The National Basketball Association is commemorating its 75th anniversary. While the main focus for casual fans is the new list of the league’s 75 greatest players, there are many game-changing events in its history that influenced the sport’s growth worldwide.
The merger. The NBA was the product of a merger between the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL). Commercial leagues had existed in the US for decades. The gold medal-winning American team to the first Olympic tournament in 1936 was made by combining two championship commercial teams. Then, Boston Garden owner Walter Brown realized that his venue was empty most nights as hockey matches were only held infrequently. The league now acknowledges the first game as the one where the Toronto Huskies hosted the New York Knickerbockers on Nov. 1, 1946. Games were also held at the old BAA armory in New York where, decades later, many of the NBA’s 50th anniversary videos were filmed.
The All-Star Game. In the fallout of a college basketball point-shaving scandal at the start of the 1950’s, the NBA’s top executives met to create a new way to attract fans to the games. The idea was to hold a showcase event at the Boston Garden in 1951, similar to Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. Though some league officials were unsure about the event, it drew over 10,000 spectators, almost triple the average attendance for a regular-season game. In 2010, the NBA All-Star Game at Cowboys Stadium in Texas pulled in a record 108,713 fans.
The shot clock. In 1954, the league was starting to suffer from how slow the game was. Bear in mind that, as recently as the late 1930’s, collegiate coaches were telling players to pass the ball around at least 30 times before attempting a shot. Shot attempts were either two-handed set shots, two-handed lay-ups or running one-handed hook shots. People actually read newspapers during games. Then Danny Biasone, owner of the Syracuse Nationals (now the Philadelphia 76ers), recommended the adoption of a shot clock. He divided the number of seconds in 48 minutes (2880) by the number of average combined attempts of both teams in a game (120), and came up with 24 seconds. The result was a faster, more creative game that stimulated creativity, running and more versatile playmaking. It probably saved the game.
The Spencer Haywood rule. “If you are a basketball fan, you should be aware of Spencer Haywood’s immense historical importance,” said The Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan. “If you’re not aware, you should be.” The NBA used to have a rule that a player could only be drafted four years after high school, or at the same time as his college class would have graduated. But in 1969, Spencer Haywood joined the new American Basketball Association (ABA) after only his second year at the University of Detroit. The next season, the NBA’s Seattle Supersonics offered him a whopping six-year, $1.5 million-dollar deal, ignoring the league rule. The NBA threatened to void the contract and punish the Sonics. Haywood pled hardship, arguing that it was the only way he could support his family. This led to a big legal battle that reached all the way to the US Supreme Court, which voted unanimously in Haywood’s favor. Without the resulting change, who knows what would have happened to the likes of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady, Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony, Lebron James and many others?
The Dream Team. Until the late 1980’s, professional athletes were prohibited from playing in amateur competitions like the Olympics. But when the US collegiate squad only won a bronze medal in Seoul in 1988, it caused an uproar among NBA players. Soviet and European players had been flip-flopping back and forth between pro and amateur status for years, giving them an unfair advantage. Besides, tennis already allowed pros in the Olympics, and Steffi Graf won a Grand Slam and Olympic gold in 1988. So USA Basketball declared the sport open, and the Dream Team was born. This rapidly accelerated the league’s popularity and commercialization outside mainland USA.
More game-changing NBA events in a future column.