Old School
In the 1940s, hockey owners looking to make spare money at their arenas started a new basketball league.
This week, as the NBA season begins, the league is about far more than just five guys playing ball against five other guys. Commissioner David Stern sells an entertainment commodity that happens to feature an athletic event.
It's hard to imagine Maurice Podoloff, the first commissioner, discussing one of his players' rap albums, authorizing an endorsement deal with a German phone company or signing a deal with United Kingdom companies to outfit athletic organizations with officially licensed NBA clothing. But that, more than the games, is what the NBA is about these days. Everyone still wants to be like Mike.
It wasn't always like that.
The game of basketball is relatively new. It was invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a Canadian instructor at a YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts, looking to provide additional recreation for the people. By 1895, a backboard was introduced to prevent fans from interfering with play; three years later, following the leads of baseball and football, basketball went pro as the first National Basketball League was created with teams in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. But it wasn't until 1914 that NCAA, Amateur Athletic Union and YMCA rules were standardized.
Before Prohibition players barnstormed, with teams like the Original Celtics, Buffalo Germans and the NY Renaissance, playing wherever there was space for ten players and two baskets. There were dozens of leagues. The first "major" league, the American Basketball Association, came into existence in 1925 and disbanded in 1931; six years later the next major league, the National Basketball League, was created. This was the first moderately successful basketball organization. Today, the Atlanta (Tri-Cities Blackhawks) Hawks, Detroit (Fort Wayne) Pistons, Los Angeles (Minneapolis) Lakers, Philadelphia (Syracuse Nationals) 76ers and Sacramento (Rochester Royals) Kings can trace their histories to the NBL.
What we'd recognize as the NBA started officially on November 1, 1946, when the Basketball Association of American promoted a game between the New York Knicks and Toronto Huskies in Maple Leaf Gardens. A series of deals saw teams jump from the NBL to the BAA until, by 1949, the BAA captured all the strong NBL teams and renamed itself the NBA. This was no surprise, given the conditions in the NBL.
"In 1938, I joined the Warren, Pennsylvania, team, and they were in the National Basketball League," the late Buddy Jeannette recalled at his 1994 Hall of Fame induction. Jeannette was a star in the late '30s and early '40s with Sheboygan, Fort Wayne and Baltimore for the NBL, the ABL and the BAA. He won five championships while being voted Most Valuable Player four times.
"That was the runner-up to the NBA. What was it like? I guess in those days, the guys in the East would play for five or ten bucks a game. Honey Russell used to play for nothing.
"When I played, we traveled in a 1928 Pierce Arrow. We had the whole team in there. We had the bucket seats. Sure I traveled. I'll say I traveled. You don't know what it's like playing pro ball until you travel from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, without lights. Oh, brother!
"The lights went out in the car. What the hell? They had good roads up there. Boy, oh boy, without lights. It's a lucky thing we had a big moon out there."
Early in his career, Jeannette joined a barnstorming team. Just playing basketball, he got to know the eastern United States as well as anybody could.
"I'll tell you, one year we played on [the east] side of the Mississippi. We played in every state but the two Carolinas and Florida. Abe Saperstein, the guy who owned the Globetrotters, he booked us. We'd play all week, and we'd call in and get the bookings for the next week on Sunday.
"That year we had a 1942 Town and Country Chrysler. A station wagon. We had six players-that was enough. One game we played in West Virginia, against a West Virginia team, and a couple of the guys came down with the flu. We'd play three guys on five, four guys on five, and we won."
When the league started, playing in the NBL or the BAA was strictly a second job, something to do for fun. Sometimes the money wasn't even enough to keep a player living in the same city as his team during the season. Jerry Fleishman lived in New York but played with the Philadelphia Warriors by night. In 1946, the Warriors picked up Ralph Kaplowitz from the Knicks. It turned out to be a great deal for Fleishman, as he gained a fellow New York?to-Philadelphia commuter.
"It's 90 miles in 90 minutes," said Fleishman of his game-day preparation. "Ralph Kaplowitz and I would meet Artie Hillhouse in Newark and go all the way through.?We'd get off at the 30th Street Station and go to the ballgame and back. That's how we commuted."
That year, the Warriors won the title; today, they're retroactively recognized as the first NBA champions.
"It was not a real big deal," Fleishman said. "In Philadelphia, they recognized it. We had a great ballplayer by the name of Jumping Joe Fulks. In the playoffs, we went all the way and beat the Chicago Stags. Eddie Gottlieb was our coach. He was terrific."
Gottlieb was not only the coach-he was owner, trainer and popcorn salesman for the Warriors, and in his spare time he made the NBA schedule. This kind of thing wasn't unusual; in 1949, Boston Celtics player Tony Lavelli provided halftime entertainment by playing the accordion.
"Eddie ran the league; he was the schedule maker, and he and Abe Saperstein of the Harlem Globetrotters started the league," Fleishman said. "In fact, in order to get people to come to our games in Philadelphia, we'd have the Globetrotters play the first game, and we'd play the second game. We played in the Arena, which held 8,000 people. Then we played at the Palestra, which was part of the University of Pennsylvania and Convention Hall.
"We went around to different places when they were available. At the arena, they sometimes had the Ice Capades. Sometimes they would put the boards over the ice and we would slip on our behinds.
"It was rough going. Some teams came in the league, some went out. Chicago went out. When Chicago went out, Bob Cousy went to Boston, luckily. Max Zaslofksy went to New York; we got one of the Whiz Kids, Andy Phillip. Actually, Red Auerbach didn't want Cousy because he was an untried rookie. It turned out to be the best thing for him."
Today the Philadelphia 76ers stay at five-star hotels, get meal allowances and have contract guarantees. Back when the league started, Gottlieb controlled two teams, the Warriors and the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association. Whoever made the Warriors went to the BAA, while the rest stayed with the other team. It would eventually become Red Klotz's Washington Generals, the foils of the Harlem Globetrotters.
Even in those days, the NBA was looking for other ways of generating interest and added revenues.
"It was all interrelated, and Gottlieb ran the whole shebang," Fleishman said. "He was known fondly as the Mogul and did a wonderful job. He was an unbelievable man. We played the Globies once in the preseason."
David Stern doesn't need the Globetrotters; he is the globetrotter, exporting basketball everywhere. He doesn't even need old school, in a game where that phrase means Larry Bird. Jeannette's 1928 Pierce Arrow and 1942 Town and Country Chrysler are long gone; so are the road trips Fleishman, Kaplowitz and Hillhouse took between New York and Philadelphia. The only resemblance between the days of yore and today is the ball.