABAZZ: Joe Newman, the owner of the ABA, started talking to me. He said, «constant ****SSLq»I know who you are. I’ve been in basketball for 45 years. You were an All-American. Don’t you play basketball anymore?’ So I told him that in Rhode Island basketball isn’t a [professional] sport.

PBN: How did he react to that?
SHABAZZ: He said this may be an opportunity for a professional sports team in Rhode Island and he sent me over the paperwork about licensing for a Providence team.

PBN: Launching a professional team takes money. How did you arrange that?
SHABAZZ: I didn’t know how that could happen. You need about a million dollars, or at least $750,000.

PBN: Did you think it could ever really happen?
SHABAZZ: I slept on it, really. It was kind of like when I was young and would go to bed in my uniform. I folded up the papers and put them under my pillow.

PBN: How did you finally come up with the money?
SHABAZZ: I offered to give him $10,000 a month for 12 months to buy into the franchise before we start playing. I’ve made commissions on my Proud to Serve jewelry and I had that connection to the ABA.

PBN: How do you feel now about this venture and what’s your goal?
SHABAZZ: We want to create at least 60 jobs. … It’s an opportunity to help bring the state together. Rhode Island is one of the most beautiful states and I think the team can collectively help build that feeling of greatness. •

INTERVIEW
Abdur Shabazz
POSITION: Owner and CEO of Providence Anchors LLC
BACKGROUND: Shabazz is from Philadelphia. He came to Rhode Island to attend Roger Williams University, where he played basketball. After he stopped playing college basketball, he worked as a designer in the jewelry industry. His work designing jewelry for the American Basketball Association led him to owning and launching a new ABA team.
EDUCATION: Central Florida University, 1992-94; attended Roger Williams University, 1995-98, majored in marketing
FIRST JOB: Delivering newspapers in Queens, N.Y., when he was 12 years old
RESIDENCE: Providence
AGE: 40

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