The concept started in February 1974 with Guy Van Den Broeck, then coach of the Belgium national basketball team and unofficial European representative for ABA commissioner Mike Storen. Van Den Broeck convened French club officials in Paris and proposed an eight-team professional league running October through April, with five franchises in France, Belgium, and Israel already 'ready.' The French Basketball Federation under Robert Busnel reacted with hostility, threatening lifetime bans for any player who signed a pro contract. Van Den Broeck's reply, that he was unfazed by 'professional amateurs' afraid of losing 'the good life when the real pros arrive,' set the project's tone. Marcel Leclerc, president of Olympique de Marseille, took over and announced the European Basketball Association from Paris on 8 March 1974. The league was eventually renamed the EPBL and reconstituted with mostly American ownership.

The Belgium Lions were the league's flagship in its host country. Owned by Roy Brown, a businessman from Skokie, Illinois, the team played its home games at the Salle Simonet in Anderlecht, with road games in Antwerp and Liège. Former UCLA star John Vallely served as player-coach. The roster included Joe Ellis, the former Golden State Warrior; Eddie Mast, a six-foot-nine forward who would lead the league in rebounding with Roger Brown of the Sabras; and Hank Siemiontkowski, a Villanova product. The Lions also fielded the only European player in the entire 60-man league: 36-year-old Willy Steveniers, a former Belgian international. FIBA had imposed a minimum age of 30 for European signings, or five years' retirement from the game, a rule plainly designed to stop the EPBL from poaching anyone Europe still wanted. The Lions opened well. They jumped to a five-game league lead. They drew 1,870 spectators for their opener and 2,101 for their second game. Attendance then collapsed.

Sir William Jones, the FIBA secretary general, had been fighting the project from the start. In August 1974 he sent a letter to national federations announcing his resolute opposition to any professional league in Europe, threatening expulsion for any player, referee, or official who cooperated. He threatened to ban professional teams from any arena used by amateur clubs. The November 1974 compromise that allowed the league to exist at all was effectively dictated by FIBA: clubs had to pay 1,000 dollars to the home federation for each game; federations had veto power over venues; all players had to be American; teams were restricted to 25 games per country, of which five had to be friendlies; teams could only play on Fridays and Mondays, to avoid clashing with the amateur calendar. Then, on 17 January 1975, William Jones personally conducted the opening tip-off in Munich. Around 400 to 500 spectators were scattered across the 6,000-seat Olympic basketball stadium. Jones could afford to be magnanimous. He had already won.

The exception to the league's failure was Tel Aviv. The Israel Sabras, named for native-born Israelis (though no player was Israeli or Jewish), played at the Yad Eliyahu Arena and drew 70,000 fans across 21 home games, including 5,000 for a friendly against the Israeli national team. They spent between 45,000 and 50,000 dollars on promotion, ran English-language advertising aimed at American immigrants, plastered Tel Aviv with colour ads, ran radio spots, and secured Tempo, Israel's largest soft-drink manufacturer, as sponsor within a month of opening. Coach Herb Brown built around league MVP M.L. Carr, future NBA coach Lon Kruger, Roger Brown, Mike Macaluso, and Henry Dickerson. The Sabras finished 20-10. The Lions were second at 17-10. Switzerland third at 15-13, Munich fourth at 10-18, Iberia last at 7-18.

The league ended in late March 1975 when the Belgium and Swiss teams refused to travel to Israel for the playoffs, citing security concerns over the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. The Israeli officials were furious: the two teams had played in Tel Aviv only weeks earlier. The real reason was almost certainly financial. Both clubs were taking heavy losses and could not justify the travel and salary costs of postseason games. EPBL president Bob Hecht offered financial incentives to complete the playoffs. Nobody took them. The Sabras were declared league champions on 31 March 1975 by virtue of their record. Despite winning the league, the Sabras themselves had projected a 260,000-dollar loss for the season. Swiss Alpines coach Jack Holley remembered the league's logistics as 'haphazard': training by running 300-yard wind sprints through hotel hallways in Munich, riding 9 hours by train from Geneva to Brussels, then 7 hours to Cuxhaven on the North Sea, then 27 hours to Barcelona. The promised second season, announced for November 1975, never happened. Sir William Jones had delayed European professionalism by about 15 years. The first true continental pro league, EuroLeague, would not emerge until the 1990s.