The Kansas City Knights and the entire ABA professional basketball league are taking a year-long “time out” to reorganize the league.

Third-year Knights coach/general manager and Lawrence resident Kevin Pritchard, who led the squad to a 35-5 record and league championship last season, remains committed to the organization.

“I am coming back to the Knights where I have grown as a coach and look forward to continuing the tradition,” Pritchard told the Journal-World on Saturday night. “I am really sad that we cannot play this season. It’s really unfortunate. We had a good team coming back.

“The good news is we are champions for two years.”

Knights assistant coach Rex Walters, like Pritchard a former Kansas University basketball player, will work as assistant coach at Blue Valley Northwest this season. Pritchard plans to bring Walters back as an assistant next season.

Knights’ owner Jim Clark on Saturday was named president/CEO of the league.

Exact details on the ABA league for 2003 will be determined at an organizational meeting to be held this December in New York. Thus far, 11 teams have made commitments to attend the meeting and plan on joining the Knights in the ABA next year.

Pritchard will hold team clinics in the KC area while continuing to work for the Knights.

“I love coaching the Knights and it’s been a great experience,” he said. “Now that Jim Clark is president of the ABA, I feel very comfortable it will be back next year and we’ll be bigger than we were. We are still going to have camps and talk with sponsors and I’m calling all season-ticket holders.

“I am GM and head coach of the Knights. We just couldn’t find a league to play in this year. Jim being a leader in the league is good for me. He’s a great businessman. If he does as good a job on the league level as he’s done with the Knights, a great future is ahead of us.”