" Birth of the NBA"

By Dan Menashi

It was June 6 1946 that sports managers of Northeast gathered in Toronto. It was end of worldwar-II. The sports managers who were mostly hockey managers were anticipating a boom in the indoor sports business and were looking for something new.

The National Basketball League existed and operated in the Midwest. This had franchises in the Midwest towns like Chicago. The sports managers who met in New York decided to start there own league and have a competition with the National Basketball League. Initially 13 members were given the franchise , but two of them, Buffalo and Indianapolis, dropped out. This left a total of 11 members who called themselves as Basketball Association of America. The names of the members were Boston , New York , Philadelphia, Providence , Toronto and Washington in the Eastern division & Chicago , Cleveland , Detroit , Pittsburgh and St´louis in the western division.

As the BBA had such large cities in its league. It gave a big blow to NBL. BBA adopted the prevailing college rules which meant there was once a time when zone defenses were legal in the pro game ; it wasn´t until 2 months into the inaugural campaign that the league banned them in a move to speed up play. Another little known fact is that the league operated under a salary cap in its first season , with each team allowed to spend up to $55k.

One major difference from the college game was that the BBA decided to play games of four 12 minute quarters instead of two 20 minute halves. The reason was that the fans could get more bang for there buck.

The first game was played at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The visiting team was the New York knickerbockers, the first basket in league history was scored by Oscar “Ozzie” Schechtman. The Knicks won the game by 68-66. The tickets for the first game were priced from $0.75 to as high as $2.50

WHO WERE THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE BASKETBALL TEAMS :


Boston Celtics - Represented by Walter Brown. The name Celtics was chosen b’cos of its association to the most famous professional basketball team of the past and Boston’s Irish population.
Chicago Stags - Represented by Arthur Morse , a lawyer who had connections with the Norris family which ran the Chicago stadium and Chicago Black Hawks Hockey team.
Cleveland Rebels - Represented by Sutphin of the Cleveland arena.
Detroit Falcons - Owned by the Olympia family
New York Knickerbockers - Represented by Irish
Philadelphia Warriors - Represented by Pete Tyrell
Pittsburgh Ironmen - Represented by John Harris
Providence Streamrollers - Represented by Lou Pieri who ran the Providence Reds of the AHL and the arena there , a close friend of Walter Brown.
St’Louis Bombers - Represented by Emory.D.Jones of St Louis Arena and the AHL team based there.
Toronto Huskies - Played at Maple Leaf gardens
Washington Gardens - Represented by Mike Uline.