A Short History Of Basketball In The NBA
The story of the origin of the National Basketball Association is more complicated than you would think, it starts with the story of two rival organisations who competed for the attention of the select few that followed the sport. Luckily we went in depth and researched the topic to provide a comprehensive guide to how the NBA was formed and what happened to make it come into being.
National Basketball League
The National Basketball Association, or NBA, is a professional basketball league in the United States with teams located in the United States and Canada. The origin of the National Basketball Association was preceded by two different basketball leagues, One of them was called the National Basketball League (NBL) which was founded in 1937. The NBL started with 13 professional teams in America’s midwest and its popularity exploded and with that elite talent like George Mikan and Bobby McDermott would become household names across the country.
The league was very hands off at the beginning leaving all game scheduling up to the teams and their owners, the league was happy as long as they all met the requirements of playing at least 10 games with at least 4 of those games being away/road games. NBL games typically lasted 40 minutes as four 10 minute quarters or three 15 minute periods depending on what the home team’s preference was. NBL teams were either owned independently but successful businessmen or companies that often also employed their own players within their company. The NBL’s explosion in popularity led to playing more games with each passing year and eventually led to the NBL being considered America’s top professional league for close to a decade, however NBL teams only had smaller arenas in various midwesterner cities.
The Basketball Association of America
The owner of the Boston Garden, Walter Brown was coming up with his own league to rival the NBL and he believed that if he could get teams into bigger cities with bigger markets, that the sport would become even bigger and start to rival other popular American sports of the time. With many major ice hockey arenas only being used on certain nights Walter thought those arenas could be put to better use when there were no ice hockey games to be played.
The Basketball Association of America (BAA) was founded on June 6, 1946, in New York City by a group of owners of the American Basketball League led by Walter Browne and the first game was played on November 1 of that year. The BAA and NBL became immediate rivals vying for the same crowds. There were some teething issues in the first year of the BAA, many owners refused to heat their arenas which meant fans had to bring warm clothes, gloves and even blankets, the players themselves also sometimes wore gloves. Some owners also simply put wooden floors over the ice rink which led to puddles and numerous game cancellations which wasn’t a good look for a league in their first season. Attendance was on average about 3000 per game which was below the estimations the owners had made and many of the teams were in very unstable financial circumstances. Despite all this the BAA still had fans who wanted to watch their league and the former college basketball players that competed in it. The BAA also had some key differences from their NBL rivals, they played a 48 minute game as opposed to the NBL’s 40 minute game and the BAA also allowed 6 fouls instead of the traditional 5 due to the extra game time of their game.
The Merger at the heart of the creation of The NBA
The NBL wasn’t really concerned by their new rivals at first as they had more of the big name stars and talent so they were not intimidated by their BAA rivals, the NBL had a better product as shown by their domination within the World Professional Basketball Tournament which was held yearly, the tournament was held 10 times and 7 of them were won by NBL teams but when some of their own players decided to take their talents to the BAA which led to a decline in NBL popularity, the NBL owners began to pay attention. Then before the start of the 1948-49 four teams (Fort Wayne, Rochester,Minneapolis, Indiana) from the NBL left the league for their BAA rivals which drastically changed the landscape of professional basketball in america with collegiate players beginning to choose the BAA over the NBL as their league of choice to play in.
With all the problems both leagues were dealing with the remaining NBL teams then merged with the BAA on August 3, 1949 which formed a league with a new name for legal reasons, the National Basketball Association (NBA), Maurice Podoloff the former president of the BAA was now the president of the new NBA. This new league was comprised of 17 different teams located in a wide variety of cities which the NBA the next year consolidated down to 11 teams and a couple years after that went down to 8 teams to save on operating costs and maximise the profitability of the league. The NBA to this day does not recognise NBL records or statistics prior to 1949 unless the player,team or coach participated in the NBA for at least one year which would then deem those stats as a part of NBA history. As part of the origin of the NBA the league has claimed the BAA history as its own and has taken the stance that the NBL teams that joined all the way back in 1949 are the result of an expansion and not a merger, no explanation has ever really been given for this.
The NBA’s Early Years
The NBA struggled at first with declining ticket sales and a lack of interest which led to them contracting down to 8 teams, in 1955 the owners met to discuss improving their on court product and the shot clock was officially introduced to basketball and the NBA, this was a revelation for the league as previously teams were just taking the lead and then holding the ball sometimes for minutes at a time. This new rule meant every team had 24 seconds to shoot the ball, this increased the pace of the game and saw fan interest and ticket sales rise rapidly. The increase in popularity led to more people playing the game of basketball which increased the talent level of the players which makes even more people tune in. A new faster paced game in a brand new league has led to tv deals and sponsorships over the years that has injected huge amounts of money into the sport.
In Closing
The origin of the NBA is messy and confusing so we hope this article helped shed some light on it for everybody. The NBA has grown from strength to strength today with 30 different teams spread over 28 different cities in America and Canada with 6 of the current teams whose history goes back to the BAA, 3 of which were originally from the NBL before they left. Whilst the BAA and NBL played a very different rudimentary form of basketball they were pivotal in the formation of the NBA and the subsequent explosion in popularity today, the founding of the National Basketball Association would not have happened without the BAA and NBL, basketball may never have became a major sport and certainly wouldn’t resemble the game that we have today. We hope you have enjoyed reading about the origin of the NBA, a league we all love and follow today.
