The Catbirds Story
The team that made La Crosse a basketball city.
A City Finds Its Team
In 1983, a minor league basketball team called the Catbirds was born in Louisville, Kentucky. The name was a mashup of the state's two college basketball giants — the University of Kentucky Wildcats and the University of Louisville Cardinals. It was clever. It was also a problem. Competing for fans against those same powerhouse programs in a basketball-obsessed state, attendance collapsed by more than 50% during the team's second season. By the summer of 1985, the Louisville Catbirds were on life support.
That's when two La Crosse businessmen stepped in. Norm Gillette, a local Pepsi bottler, and D.B. Reinhart — along with a small group of partners — bought the franchise and brought it 600 miles north to the banks of the Mississippi River. On July 11, 1985, the La Crosse Catbirds were officially born. They kept the name. They changed everything else.
Nobody could have predicted what happened next.
The greater La Crosse community — a metro area of roughly 350,000 people with no professional sports team to call its own — didn't just welcome the Catbirds. They embraced them with a fervor that stunned the entire Continental Basketball Association. In their very first season, despite finishing with a modest 24-24 record, the Catbirds shattered the CBA's all-time single-season attendance record. They led the entire league in attendance for five consecutive years. More than 4,500 fans packed the La Crosse Center on game nights, with a single-game record of 5,153 spectators set during the 1987-88 season. In a 6,011-seat arena, that's standing room only.
The La Crosse Center, a multi-purpose arena built in 1980 in the heart of downtown, became the team's fortress. On game nights, it transformed from a convention hall into one of the loudest, most electric basketball venues in minor league sports. The CBA was the NBA's official developmental league at the time — the proving ground where players were just one phone call away from a coveted 10-day contract with an injury-riddled NBA club. The stakes were real, and the fans felt it.
Free halftime pizza. A beloved, wonderfully weird mascot known as C.B. — played by Dave Woggon, who entertained Catbirds fans from the very first game in 1985, bringing a clown-like energy with his orange and black wig that became iconic at the La Crosse Center. There was a Catbird Club membership with laminated cards and home game schedules. Glitter buttons with the mascot on them. Player buttons you could pin to your jacket. And basketball so good it kept fans on their feet from tip-off to the final buzzer.
Even that first year, the Catbirds made magic. Under head coach Ron Ekker — a Mabel, Minnesota native and Winona State graduate who had been the driving force behind bringing the team to La Crosse — the .500 squad caught fire in the playoffs and fought all the way to the CBA Championship Series before falling to the Tampa Bay Thrillers in five games. The city had its team. The team had its city.
The Ron Ekker Foundation
Before the Catbirds became champions, they had to become contenders. That was Ekker's work.
In 1986-87, the Catbirds won the Western Division with a 28-20 record. The following season, 1987-88, they were dominant — going 40-14, one of the best regular-season records in CBA history. The La Crosse Center was rocking. The team featured players like Mark Davis, who would become one of the most prolific scorers in franchise history, and a rotating cast of hungry young athletes fighting for their NBA dreams.
But both years, the postseason ended in first-round exits. The regular-season dominance hadn't translated to playoff success — yet.
Then came the 1988-89 season. It was the Catbirds' only losing campaign in nine years. The team stumbled to a 19-35 record, and Ekker departed to become the first head coach of the CBA's Sioux Falls franchise. It felt like a crossroads. What nobody knew was that the best was still ahead.
Ekker had built the foundation. What came next was a dynasty.
The Flip Saunders Era
In 1989, a young coach named Flip Saunders arrived in La Crosse. He'd spent the previous season coaching the Rapid City Thrillers, where his team went 38-16 and the general manager was a young Eric Musselman — who would later go on to coach the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings. Saunders was an Ohio kid, a former All-State point guard who averaged 32 points a game in high school and went on to start 101 of 103 games at the University of Minnesota alongside future NBA players Mychal Thompson, Ray Williams, and Kevin McHale.
He'd bounced around the coaching ranks — Golden Valley Lutheran College (where he went 92-13 with a perfect 56-0 home record), a stint as an assistant at Minnesota, time at the University of Tulsa — before finding his way to the CBA. But La Crosse is where Flip Saunders became Flip Saunders.
The turnaround was immediate. In his first season, 1989-90, the Catbirds exploded to a 42-14 record — the best in the CBA. They swept the Quad City Thunder 3-0 in the conference semifinals with dominant performances of 124-104, 117-103, and 136-124. They survived a grueling seven-game conference finals against the Albany Patroons, including a 114-111 overtime win in Game 4 and a 112-110 clincher in Game 7. And then they took on the Rapid City Thrillers — Saunders' old team — in the CBA Finals and won the championship 4-1. Guard Tony White led the team with 1,141 regular-season points and was brilliant in the postseason.
La Crosse had its first championship.
The 1992 Championship: The Greatest Series
If 1990 was dominant, 1992 was legendary.
The Catbirds went 40-16 in the regular season, powered by an explosive roster. Mark Davis led the team with 1,382 points. Jaren Jackson — who would go on to win an NBA championship with the 1999 San Antonio Spurs — averaged 18-plus points per game. David Rivers ran the offense with 414 assists. Brian Rahilly anchored the glass with 511 rebounds. Davis added 128 steals on defense. It was one of the most complete rosters the CBA had ever seen.
They marched back to the Finals, and once again, the Rapid City Thrillers were waiting.
This time, it went seven games. The series was a war. Back and forth, La Crosse and Rapid City traded blows across nearly two weeks of basketball. And then it came down to the final game — and the final seconds.
La Crosse won. The Catbirds were back-to-back champions.
The 1992 championship ring — gold and black with a basketball at the center, inscribed with "Road Warriors 1992" and "La Crosse Catbirds 50-22 Pride" — now resides at the La Crosse County Historical Society, donated in 1995, just three years after the title was won.
"Almost every NBA game I've been to has been less intense than the Flip Saunders-led Catbirds show. It was a strange phenomenon — I would almost compare it to the circus coming to a small town, where the ringleader, the performers, and the audience all take it to the next level. That Game 7 in '92 was the best representation of basketball as a sport I've ever witnessed. It came down to the last second."
The Man Who Wore Every Hat
Flip Saunders didn't just coach the Catbirds. By 1991, he was also the team's general manager. By the end of his tenure, he was the team president. He wore every hat there was to wear in a minor league franchise — scheduling, travel logistics, player contracts, game preparation, community relations. In the CBA, there was no front office army. You did it all yourself, or it didn't get done.
That experience forged something in Saunders that no NBA coaching clinic could replicate. He understood every dimension of running a basketball operation, from scouting to budgets to building relationships with a community. He earned back-to-back CBA Coach of the Year honors in 1990 and 1992. He compiled seven consecutive seasons of 30 or more victories across his CBA career. He facilitated 23 player call-ups to the NBA. He finished second all-time in CBA history with 253 career coaching victories.
And he became a fixture in the community. He and his wife Debbie and their four children — Ryan, Mindy, and twins Rachel and Kimberly — lived in the area and became part of the fabric of La Crosse life. They attended church in Onalaska. They built friendships that lasted decades. In a minor league world defined by transience, the Saunders family put down roots.
The NBA Pipeline
The Continental Basketball Association was more than a minor league — it was the last stop before the NBA. Every player on the Catbirds roster was chasing the same dream: a phone call from an NBA team offering a 10-day contract, a chance to prove they belonged on the biggest stage in basketball. The Catbirds sent 23 players to the NBA over their nine seasons, more than almost any franchise in CBA history.
The names read like a who's who of late-'80s and early-'90s basketball talent:
Mark Davis — the franchise's all-time leading scorer, a versatile forward whose twin sons later committed to play for the Wisconsin Badgers. Davis was the engine of both championship teams.
Jaren Jackson — an undrafted guard out of Georgetown who bounced between nine NBA teams and four CBA squads before finding a home with the San Antonio Spurs, where he was part of the 1999 NBA Championship team.
Elliot Perry — who went on to play seven NBA seasons, most notably with the Memphis Grizzlies and Phoenix Suns.
David Rivers — a former Notre Dame star who ran the point for the 1992 championship team with vision and precision.
Kenny Battle — an athletic forward who played for the Phoenix Suns and Boston Celtics.
Gerald Glass — a gifted guard/forward who played for the Minnesota Timberwolves and Detroit Pistons.
Derrick Gervin — brother of NBA legend George "The Iceman" Gervin, a talented scorer in his own right.
Andre Turner — the "Little General" from Memphis State, a diminutive point guard with an outsized heart.
Vince "The Prince" Hamilton — a fan favorite whose nickname alone tells you how the La Crosse Center faithful felt about him.
Ron Brewer — a former first-round NBA draft pick of the Portland Trail Blazers who spent time with the Catbirds during the 1988-89 season. His son, Ronnie Brewer Jr., went on to become a first-round pick himself, selected by the Utah Jazz in 2006.
Russell Cross — a former first-round NBA draft pick who was part of the team's inaugural La Crosse roster in 1985.
Lancaster Gordon — another former first-round NBA pick (Los Angeles Clippers, 1984), who passed through the Catbirds roster during his CBA career.
From La Crosse to the NBA: The Flip Saunders Story
After the 1993-94 season, Saunders coached one more year in the CBA with the Sioux Falls Skyforce. Then he did something bold: he wrote a letter to Glen Taylor, the new owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, and asked for a job. His old college teammate, Kevin McHale, had taken over basketball operations with the Wolves and brought Saunders in as general manager. When head coach Bill Blair was fired 20 games into the 1995-96 season, Saunders suddenly found himself at the helm of a struggling NBA franchise that had never made the playoffs.
What followed was one of the great coaching tenures in NBA history. Saunders led the Timberwolves to their first-ever playoff appearance in 1996-97. A year later, their first winning season. He nurtured Kevin Garnett from a raw teenager who jumped straight from high school to the NBA into the league's Most Valuable Player. The Wolves made eight straight playoff appearances under Saunders, culminating in a franchise-best 58-24 record and a Western Conference Finals berth in 2003-04.
After parting ways with Minnesota, Saunders took over the Detroit Pistons and promptly coached them to a franchise-record 64 wins in 2005-06. He led Detroit to three straight Central Division titles and three consecutive Eastern Conference Finals appearances. He later coached the Washington Wizards before returning to Minnesota as both head coach and President of Basketball Operations.
Over 17 NBA seasons with three franchises, Saunders compiled 654 wins. He coached in two NBA All-Star Games. He led Team USA to a gold medal at the 2001 Goodwill Games. He amassed more than 1,000 victories across his combined college, CBA, and NBA career.
Through all of it, he never forgot La Crosse. In interviews throughout his NBA career, Saunders credited his CBA years with teaching him the work ethic, the organizational knowledge, and the resourcefulness he needed to succeed at the highest level. He spoke of La Crosse with genuine affection — not as a stepping stone, but as the place that made him who he was.
On October 25, 2015, Flip Saunders passed away from Hodgkin lymphoma at the age of 60. He had been diagnosed just months earlier, and doctors initially called it treatable and curable. When complications arose, he took a leave from the Timberwolves. He never returned to the bench.
Kevin Garnett, upon learning of Saunders' death during a Sunday practice, walked to the parking garage at the team's facility and sat down in the parking spot marked with Saunders' name. He posted a photo on Facebook with the words: "Forever in my heart."
The obituary guestbook told the story of a man who mattered far beyond wins and losses. Fans from La Crosse and Onalaska filled it with memories. One wrote: "I remember Flip when he was coaching for the Catbirds in La Crosse. He was very well-liked. I remember him and his family coming to worship in our church in Onalaska. My condolences to his wife and family. The world is a sadder place with his loss."
His son, Ryan Saunders, followed his father into coaching and later became the head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves — carrying the Saunders name into a new generation.
Season by Season: The Complete Record
Over nine seasons in La Crosse, the Catbirds compiled a regular-season record of 292 wins and 192 losses — a .603 winning percentage. They qualified for the playoffs in eight of nine years. They won two championships, reached the Finals three times, and posted just one losing season.
1985-86 — 24-24. CBA Finals (lost to Tampa Bay Thrillers 4-1). Coach: Ron Ekker.
1986-87 — 28-20. Western Division champions. First-round playoff exit. Coach: Ron Ekker.
1987-88 — 40-14. Division champions. First-round playoff exit. Coach: Ron Ekker.
1988-89 — 19-35. The only losing season. Coach: Ron Ekker.
1989-90 — 42-14. CBA Champions (defeated Rapid City Thrillers 4-1). Coach: Flip Saunders.
1990-91 — 32-24. Second round exit. Coach: Flip Saunders.
1991-92 — 40-16. CBA Champions (defeated Rapid City Thrillers 4-3). Coach: Flip Saunders.
1992-93 — 32-24. Playoff appearance. Coach: Flip Saunders.
1993-94 — 35-21. Playoff run. Coach: Flip Saunders.
The CBA: A League Like No Other
To understand what the Catbirds meant, you have to understand what the CBA was.
The Continental Basketball Association started as the Eastern Pennsylvania Basketball League in the 1940s, grew into the Eastern Basketball Association, and finally rebranded as the Continental Basketball Association. By the mid-1980s, it was the NBA's official developmental league, with teams in small and mid-sized cities from Rapid City, South Dakota, to Albany, New York.
The CBA used a unique points system: teams earned three points for a game win and one point for each quarter won, making every minute of every game matter. There were no throwaway possessions. The intensity was constant.
The league was also a coaching incubator. Beyond Flip Saunders, the CBA produced Bill Musselman, George Karl, Phil Jackson, and other coaching legends. For the players, it was a grind — modest salaries, brutal bus rides across the Great Plains in winter. But the reward was clear: perform well enough, and an NBA team might call.
For fans in cities like La Crosse, the CBA offered something the NBA couldn't: intimacy. You could sit close enough to hear the coaches draw up plays. You could watch a guy score 30 points on a Tuesday in La Crosse and see him on national television with an NBA team by Saturday.
Game Night at the La Crosse Center
If you were in La Crosse on a winter evening between 1985 and 1994, you knew where to be.
The La Crosse Center sat in the heart of downtown, a few blocks from the Mississippi River. On Catbirds game nights, it belonged to basketball.
The routine was familiar: grab your seat, wait for the over-the-top TV broadcast intro theme, watch C.B. the mascot work the crowd with his orange and black wig, settle in for four quarters of basketball played like every possession was life or death — because for many of the players, it was. At halftime, if you were lucky, there was free pizza. By the fourth quarter, the building was shaking.
This was pre-internet, pre-Netflix, pre-smartphone entertainment. In a city without major professional sports, the Catbirds were the show. Families came together. Regulars had their seats. Kids collected player buttons and program covers. The Catbird Club issued membership cards with the home game schedule printed on the back, sponsored by Heileman's Old Style Export Light — because this was La Crosse, and of course the local brewery was involved.
The Departure
It couldn't last forever.
By the early 1990s, the initial wave of excitement had gradually receded. The Catbirds were still winning — they posted records of 32-24, 40-16, 32-24, and 35-21 in their final four seasons — but attendance had slipped. During the 1993-94 season, the Catbirds ranked 9th out of 16 CBA teams in attendance.
Sustaining a minor league franchise was expensive, and the economics of the CBA were never forgiving. And in one final indignity during their last playoff run in April 1994, the Catbirds were forced to play a key home postseason game at Viterbo College's tiny Student Activities Center — because the La Crosse Center had been booked by the Wisconsin Cheesemen's Association for a dairy festival.
Professional basketball, bumped for cheese. It was the kind of thing that could only happen in the CBA.
After nine seasons — the longest any franchise in CBA history had remained in one city under the same ownership — Gillette and Reinhart sold the club on May 6, 1994. The new owner, Pittsburgh businessman Bob Murphy, moved the team east and renamed them the Pittsburgh Piranhas.
The Piranhas lasted exactly one season. Despite reaching the CBA Finals in their only year of existence, the team folded due to dismal attendance in a Pittsburgh metro area of 2.3 million people. It was the ultimate proof of what La Crosse had meant to the franchise: a city of 50,000 had done what a major metropolitan area could not.
D.B. Reinhart passed away on April 13, 1996, at the age of 75 — less than two years after the team he helped bring to La Crosse left for good. Norman Gillette Sr. also passed in later years, but their legacy endured.
After the Catbirds
La Crosse was without professional basketball for just one winter. In 1996, the Chicago Rockers relocated to the Coulee Region and were renamed the La Crosse Bobcats, coached by Don Zierden — who would later go on to coach the Minnesota Lynx in the WNBA.
The Bobcats played five seasons at the La Crosse Center, from 1996 to 2001. Stephen Jackson — who would go on to win an NBA championship with the 2003 San Antonio Spurs — suited up for six games with the Bobcats during his early career.
But the Bobcats never captured the Catbirds' magic. They didn't post a single winning season. When the NBA launched its own developmental league and the CBA declared bankruptcy in early 2001, the Bobcats folded mid-season.
In total, La Crosse was home to professional CBA basketball for 14 seasons. The city is one of just six in CBA history to produce two championships.
Bigger Than Basketball
For nearly a decade, the Catbirds were the heartbeat of downtown La Crosse. On cold Wisconsin winter nights — the kind where the wind comes off the Mississippi and cuts right through you — thousands of fans streamed into the La Crosse Center for something electric. Professional basketball played with a passion and intensity that the big leagues couldn't always match.
La Crosse proved something the rest of the league couldn't ignore: a small city that truly loves its team will outshine markets ten times its size. The numbers tell the story — five straight years leading the CBA in attendance, a franchise record for longevity under single ownership, a .603 winning percentage, two championships, and a coaching legacy that stretched all the way to the NBA Finals.
The La Crosse County Historical Society preserves the memory. A 1992 championship ring. Trading cards. Programs from games against the Cincinnati Slammers and the Topeka Sizzlers. Membership cards from the Catbird Club. A CBA trading card of C.B. the mascot, orange wig and all.
The memories live on in every fan who was there for the halftime pizza, the roar of 5,000 voices in that arena, and the thrill of watching future NBA talent battle under the Catbirds banner. In the kids who collected player buttons and grew up to tell their own children about the night Flip Saunders drew up the winning play. In a championship ring sitting in a glass case at a historical society, three decades later, still catching the light.
Wear the Legacy
Two championships. Nine unforgettable seasons. One legendary team.