The Black Hills Posse was a professional

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

team based in

Rapid City Rapid City ( lkt, link=no, Mni Lúzahaŋ Otȟúŋwahe; "Swift Water City") is the second most populous city in South Dakota and the county seat of Pennington County. Named after Rapid Creek, where the settlement developed, it is in western So ...

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...

that competed in the

International Basketball Association The International Basketball Association (IBA) was founded in 1995 by a group of businessmen led by Tom Anderson. The original owners of franchises in the league were George Daniel (Black Hills Posse-Rapid City, SD), John Korsmo, Al Gardner, and A ...

beginning in the 1995–96 season. The team was founded by George Daniel, an attorney from Pennsylvania. The Posse were created for Rapid City as a response to the departure of the

Rapid City Thrillers The Rapid City Thrillers were a semi-professional basketball team in Rapid City, South Dakota, that competed in the Continental Basketball Association beginning in the 1987 season. They were reincarnated in 1998 as an International Basketball As ...

of the

Continental Basketball Association The Continental Basketball Association (CBA) (originally known as the Eastern Pennsylvania Basketball League, and later as the Eastern Professional Basketball League and the Eastern Basketball Association) was a men's professional basketball m ...

. They were the 1996–97 International Basketball Association champions with an all-time winning record of 85 and 37.
In 1998, the Black Hills Posse were sold to John Tuschman (former owner of the original

of the

). Tuschman tried to spark the old spirit the Thrillers had from the late 1980s and early 1990s, by renaming the Posse to the Thrillers and bringing back the original "flaming basketball" logo. Unfortunately, Tuschman was unsuccessful and the new Thrillers folded after the end of the 1998-99 season. The IBA continued for one more season in Rapid City, as the

Black Hills Gold The Black Hills Gold was an American professional basketball club based in Rapid City, South Dakota that competed in the International Basketball Association for a single season (1999/2000). The team followed two previous Rapid City IBA teams, th ...

played in the 1999-00 season for one year. Rapid City has been without professional basketball ever since.

Year-by-year

Some notable players

Isaac Burton Isaac; grc, Ἰσαάκ, Isaák; ar, إسحٰق/إسحاق, Isḥāq; am, ይስሐቅ is one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites and an important figure in the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He was th ...

Dennis Edwards (basketball) Dennis Edwards Jr. (February 3, 1943 – February 1, 2018) was an American soul and R&B singer who was best known as the frontman in The Temptations, on Motown Records. Edwards joined the Temptations in 1968, replacing David Ruffin and sang w ...

Damon Jones Damon Darron Jones (born August 25, 1976) is an American professional basketball coach and former player who was an assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). A combo guard, he played college baske ...

* G.J. Hunter * Lonnie Cooper

External links

Black Hills Posse
website archived on February 20, 1999 via the

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...

{{IBA Defunct basketball teams in the United States Basketball teams in South Dakota Sports in Rapid City, South Dakota