Historical Pro Basketball 1946-49

[SWC75]

(This is along post about a short period but it's the most significant and perhaps the most interesting period in the history of pro basketball so I really didn't want to leave anything out. Whether you read it it or not, check out some of the rare videos in the links. They show what the NBA looked like in its infancy.)

THE PILLARS OF CREATION

You may remember an image from the Hubble telescope that someone decided to call the “Pillars of Creation”:
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2457764/images/o-PILLARS-OF-CREATION-facebook.jpg
It depicts three columns of gas and dust within which new stars are being formed. The name is derived from a sermon by a preacher named Charles Spurgeon in which he said “And now wonder, ye angels…the Infinite has become an infant; he, upon whose shoulders the universe doth hang, hangs at his mother's breast. He who created all things, and bears up the pillars of creation.”

In basketball those three pillars would represent the American Basketball League, the National Basketball League and something called the Basketball Association of America. The first two had been in business since 1925 and 1937 respectively when the baby of the bunch, the BAA was formed in 1946 and yet most histories of pro basketball start with the BAA’s creation. They see only the one pillar.

When World War II ended, people wanted to have fun and the basic way for sports fans to have fun in the winter was to go to downtown arenas and see either a boxing card or a hockey game. The ABL and NBL played mostly in smaller arenas in smaller cities, sometimes in places like ballrooms. Basketball was not big-time in the big cities. The owners of the big arenas belonged to Arena Managers Association of America. Many of them owned hockey teams that played in the National Hockey League or in the (of course there had to be one), American Hockey League. Their idea was that they could make more money if they had something to show the fans when the hockey teams were out of town. Walter Brown of Boston was the leader of the pack and he mortgaged his home to get the money to found the Celtics.

Ned Irish, the sportswriter who had put together college doubleheaders and then the NIT in Madison Square Garden, “strong armed” his way into the new league. Wikipedia: “With the Garden backing him, Irish claimed he represented a corporation with $3.5 million in assets. According to Sports Illustrated, when his other competitor for the franchise, Max Kase, a New York newsman, was making his pitch to the other league representatives, Irish would interject from time to time, "Three and a half million." Ironically the idea for the new league had originated with Kase, who had first contacted Brown about it.

Eddie Gottlieb of the ABL’s Philadelphia SPHAs was invited to purchase a BAA franchise. He could see that the larger arenas meant bigger crowds and more money so that was the place to be. But he didn’t move his SPHAs to the new league. Instead he created a new team- you might have heard of them - the Warriors. He also became their coach-and everything else- for the next nine seasons. Mike Lupica: “"He promoted the team on street corners and he sold tickets and then he counted the cold house."

Fran Seike, who was running Maple leaf Gardens in Toronto, created the Huskies for that city. Chicago got a team called the Stags to alternate home dates with the Black Hawks. No, they weren’t owned by George Halas. Instead Arthur Morse, a lawyer representing Chicago Stadium was at the initial meeting on D-Day, June 6, (but in 1946). Detroit had the Falcons. Montreal was the only NHL city of the time without a BAA team. It could be said that the NBA had four pillars of its creation, the forth being the National Hockey League. In fact, the new league’s first game was played in Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto on November 1, 1946 with the New York Knicks being the visiting team.

The Capitols, coached by Red Auerbach, represented Washington. Providence had the Steamrollers, (an old NFL name). St. Louis had a team called the Bombers, coached by Ken Loeffler, who would later win an NCAA championship at LaSalle. Cleveland had the Rebels, coached by Original Celtic, Dutch Dehnert and starring the well-travelled Ed Sadowski. Pittsburgh had – what else- The Ironmen. No Oshkoshs or Sheboygans in the group.

The new league had the arenas but they didn’t have the players- yet. They did have a commissioner, Maurice Podoloff, co-owner of the New Haven Arena and the Commissioner of the American Hockey league, (he did both jobs simultaneously until 1952). It was said that “he didn’t know a backboard from a backcourt” but he did know how to organize things. He hired a young man named Walter Kennedy to handle the league’s publicity. He would succeed Podoloff in 1963 and hold the job until 1975.

They decided to have an ambitious 60 game schedule, (same as the NHL). They wanted to produce excitement and decided to outlaw zone defense to increase scoring. They decided to play 48 minutes games in four 12 minute quarters to give the fans “an evening’s entertainment”, rather than a 40 minute game in two halves. Home teams would keep all the gate receipts while visitors would “paid off in boos”. There was a salary cap of $50,000 per team. They also decided that would be no black players in the league. I guess the hockey fans weren’t used to them.

The NBL was still the best league but the BAA raided the ABL the way the ACC has raided the Big East, with similar results. They also benefited from the large number of athletes who were getting out of the service.

 

[SWC75]

1946-47

The Washington Capitols proved the class of the new league, running off a 17 game winning streak early in the season and finishing with a 49-11 record, easily the best in the league, making a name for Red Auerbach, who had previously been coaching high school ball in the DC area. He’d also been coaching service ball and thus had a connection to some of the best players coming back from the war. (You will find a number of successful coaches in multiple sports from this era who had coached service ball and thus had an inside track on returning players: Frank Leahy and Paul Brown in football were in a similar positon.) Red was already using his fast breaking tactics and the Caps averaged 73.8 points per game. But this was a high scoring league in a time when scoring was increasing toward modern levels: the BAA averaged 67 points per team per game. The NBL averaged 60. In fact the Caps were the second highest scoring team in the league, behind Chicago, who had the second best record at 39-22 and averaged 77 points a game.

Auerbach’s big scorer was Bob Feerick, a 26 year old 6-3 forward/guard from Santa Clara who averaged 16.8 points a game. 5-11 Freddie Scolari scored 12.6. 6-6 Bones McKinney, later a successful coach at Wake Forest, averaged 12.0. 6-3 Johnny Norlander scored 10.4. 6-8 220 center John Mahnken was the only starter not in double figures and he scored 9.3. In the old days the ABL had that many double figure scorers as a league – at best.

The Stags, coached by one Ole Olsen, were even more balanced. Former St. John’s star Max Zaslofsky led them with 14.4 points per game. 6-9 225 center Chick Harbert averaged 12.7 and 6 foot guard Swede Carlson scored 10.7. But six other players averaged at least 5 points a game.

But the big scorer in the league, by far, was Philadelphia’s Joe Fulks. He’d played at little known Murray State and then joined the Marines. Pre-war SPHAs star Petey Rosenberg had recommended Joe to Eddie Gottlieb. Gottlieb almost turned Joe down when Fulks had the temerity to demand $8,000 of the $50,000 Gottlieb had to spend on player contracts to sign. He proved worth it. A 6-5 forward, Fulks was a gunner like basketball had never seen, with the possible exception of Bobby McDermott at his best. He only shot 30.5%, (Feerick led the league at 40.1) but that was still better than the league as a whole shot (27.9). But Joe was a volume shooter. He led the league with 1,557 field goal attempts 403 more than anyone else. He also got to the line (where he shot 73%, compared to 64% for the league). He attempted 601 free throws, 216 more than anyone else. That was 26 field goal attempts per game for Joe, (29% of his team’s shots) and 10 free throw attempts (38% of his team’s). It all added up to 23.2 points per game, with high games of 37 points against Providence and later 41 against Toronto. The league had its first star.

And it also had its first champion when Fulks led the Warriors to the first ever BAA, and thus, (by extension) the first NBA champion. Somehow, the league’s playoff schedule had the two divisional champions playing each other in the first round, with the second and third place teams doing the same. The 1st place series was best of 7, the others best of three. Then the winners of the 2-3 series played each other in another best of three series, by which time the top series would be over. Chicago beat Washington in 6 games, including wins in the first two games in Washington, where the Caps had been 29-1 during the regular season. The Warriors beat St. Louis 2-1, as did the Knicks vs. Cleveland. The Warriors then swept the Knicks 2-0 and went on to beat the Stags 4-1 for the title.

Fulks was at his best in the final series, with another 37 point game in the opener, an 84-71 win in Philadelphia. He got plenty of attention in the second game and was held to 13 points but the final score was almost the same, 85-74 as his teammates took up the slack. Fulks scored 26 in the third game in Chicago. The Warriors pulled that out 75-72 to give the Warriors a 3-0 lead in games. The Stags finally won game four, but barely 74-73. They gave it all they had back in Philly and were tied 80-80 with a minute left, despite 34 points from Fulks. But Howie Dallmar scored the go ahead basket and the Warriors closed it out with a 83-80 win.

The worst team in the Eastern Division was the Boston Celtics, coached by Honey Russell, who had been an Original Celtic and also the head coach and Seton Hall, (and would be the latter again). One of his players at the Hall was Kevin “Chuck Connors” whom Russell named as starting center for the Celtics first game. That game was delayed, however when Chuck became the first player to break a glass backboard, which he did during the pre-game warm up. He didn’t do it with a dunk. He did it with a two hand set shot! The story goes that an arena worker made the mistake of not installing a protective piece between the basket rim and the backboard. Chuck’s shot hit the front rim and the force and vibration cracked the back board. Still, when you break a back board with a set shot, you might think of finding another line of work and he did.

One irony of that first season is that Ned Irish’s Knicks played only 6 games in Madison Square Garden because of all the various events that were scheduled there, many of them due to the previous efforts of one Ned Irish. His new team played more of their home games in the 69th Regiment Armory. They would continue to play some of their games there each year until 1960.

The BAA also began keeping track of stats other than just scoring. They kept track of assists and personal fouls There weren’t a lot of assists recorded Ernie Calverley of Providence led the league with 3.4 per game and that was 1.1 more than second place Kenny Sailors of Cleveland. They also kept track of both field and free throw attempts. My “net points” formula at this point had two positives: points and assists, vs. three negatives: missed field goals and missed free throws plus fouls committed. Joe Fulks comes to a -29: 1389 points + 25 assists minus 1,082 missed field goals, 162 miss free throws and 199 fouls. But I’ll still use it as a ranking of players, even if some of them have some strange-looking numbers.

The ABL still existed but its days were numbered. They still paid on a per game basis rather than a yearly salary and they didn’t have the big arenas. The BAA almost immediately displaced them as the “eastern’ league and started signing their players. But the BAA didn’t yet attempt to raid the more powerful NBL. The BAA was more interested in young players coming out of college and the military, rather than the “old pros” of the NBL. They also weren’t quite ready to make financial war on the more established league. The NBL was so dominant at this time that, when their teams started to migrate to the BAA/NBA, ex-NBL teams won seven championships in a row before the Warriors could resurface as an original BAA team winning and NBA title. The also won the final two World Professional Basketball Tournament titles in 1947 and 1948. The tournament then disbanded when the NBL and BAA combined to form the NBA and it was obvious that their champion was also the professional champion.

In their last year as anything approaching a major league, the ABL had one good team: the Baltimore Bullets, who were close to unbeatable. This is not the franchise now known as the Washington Wizards. This Bullet team was founded in 1944 and was named after the sneakers they played in, which were called Bata Bullets). They also played in an armory, (which a lot of teams did) and “Baltimore Bullets” is alliterative. Their star was player-coach Buddy Jeanette, who had starred with the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons when they dominated the ABL. Jeannette teamed with Mike Bloom, who averaged 14.9 ppg and Jeanette 11.9. This team tore through the tattered ABL with a 31-3 record. They didn’t even bother with the ABL title: they quit the playoffs after beating Brooklyn in their opening series, (leaving the Trenton Tigers, who had finished 17-17, to win the ABL title). Instead they went right to the WPBT, only to lose 46-57 to the NBL’s Tri-Cities Black Hawks, (you know them now as the Atlanta Hawks). The next year they jumped as a team to the BAA. From that point on, the ABL was clearly a minor league. I looked over the players listed for the period 1947-1951 on this site, (about 80% of the way down the page), and I just don’t see familiar names, (and no names at all in the league’s final two years).
American Basketball League 1925-26 to 1930-31, 1933-34 to 1952-53
There are no BAA or NBL players here – they are all in the BAA and the NBL. The league suspended operations in 1953. I’m going to cut bait with the ABL after the 1946-47 season. They will no longer be part of the narrative or the statics in the “net points” section.


The NBL also benefited from players coming back from the service. They expanded from 8 to 12 teams to accommodate them. One of the new teams was called the Anderson (Indiana) Duffey Packers, after the meat packing plant the owners, Ike and John Duffey also owned. The Toledo Jeeps were named after a plant that produced those vehicles. The Detroit Gems, (who didn’t shine, going 4-40) would shortly pass from history but would make some in their next incarnation: they became the Minneapolis Lakers the next year. As mentioned, the Tri-Cities, (Moline, Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa) Black Hawks now reside in Atlanta as the Hawks. They had spent their first 38 days as the Buffalo Bisons.” On the team was William "Pop" Gates, who, along with William "Dolly" King, was one of the first two African-American players in the NBL.” (Wikipedia)

The Bisons first ever game came against another new team, the Syracuse Nationals. (The Nats had already won their own first game, 67-64 over the Youngstown Bears.) Danny Biasone, owner of a combined restaurant/bowling alley called the Eastwood Sports Center, thought it would be a good thing to get the famous Rochester Royals, owned by Lester Harrison and the 1946 NBL champions, to play a game in Syracuse against a team of Syracuse All-Stars. David Ramsey, who wrote “Nats: A team, a City, An Era” says that Harrison turned down Biasone twice. Mark Allen Baker in “Hoops Roots: Basketball History in Syracuse” said that the games were scheduled twice but Harrison cancelled twice. Harrison told Ramsey that neither was true that he encouraged Biasone to get a team and helped him to do it. Whatever, Danny contacted the league offices in Chicago and found that for $5,000, he could have a franchise. (The Philadelphia 76ers are now worth $800 million).

He hired Benny Borgmann, the big star of the early days of the ABL, (and also the manager of the 1941 Syracuse Chiefs), to coach the team. He got Big (6-9), Mike Novak from Sheboygan to go with a 5-8 150 guard named Jerry Rizzo. And Johnny Gee, a 6-9 baseball pitcher who had pitched for Borgmann with the Chiefs, (Johnny was MLB’s tallest player prior to Randy Johnson). Ramsey and Baker on Borgmann: “he was an easy going man, Benny was. I never head him raise his voice. He didn’t stomp up and down the court or anything…..He spent as much time talking baseball and he did basketball.”

On Novak: “Novak didn’t enjoy banging in the middle. He wanted to roam outside shooting long set shots. This angered his shorter teammates , who often yelled at him in team meetings. “Go inside…get Tough…get Mean…Get Nasty!” Novak would say “I’m sorry guys” and promise to travel inside the dangerous jungle underneath the basket. The next game he would return to the court’s outer limits and launch his set shot.”

The team played in the Jefferson Street Armory, (now the Museum of Science and Technology). They finally got to play Harrison’s Royals- and were defeated four times. Still, they finished with a respectable 21-23 record and actually made the playoffs where they were matched with the powerful Royals and went down 1 game to 3. The one win, in game two in the Armory, 64-61, must have given Danny Biasone a moment of consolation.

The Royals stormed to a 31-13 regular season record, the best in the NBL, beating out Fort Wayne by 6 games for the Eastern Division title. They were the only two teams with winning records in that division, (Buffalo/Tri Cities went only 19-25). The Oshkosh All-Stars had enough left to win the west with a 28-16 record. The Indianapolis Kautskys were one game back at 27-17 and the Chicago American Gears and Sheboygan Redskins two back at 26-18. Any of those teams probably would have won either the ABL or the BAA. Eight of the 14 teams in the WPBT were NBL teams. They went 5-1 against the six non-ABL teams in the first round, (the only loser being Syracuse, who lost to the Midland Dows by an embarrassing 39-71). The quarterfinalists were all NBL teams and Indianapolis beat Toledo 62-47 for the tile.

And the Chicago American Gears weren’t even in the tournament, even though it was held in Chicago and George Mikan had made his debut in that tournament the year before. Mikan had missed six weeks due to a contract dispute and when he came back the team was only 9-12. The team not only gained his services but also those of Bobby McDermott from Fort Wayne as a player- coach. The combination of Mikan’s inside game and McDermott’s outside game got the Gears in gear and they finished the regular season winning 17 of 23. In the playoffs the Gears subdued the Kautsky’s, with Mikan dominating their skinny 6-9 center, Arnie Risen, in five games. Then then swept Oshkosh, beat Rochester (3 games to 1 for the title, the first of seven in 8 years for Mikan, who at 6-10 245, intimidated everyone in the league. Since Rochester had not played in the WPBT the previous year, I wonder if the NBL winner felt they didn’t have any more to prove and didn’t see a reason to play in the tournament, which had become a sort of professional NIT.

(“The Modern Encyclopedia of Basketball” by Zander Hollander makes this statement, which I have not read from any other source: “A new league rule, however, gave the championship to the team with the best record for the entire season and on this basis, Rochester was declared the champion.” Rochester, including the playoffs had a record of 37-18, Chicago 36-21. It seems strange that teams would play in a playoff just to try to accumulate more wins or a better winning percentage so they would have “the best record for the whole season.”)

Mikan had the league’s highest scoring average at 16.5 and upped that to 19.7 in the playoffs. Al Cervi of Rochester was technically the league’s leading scorer with 632 points, (his average was 14.4). The NBL All-Star team is interesting. It included Mikan and McDermott as well as Al Cervi and Bob Davies of Rochester. The other player was a 6-2 forward for Sheboygan named Fred Lewis. This All-Star team thus included both the coach of the 1954-55 Syracuse National NBA champions and the coach of the 1965-66 Syracuse University team that averaged almost 100 points per game.

 

[SWC75]

1947-48

The firmament was in even greater turmoil the next year. The only good team in the ABL, the Baltimore Bullets, jumped to the BAA. In a much less noticed transaction the defunct Detroit Gems franchise of the NBL was purchased by two Minneapolis businessmen, Ben Berger and Morris Chalfen, who renamed the team the “Lakers”, since Minnesota was the “The Land of 1,000 Lakes”. (LA is the land of 1,000 swimming pools). But the most ambitious plan was that of Maurice White, owner of the Chicago American Gears and thus of the contract of George Mikan, the #1 drawing card in the game. He announced the Gears were leaving the NBL for the Professional Basketball League of America, a new organization White created with no less than 24 teams, (finally reduced to 16), ALL OF WHICH HE OWNED. This folly lasted all of 8 games, (per team: the Gears went 8-0 by an average of 16 points as MIkan averaged 24.1 and McDermott 17.5). The league disbanded and all its players were distributed among NBL teams in a special draft and the Lakers wound up with Mikan, largely due to the awfulness of the Detroit Gems the previous year.

But he wasn’t the only Lakers star. Jim Pollard, who had led Stanford to the 1942 NCAA title, had been playing AAU ball but joined the team for the 1947-48 season. The 6-4 Pollard was known as the “Kangaroo Kid” for his jumping ability. He’s noted as the first pro basketball player with an “above the rim” game. Mikan was six inches taller but if you look at the old films, you never see him dunking. It’s hook shots, lay-ups and tip-ins and old fashioned pivot play at the top of the key. They also picked up a good point guard from Indianapolis, Herm Schaefer, who knew how to get the ball to the two stars. Coach John Kundla was able to shape the beginnings of a dynasty with these three players. And he was to add even more later.

Mikan led the league in scoring at 21.3 and Pollard scored 12.9. We still didn’t have assists in this league yet but Schaefer must have gotten a lot of them. Rebounds didn’t become a stat until 1950-51 but Mikan surely dominated the boards. The league’s second leading scorer was Arnie Risen, now with Rochester, a 6-9 200 string bean who scored 14.5 against the league’s other centers but had no answer for the much stronger Mikan. Still, the Royals had an impressive team with their three guard line-up of Bob Davies, the cleverest ballhandler in the league, (famous for his behind-the-back dribble), high scoring Al Cervi, (13.4) and Red Holzman, (much later the coach of the champion Knicks). They also had another fine guard, Bobby Wanzer, coming off the bench. They actually had the best regular season record in the league at 44-16 to the Lakers’ 43-17, (which would have been better if they’d had Mikan from the beginning). But the East, (where the Royals were), was the stronger division with the Anderson Duffy Packers going 42-18 behind a sizzling fast break and the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, despite having lost key players like Bobby McDermott and Buddy Jeanette, still had a 40-20 record despite a less than stellar line-up. It’s a team sport.

The Syracuse Nationals picked up another piece to their own puzzle in 19 year old Paul Seymour, whom they picked up from the Baltimore Bullets, who had been in the ABL but had jumped to the BAA for that loop’s second season. It was his fourth team in three leagues in two years. He would never play for anyone else once he came to Syracuse. He joined already strong backcourt of Jerry Rizzo and John Chaney, (not the later Temple coach). 6-5 220 Jim Homer added some bulk and led the team in scoring at 12.5ppg, its only player in double figures. But “The team showed a lack of tall men and will have to have them”, wrote Bud Vander Meer of the Herald Journal, who would cover them for all 17 years of their Syracuse existence. The team limped to a dismal 24-36 record. The actually beat the mighty Lakers twice but lost to them the other four times and went 0-12 against Rochester and Fort Wayne. They were 6-0 against the Flint Dow AC’s, (the former Midland Dows, avenging their poor performance against that team in the previous year’s WPBT). The AC’s, (not sure what it stands for) were 8-46 against everybody else.

The Nats lost to Anderson in a three game sweep in the first round of the playoffs. Rochester beat Fort Wayne in four games. And the Lakers beat Oshkosh, (which still had the by now ancient Cowboy Edwards at center). Tri Cities, who had Don Otten, actually the league’s tallest player at 7-0, beat the Kautskys, who had no answer for him without Risen, also in four games. Even Otten was no match for Mikan, whose team swept the Blackhawks in the semis, outscoring them by 43 points. They Royals beat Anderson in their final game 74-48 behind a blinding display of passing. Unfortunately Risen suffered a fractured jaw from a swinging elbow. Holzman’s leg was hurting and Cervi had a bad knee. The Royals shocked the Lakers in game three, winning 74-60 in Minneapolis despite 32 points from Mikan. But the Lakers won the other three games by a total of 33 points. After the season, Mikan won the MVP vote 240-0.

Unlike the last two NBL champions, the Lakers decided to go for the double and played in what turned out to be the last World Professional Basketball Tournament. Anderson, Indianapolis, Tri-Cities and Fort Wayne followed them to Chicago. The Lakers annihilated a team from Wilkes-Barre 98-48 in the first round. Then they nipped Anderson 59-56 in the semi-finals. In the finals they faced the New York Rens, and their new star, Sweetwater Clifton, and subdued them 75-71 for the title, behind a 40 point performance from Mikan. It was quite an exclamation point to end a dominant season, the first of many for the Lakers.

“The Sports Encyclopedia: Pro Basketball” entitles their article on the 1947-48 Basketball Association of America season “A Dull and Nameless Champion”. That would be the Baltimore Bullets who came over from the sinking ship of the ABL to join the BAA to help replace four franchises that had folded. With 8 teams instead of 11, Maurice Podoloff reduced the schedule from 60 to 48 games. The competition was at least close. The St. Louis Bombers went 29-19 while Baltimore, Chicago and Washington all went 28-20. The Philadelphia Warriors went 27-21 and the New York Knicks 26-22. The Boston Celtics had one of only two losing records at 20-26. Obviously, someone had to be very bad and that would be the Providence Steamrollers, who got steamrolled 42 times.

6-2 Max Zaslofsky of Chicago gave Jumping Joe Fulks a run for the scoring title but came up short in average at 21.0ppg to 22.1. But Fulks missed five games and Max scored more total points 1007-949. Bob Ferrick was still the star for the Caps at 16.1. Red Auerbach was still their coach. 6-9 185 Red Rocha was emerging at center for St. Louis and scored 12.7, one of four double figure scorers for that team. Player coach Buddy Jeannette was one of four double figure scorers for the Bullets at 10.7. Their lead scorer was 6-9 235 center Kleggie Hermsen. (Mikan was not the only big guy around – just the best.)The Knicks were led by their two forwards, 6-5 Carl Braun at 14.3 and 6-4 Bud Palmer at 13.0. Braun set a league scoring record with 47 points against pitiful Providence. The handsome Palmer later became a sports broadcaster of considerable note.

In another weird playoff set up, of the three teams tied for second in the western division, Baltimore was “in” and Chicago and Washington played a single elimination, which the Stags won. Then the first, second and third teams in each division played their counterpart at the same level, meaning that the two “pennant winners” played each other in the first round. That was a weird seven game series with the decider a huge blow out, Philadelphia winning over a St. Louis team dealing with several injuries 85-46. The second place team, New York and Baltimore, played a best of 3 series, which Baltimore won 2-1. Chicago then beat the Celtics by the same margin. The Bullets swept the Stags in two games.

Then came a best of seven series between the Bullets and Warriors. The defending champion Warriors won the first game in in Philadelphia and led the second game at the same venue 41-20 at halftime. It seemed like a coronation was taking place. But the Bullets kept playing, got back into the game and eventually won it 66-63. That turned the series completely around. They won both games in Baltimore 72-70 and 78-75 to take a commanding 3-1 lead. The Warriors won game 5 back in Philly, 91-82, (notice the more modern-looking scores). But the Bullets won the finale in Baltimore 88-73. The Sports Encyclopedia: “With the Bullets, a dull club to watch and one without any big-name players as reigning champions, the BAA couldn’t honestly hold up its champions the best pro basketball had to offer.”

 

[SWC75]

1948-49

The young circuit learned a lesson in labor relations: After playing a 60 game schedule their first year, they decided to reduce travel costs by cutting it back to 48 games the next year. But the players refused to take a pay cut for playing fewer games, (remember they were getting annual salaries instead of playing on a per game basis as the ABL had done). So the league voted to resume the 60 game schedule for the 1948-49 season. The players demanded a raise. After all, they would have to play more games.

The NBL was clearly the best league but the BAA had more big cities and big arenas and thus the biggest potential to make money. Maurice Podoloff could see that and began talking to the owners of the top NBL franchises. He managed to convince the Minneapolis Lakers, the Rochester Royals, the Indianapolis Kautskys and Fred Zollners Fort Wayne Pistons to jump over to the BAA. With this one move, the BAA became the superior league. To make matters worse for the older league, two other franchises, Toledo and Flint, both folded. Suddenly the league was on the critical list. Even their commissioner, Ward “Piggy” Lambert, (who had been John Wooden’s coach at Purdue), had to resign due to ill health.

But they refused to fold. They added franchises in Hammond, Indiana, Waterloo Iowa, Detroit and Denver to go with Syracuse, Tri-Cities, Anderson, and good old Sheboygan and Oshkosh. Anderson had easily the best team with their fast-breaking game. Their one weakness was against top big men and with Mikan and Risen out of the league, no one could match then They went 49-15, 8 game s ahead of the next best team.

That next best team was the Syracuse Nationals who improved their record from 24-36 the previous year to 40-23. The absence of the Lakers and Royals helped them, too but a major infusion of talent was the big reason for the jump. Al Cervi had had a disagreement with Royals owner Les Harrison and jumped to the Nats to become their player-coach. David Ramsey: “He brought more than basketball smarts. He brought a ferocious on-court style. He dived into the stands for loose balls. He defended in a frantic, hustling, mauling style. He chased victories with an unreasonable, unholy fire. He had a way of drawing fans into the action, making them feel they mattered. He spent a lot of time in the stands. He came there to chase loose balls, diving right into the seats. He didn’t play the game. He attacked it. He changed a franchise.” Mark Allen Baker: “Central New York fans were more than happy with the new additions – in fact, they were ecstatic. They loved Cervi as a player and detested him as foe.” Paul Seymour found a kindred spirit on Cervi and his own career began to blossom under Al’s leadership.

Billy Gabor had been the outstanding player Syracuse University had since Vic Hanson back in the 20’s. He’d used his quickness and shooting ability to become the school’s all-time leading scorer. “But Gabor delivered something far more important than his basketball ability. He brought thousands of fans with him from SU. They appreciated his approach to the game. Gabor, like Cervi, gave everything”. Dolph Schayes: “Billy was very motivated, very aggressive, a bull-in-china-shop kind of a guy. Once he was dribbling down the court full blast and he stopped. He had been going so fast that his sneakers couldn’t take it. They ripped right in half. And they were new sneakers.”

The biggest addition was, of course Dolph Schayes who became the “face of the franchise” superstar for the team, which remained one of the best in professional basketball for the rest of its existence in Syracuse. Schayes retired as the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and rebounder. “Players of his height, 6-8, were supposed to move about as often as trees. But Schayes was a basketball rule-breaker, one of the first. He didn’t want to stand around. He wanted to move, always move. He was a superb rebounder, especially on the offensive boards. But otherwise, he played more like a guard than the power forward he was. He tossed up long, too-handed set shots. He ran the floor on the break. He revolutionized his position.” I love players that keep moving the whole game and dare defenders to keep up with them. Lawrence Moten, SU’s all-time leading scorer, was like that, too. If you want to avoid defenders, make them move.

The Nats had had to out-bid the New York Knicks of the BAA for Schayes, paying him the handsome sum of $7500 for the season. That deal created fears of bidding war between the two leagues that accelerated their eventual merger. The team moved out of the tiny Armory to the relatively spacious State Fair Coliseum. Schayes scored 12.8, Cervi 12.2. Five more players averaged at least 6ppg and the Nationals became the second highest scoring team in the league at 66.3. Unfortunately, Anderson was #1 at 72.1 Syracuse defeated Hammond in a two game sweep to open the playoffs but then lost to Anderson in four games, 74-89, 80-62, 59-76 and 84-90. Anderson then swept Oshkosh in the finals to win the last ever NBL championship. But Al Cervi was named coach of the year and Dolph Schayes the rookie of the year.

The BAA put the four ex-NBL powerhouses in their Western Division along with the Chicago Stags and the St. Louis Bombers, who had been two of their best teams the year before. The East had four teams that had winning records the year before: the defending champion Baltimore Bullets, the Washington Capitols, the Philadelphia Warriors and the New York Knicks. It also had the Boston Celtics and the poor Providence Steamrollers, who gave it one more try and actually improved their record from 6-42 to 12-48. It was not a forgiving league and the Fort Wayne, (22-38) and Indianapolis, (who had re-named themselves the Jets), (18-42) were not forgiven for their mediocrity. (They might have been contenders in what was left of the NBL).

Despite all the contenders the two best teams in the league were the Lakers and the Royals. Minneapolis beat Rochester out by a single game for the best record, 45-15 to 44-16. The Stags and Capitols, who, (still coached by Red Auerbach), won the East were both 38-22. The Knicks had the only other winning record at 32-28.

Mikan was at his most dominant, averaging an unheard of 28.3 points per game. Whole teams used to score that much. The big guy exceeded 45 points six times! Joe Fulks tried his best to match Mikan’s heroics, averaging 26.0, including 63 points on the night of February 10, 1949 in a 108-87 drubbing of the Jets. Joe made 27 of 56 field goal attempts and scored as much as entire teams were scoring in 1949. His single game scoring record would last ten years until Elgin Baylor broke it.

The Lakers swept both Chicago and Rochester in the playoffs but Auerbach’s Capitols managed to win 2 of 6 games against them. The Lakers won the first three games by a total of 38 points but Mikan broke his wrist in the fourth and Caps won two in a row. Mikan played in a cast for the final game and scored 29 points in a 77-56 championship clinching victory. Big George even outdid his regular season performance in the playoffs, scoring 30.3ppg.

 

[SWC75]

HABEMUS NBA!

The warfare between the BAA and the NBA came to an end at the kitchen table of Fred Zollner’s house. He brought the leaders in both leagues together to talk merger. The BAA did not want the smaller cities of the NBL in. Anderson, Syracuse, “Tri-Cities”, Sheboygan, Waterloo and Denver made the cut. Oshkosh agreed to move to Milwaukee but their owner, Lon Darling, died suddenly and the franchise, after a glorious history dating back to their touring days in 1929, was dissolved. So were the Dayton Rens and the Hammond Calumet Buccaneers. The BAA sacrificed the Providence Steamrollers and the Indianapolis Jets.

The Jets were replaced by another Indianapolis team, the Olympians who were exactly that. Five players from the University of Kentucky’s 1948 and 1949 NCAA champions who had comprised the nucleus of the 1948 US Olympic team, went to Indy to play pro ball. The players were Alex Groza, (the brother of football’s Lou), Ralph Beard, Wallace Jones, Cliff Barker and Joe Holland. In fact, according to The Official NBA Basketball Encyclopedia, they created the franchise themselves and were the owners! I found one on-line reference that supports this claim:
Indianapolis Olympians
They agreed to join the new conference as a group and the new franchise was named after them. At first they were going to join the NBL but after the merger, they joined the only league “in town” and their presence in the new league spelled the end of the Kautskys/Jets franchise, which dated back to 1931.

Most histories of pro basketball will tell you that the story begins with the formation of the BAA in 1946. It obviously goes back decades before that and really gets going with the formation of the ABL in 1925 and the NBL in 1937. The fact that the NBL was clearly the superior league is illustrated by the fact that once Podoloff pulled off his coup of getting the Lakers, Royals and Pistons, along with the Kautskys, to jump, the next seven champions of Podoloff’s league were former NBL teams. And the prestige of the NBL can be shown by the fact that the new league changed its name and that 2/3 of that name- the first 2/3 – came from the name of the National Basketball League. But ever after, pro basketball would be synonymous with the National Basketball Association – the NBA.

You often hear that the Celtics have 17 championships and the Lakers have only 16. That’s true if you count only NBA championships. But if you count ABL, NBL and BAA and WPBT titles, (and I’ll throw in titles from the ABA) current NBA franchises have the following number of championships, (not counting the same year twice):
17 - Celtics and Lakers
6 – Bulls and Pistons
5 – Spurs and Warriors
3 – Heat, Pacers (all ABA) and Sixers
2 – Kings, Knicks and Rockets
1 – Blazers, Bucks, Cavaliers, Hawks, Mavericks, Thunder, Wizards


But I have two more stories to tell before moving on. George Mikan is remembered as the first great big man in basketball but he had a contemporary who was even bigger and many have been even better. Bob “Foothills” Kurland was an even 7 feet tall and weighed 220 pounds, (Mikan was heavier at 6-10 245). Bob was the centerpiece for Oklahoma A&M’s, (they are now Oklahoma State) 1945 and 1946 NCAA championship teams. In 1945, DePaul had won the NIT and during the war, the NCAA and NIT champions played a Red Cross benefit game in Madison Square Garden. Kurland’s Aggies beat the Blue Demons 52-44 and Bob outscored George, who fouled out, 14-9. (The two teams had met in the NIT semi-finals the year before and Bob out-scored George 14-9 in that one, too, but DePaul won that game 41-38, before losing to St. John’s in the finals.) Mikan had been player of the year in 1943 and 1945 but Kurland won it the next year. The defensive goaltending rule was passed primarily in response to Kurland swatting balls away from above the basket. And, unlike Mikan, Kurland dunked the ball.

Had Kurland followed Mikan into pro ball, it would have dramatically changed the balance of power, assuming that a decent team was built around him. Essentially, there would have bene two teams the equivalent of the Lakers and they would have met for the championship regularly. The Kurland-Mikan rivalry would have become the equivalent of the later Russell-Chamberlain rivalry, except perhaps they might have traded championships, as the Lakers and Celtics did in the 1980’s.

But it was not to be. This was still an era when playing professional basketball didn’t make players rich and the lure of a career with a company that sponsored an AAU team was strong. When Kurland got offered a job with the Phillips Petroleum Company, he took it and worked very happily for that company until 1985, becoming a senior marketing executive, (the concept of self-service gas stations seems to have originated with him). He played for the Phillips 66ers, who were for years the best AAU team in the country, winning three national championships. He also joined those Kentucky Wildcats for the 1948 Olympics and helped them win that title and came back to get a second gold medal in 1952. He doesn’t seem to have ever regretted his decision but you have to wonder what might have been.

An interview with Bob:
Bob Kurland.flv


By the end of the 1940’s there was one vestige of the old days of touring teams still left: the Harlem Globetrotters. With the WPBT over, the Trotters decided to challenge the mighty Lakers. Such a confrontation would certainly draw paying fans and the Minneapolis team agreed to play them before 17,000 fans at Chicago Stadium. The Trotters had won 103 games in a row but none against the Lakers, who were the “younger taller team” and took a 32-23 halftime lead. The Trotters blamed it on being “tensed up”. (per “The Harlem Globetrotters: An Illustrated History” by Chuck Menville). “Goose Tatum wasn’t having much luck against the towering Mikan….Only once did the Trotters try any of their tricks when they rolled the ball between a Minneapolis’ player’s legs to Tatum who snatched it up, whirled and scored a basket. Otherwise they were too busy trying to hold off Mikan, who scored 24 points. “

“But in the third quarter, the Globies began to loosen up. With 90 seconds to play, the Globetrotters had tied the score at 59 all and the crowd held its breath as Marques Haynes dribbled down the clock against a wall of determined Lakers. With two seconds left, a pass was flipped to Ermer Robinson and he unleashed a two hand set shot from fifty feet out. The ball was still in the air as the final gun went off. But Ermer didn’t miss! Final score: Globetrotters 61 Lakers 59. Had they tried, the Trotters could have written the script any better. They had beaten the best there was, proving that they were not only the world’s funniest but also the world’s greatest. “

Of course it was only one game. The next year an even bigger crowd assembled at the same venue- and the Trotters won again. 49-45. But the Lakers were missing a couple of injured players, Jim Pollard and Swede Carleson. Two weeks later, the teams met again in Minneapolis and the now fully healthy Lakers finally triumphed 68-53. They played five more times in the 1950’s and the Lakers won all five contests.
Minneapolis Lakers vs. Harlem Globetrotters

But the Trotters had proven that the NBA wasn’t all there was to professional basketball. In the following decade the Globetrotters became truly international, traveling the world to bring basketball to all points of the compass and assure the game’s future while remaining a link to it’s past. They had one other impact: the NBA was about to integrate.

 

[SWC75]

NET POINTS

1946-47 ABL (just points)
Ash Resnick, Troy 563
Mike Bloom, Baltimore 508
Stan Brown, Philadelphia 432
Cy Boardman, Paterson 412
Paul Chaddick, Wilmington 403
John Ezersky, Brooklyn 394
Bobby Dorn, Paterson 389
Sol Cohen, Brooklyn 369
Roy Leenig, Jersey City 403
George Babich, jersey City 375

1946-47 NBL (points minus missed free throws)
Al Cervi, Rochester 572
Fred Lewis, Sheboygan 540
Hal Tidrick, Toledo 529
George Sobek, Toledo 482
Arnie Risen, Indianapolis 480
Don Otten, Tri-Cities 477
Red Holzman, Rochester 463
Bob Carpenter, Oshkosh 459
Bob Calihan, Chciago 444
Gene Englund, Oshkosh 433
(George Mikan played only 25 of 44 games and had 368 net points)

1946-47 BAA (points + assists minus missed field goals, free throws and personal fouls)
Bob Feerick, Washington +247
Ed Sadowski, Cleve-Toronto +58
Max Zaslofsky, Chicago +39
Coulby Gunther, Pittsburgh +22
Ernie Calverley, Providence -7
Johnny Norlander, Washington -26
Joe Fulks, Philadelphia -29
Connie Simmons, Boston -31
Frankie Baumholtz, Cleveland -44
Leo Mogus, Tor-Cleveland -49

1947-48 NBL (points minus missed free throws)
George Mikan, Minneapolis 1069
Bob Calihan, Flint 695
Jim Pollard, Minneapolis 693
Don Otten, Tri-Cities 692
Hal Tidrick, Toledo 669
Mike Todorich, Sheboygan 657
Gene Englund, Oshkosh 643
Whitey Von Nieda, Tri-Cities 613
Al Cervi, Rochester 600
Frankie Brian, Anderson 596

1947-48 BAA (points + assists minus missed field goals, free throws and personal fouls)
Buddy Jeanette, Baltimore +73 (46g)
Bob Feerick, Washington +73 (48g)
Max Zaslofsky, Chicago +56
Ed Sadowski, Boston +29
Andy Phillip, Chicago +20
Carl Braun, NY -12
Johnny Norlander, Washington -12
Johnny Logan, St. Louis -18
Bud Palmer, New York -28
Gene Vance, Chicago -31

1948-49 NBL (points minus missed free throws)
Don Otten, Tri-Cities 772
Dolph Schayes, Syracuse 759
Dick Mehen, Waterloo 748
Gene Englund, Oshkosh 739
Harry Boykoff, Waterloo 703
Al Cervi, Syracuse 600
Noble Jorgensen, Sheboygan 569
Whitey Von Nieda, Tri-Cities 562
Frankie Brian, Anderson 561
Mike Todorich, Sheboygan 537

1948-49 BAA (points + assists minus missed field goals, free throws and personal fouls)
George Mikan, Minneapolis 679
Bob Davies, Rochester 396
Max Zaslofsky, Chicago 333
Johnnny Logan, St. Louis 291 (57g)
Bobby Wanzer, Rochester 291 (60g)
Belus Smawlley, St. Louis 287
Herm Schaefer, Minneapolis 269
Bob Feerick, Washington 267
Arnie Risen, Rochester 251
Jim Pollard, Minneapolis 233


TOP TEN FOR 1946-49 (10 for 1st, 9 for 2nd, 8 for 3rd, etc.)
Max Zaslofsky 24
Bob Feerick 22
Don Otten 22
George Mikan 20
Al Cervi 17
Ed Sadowski 16
Hal Tidrick 14
Gene Englund 12
Bob Calihan 11
Buddy Jeanette 10
Johnny Logan 10
Ash Resnick 10


HISTORICAL TOP TEN after 1949
Bobby McDermott 65
Leroy Edwards 58
Benny Borgmann 57
Phil Rabin 56
Inky Lautman 51
Ed Sadowski 51
Moe Spahn 47
Mike Bloom 44
Carl Husta 44
Nat Hickey 36

 

[SWC75]

THE PLAYERS

(I’ve already covered Ed Sadowski in prior posts.)

There’s three big questions about the above Top Ten lists:

1) Why didn’t the Historical Top ten change much? The only movement was that Ed Sadowski and Mike Bloom moved up a little. Firstly, this era, while hugely significant in the history of the sport, is only three seasons. Also see questions #2 and #3. There will be big changes in the eras to come.

2) Where is Joe Fulks? Joe was the ultimate gunner and “black hole” in basketball history. Let’s look at his 1948-49 season when he averaged 26.0 points per game and set a record that lasted a decade by scoring 63 in one game. That year Joe scored 1,560 points. He was credited with only 74 assists, 1.2 per game. Rebounds, blocks and steals were not kept track of. Fulks was a 6-5 forward and so he might have had a fairly good total of rebounds. He attempted 1,689 field goals, 28 per game. He made good on 529 of them, 31.3%. His teammates shot better, 32.5%, although I’m sure they didn’t get the defensive attention Joe got. Joe was a good free throw shooter, making 502 of 638, or 78.6%. He committed 262 fouls. 1,560 points + 74 assists is 1,634 “positives”. 1,160 missed field goals (19 a game), plus 136 missed free throws plus 262 fouls is 1,558 negatives. His “net points” are +76. If we had the rebounds, that would have helped Joe. Steals and blocks might have added a bit to the total. If we had the turnovers, that probably would have negated much of the gains. The 10th place guy on the net point list for 1948-49 in the BAA was Jim Pollard with 233 net points. I doubt Joe would have caught him even if we had all the elements of the net points formula. Joe’s team went 28-32 that year. Max Zaslovsky was also a “gunner” but a much more efficient one and that puts him at the top of the Top Ten for te era. You could argue that Joe didn’t have much help but Ed Sadowski and Howie Dallmar were on that team. Joe was surely a drawing card and he certainly put up some impressive numbers but it’s questionable how great a player he was. I’ve decided to cover him anyway because of his importance to the young BAA and will discuss him at the end of the Top Ten.

3) Why isn’t George Mikan at the top of the list? Because of Mauice White’s cockamamie scheme of having his won league and owning all the teams. It meant Mikan didn’t join the Lakers until there were only 25 games left in the 1947-48 season and didn’t quite make the Top Ten that year. Mikan only played 8 games for the “Professional Basketball league of America”, so he played only 33 games that season: History of the Professional Basketball League of America
If you add in the 174 net points he accumulated in those 8 games to the 368 Net Points he got playing for the Lakers, he would have had 542 net points, which would have placed him second to Al Cervi, who played 49 games that year. Finishing second would have given George 9 more ranking points for 29 for the 1946-49 period, thus putting him in 1st place, 5 points ahead of Zaslofsky. And if White hadn’t fooled around, Big George would have played a full NBL season and wound up with a perfect 30 ranking points for the period.

MAX ZASLOFSKY could shoot. He scored nearly as much as Joe Fulks but much more efficiently. He hit 34.3% of his shots lifetime to 30.2 for Fulks. Joe’s average was typical for the beginning of their careers in the mid 40’s: max’s was typical of the end in the mdi 50’s. Max was a thro-w back who eschewed the jump shot for two hand set shots. But he was able to throw them in from as far as 30 feet out. Max consistently played for successful teams. He played for Chicago, New York and Fort Wayne and every team had a winning record and made the playoffs. (He had brief tenures with two last place teams, Baltimore and Tri-City, in 1953 before Fort Wayne picked him up.) Six of the teams he played on reached the NBA finals, although he only played in four of them: He had a broken arm with the Knicks in 1951 and was released by the Pistons in his final year of 1956 before the playoffs. None of those six teams won the championship.

Zaslofsky, (a 6-2 170 guard), started out as one of the league’s leading scorers, twice averaging over 20ppg and making the all-league first team his first four years. He then morphed into the kind of veteran guard good teams like to have. When the Chicago Stags folded in 1950, their players were distributed around the league by the sophisticated system of having owners pull pieces of paper with the player’s name on them out of a hat. Ned Irish of the Knicks was overjoyed to pull out a slip that said “Max Zaslofsky”.New Boston Coach Red Auerbach was very disappointed. The Celtics had to settle for a kid who have never played pro ball, who had been drafted by “Tri-Cites” and then been traded for by the Stags to play behind Max. A player named Bob Cousy.
http://www.jewsinsports.org/profile.asp?sport=basketball&ID=5

Should Max be in the Hall of Fame?
8. Max Zaslofsky


BOB FEERICK was Red Auerbach’s first star. Red had coached him during the war when both were in the Navy. Eventually he succeeded Red, becoming the Washington Capitol’s player-coach. After five years he returned to his alma mater, Santa Clara, which he coached for a dozen years, leading the nation in defense in back-to-back years, (1961-62) before running to the NBA as coach and later GM of the San Francisco Warriors.

He was another player Joe Fulks could have taken some lessons from. Bob second behind Joe in scoring in the BAA’s first season. He twice led the league in both field goal and free throw percentage. Much was made of the fact that Fulks outscored the second place Feerick by 6.4 points but Bob shot 40.1% from the field in 1946-47, 3.2 points ahead of anyone else – and he was a 6-3 guard!
BOB FEERICK - Pro Basketball Encyclopedia

On February 19, 1949 the Caps honored their star with “Bob Feerick Night”. Amazingly, there a (silent) You-Tube record of that game:

This what pro basketball looked like in the 1940’s! An awful lot of underhand shooting both from the foul line and out side. High post center play with hook shots and hook passes, too. No above-the-rim action. (No one is close to it –it looks like two teams of guards.) But a lot of good 5 on 5 ball movement instead of “the star” making a one-man assault on the defense that leads to him going 1 on 5, as we see today. It’s different but it’s not boring. There are some halftime shots of the venue- the 6,235 seat Uline Arena. It still exists and is now called the Washington Coliseum. We see some shots of the ceremony honoring Ferrick, including a young Red Auerbach, (he was 31 but already balding). Was this done at halftime or are we seeing shots form before the game? (The ceremony starts at the 16:38 mark of the clip.)


DON OTTEN is a forgotten figure, which is strange because he was the biggest player in the league in his time. With Bob Kurland playing AAU ball, Don was the only 7 footer in the game, save for Ralph Siewart (7-1 230) who played 21 games for the Toronto Huskies in 1946-47. Ralph was a deep bench reserve. They didn’t record minutes back then but Ralph scored 20 points in his career on scintillating 6 for 44 shooting from the field. Don Otten (7-0 245) scored 4,586 points in 387 games. He was the NBL’s scoring champion and MVP in 1948-49, (the year that Mikan and the Lakers switched to the BAA).

Don’s NBL numbers: Top 10 NBL players of all-time: Don Otten
Don’s NBA numbers: Don Otten Stats | Basketball-Reference.com

Wikipedia: “Otten holds the NBA record for most personal fouls in a game, with eight. He set the record in a November 24, 1949 game between Tri-Cities and the Sheboygan Red Skins. NBA Rule 3, Section I permits a player to remain in the game after fouling out if no other players are available on the bench.”

Note: The Sports Encyclopedia: Pro Basketball, which came out in 1989 lists Don as 7-0 245. The references I found on the internet list him as 6-10, 245. Any way, he was a modern-size player in the 1940’s. Don and his teammates:
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QKYtd4sh...fWPQr7C8fqhJhjjVXoQ/s1600/otten-don-nbl-1.jpg


But GEORGE MIKAN was the man do dominated and revolutionized the game. In 1950 he was named the greatest basketball player of the half century. That’s quite an impression to make for a guy whose pro career only began in 1946. With his handsome face, his mop of dark hair and the glasses he played with, (he was near-sighted), people said he looked like Clark Kent but played like Superman. But he wasn’t Superman. Teams devised every conceivable defense at Mikan to try and stop him and things could get very rough. In his career, George broke both legs, his right foot, the arch of this left foot, his right wrist, his nose, one thumb and three of his fingers. His career total was 166 stitches. What was ‘super’ was George’s ability to play through that and have a great career and dominate the league anyway. He always has a big smile on his face in his pictures but he was one tough dude.

The only thing he had been in high school was awkward and he never played basketball until he played in the CYO leagues. Ray Meyer, a 28 year old rookie coach at DePaul, convinced George he could play for his team after Notre Dame coach George Keogan had told him he’d never be more than mediocre at basketball. Mikan: “I had some speed but I was not agile. I could shoot only with my right hand. Meyer went to work on me. He gave me the correct outlook. I remember how he stressed work as the prime factor in success. Every night he kept feeding me the ball on my left side. It took me two years to master the shot but now it is more accurate and natural than my right.” Mikan got so good he could throw hook shots with either hand. Some people can’t make lay-ups with either hand. The Mikan drill:
Mikan Drill - Wikipedia

He was a three-time All-American and two time player of the year for Meyer. They won the 1945 NIT, then an equal tournament with the NCAAs, including a game where he dropped an record 53 points on Rhode Island, equaling their score in a 97-53 blow-out and beat Don Otten’s Bowling Green team 71-54 in the final, out-scoring Otten 34-7. (Then came the confrontation with Kurland’s Oklahoma A&M NCAA champions described above.)

“The most famous college player since Hank Liusetti, Mikan had starred at DePaul by using his great strength and 6-10 frame to score repeatedly on hook shots and tap-ins. Famous for his thick eyeglasses and whirling elbows, Mikan rounded out his game with fine passing from the pivot, very tough defense and superb rebounding.” (The Sports Encyclopedia: Pro Basketball). Rebounding did not become an official stat until the 1950-51 season and, surprisingly, the first leader wasn’t Mikan, who finished second with 14.1 per game. The leader was Syracuse’s Dolph Schayes with 16.4. But George led the next two years and averaged 13.4 boards per game in the years where it was a stat, to go with his career 23.1 scoring average. Les Harrison of the Laker’s great rivals, the Rochester Royals, said of Mikan: “A monster! That’s what he is: a monster!” You’d have to forgive Harrison for his hyperbole: Mikan had just scored 61 points on his team.

“Mikan had a reputation for being a brute under the basket. As the lights glinted off his glasses he would get the ball, whirl toward the hoop and heaven help the poor guy who dared to be in his path. Down on the floor would go the bloody opponent and into the basket the hook shot….But George received punishment, too and the broken wrist is just one example….not counting cuts form his eyeglass frames being jammed into his face. “Those elbows banging your teeth from each side take a toll” he said. “I’ve lost my share of teeth” (including four in his first pro game, courtesy of Cowboy Edwards)…A writer once entered the Laker locker room after a game and told Mikan the players on the other team had been complaining about his rough play. George pulled off his jersey, revealing bruises and welts all over his upper torso. “What do you think these are – birthmarks?” George vs. his brother Eddie, (after the commercial):
George Mikan
He was, indeed, the “Big Boss Man”

A scouting report: George Mikan Scouting Video (First Dominating HOF NBA center)
I notice that Dolph Schayes tells the same story in both videos but in the first one Mikan scored 42 points on him. In the second he scored 48. George was so good, he scored three more baskets on Dolph in between those interviews.

“Meet the Champs”, a 1953 documentary on Mikan and the Lakers with some extra material from ESPN:
George Mikan (AMAZING BASKETBALL NBA DOCUMENTARY) [HD]
Note that they are shown winning their “5th World Championship” in 1953. They’d won the BAA/NBA title in 1949, 1950, 1952 and now 1953. Their 1948 NBL title was obviously being included, (they would win a 6th title the next years and Mikan’s 7th because he’d also won the NBL title with Chicago American Gears in 1947). That 1948 NBL titles and the WPBT title they won the same season were fully recognized as making them “World Champions” for 1948. The Lakers thus have 17 championships, not 16: Six in the Mikan era, one with Wilt and West, five with Magic and Kareem and five more with Kobe. They are tied with the Celtics, not one behind.

As with all great big man, he provoked a rule change: the lane was widened from 6 to 12 feet to prevent Big George from camping under the basket. It was called the “Mikan Rule”. But even that couldn’t stop him. He scored over 45 points nine times with a high of 61 against the Royals in 1952. He lost some of his statistical dominance in the early 50’s due to age and injuries which caused the Lakers to play him fewer minutes. But his team won every championship but one in his career, including the last three before he decided to retire. “I’ve got three boys and they scarcely know they have a father.” Maybe the most telling thing about George Mikan’s career was the marque on Madison Square garden one night, which simply said “Tonight: George Mikan vs. Knicks”.

He served as the Laker’s general manger for a year and half, then due to declining attendance, announced a comeback during the 1955-56 season. He played 20 minutes a game for 37 games and scored 10.5 per game. He’d averaged 18.1 on 32 minutes in 1953-54. At his production rate of 1955-56, he would have scored 16.8. But he couldn’t play more than those 20 minutes, (Danny Biasone’s 24 second clock had by now been introduced, which required more movement than George’s legs could supply), and the team was heading into a rebuilding phase. He retired again and came back to coach the team in two years later. They were at a low ebb that year and George went 9-30 on the way to a 19-53, last place season, which at least allowed the Lakers to draft Elgin Baylor.

Mikan ran unsuccessfully for Congress, opened a law practice and was involved in real estate. George was chosen as Commissioner of the fledgling American Basketball Association. The league owners figured his presence would give the league instant credibility, (the red, white and blue ball was George’s idea). Later, he headed the effort to bring NBA ball back to Minneapolis in the form of the Timberwolves.

In his later years, Mikan suffered from diabetes and failing kidneys, and eventually, his illness caused his right leg to be amputated below the knee. When his medical insurance was cut off, Mikan soon found himself in severe financial difficulties. Mikan was involved in a long-standing legal battle against the NBA, fighting to increase the meager pensions for players who had retired before the league became lucrative. In 2005, Mikan died after a long battle with diabetes…..Mikan's death was widely mourned by the basketball world, and also brought media attention to the financial struggles of several early-era NBA players. Many felt that the current players of the big-money generation should rally for larger pensions for the pre-1965 predecessors in upcoming labor negotiations. Shaquille O'Neal paid for Mikan's funeral. He said: "Without number 99 [Mikan], there is no me."


The image I have of AL CERVI is as the defensive-minded, tough as nails coach of the Syracuse Nationals when the 1955 NBA title. That’s not false but that’s not all. In his prime, Al Cervi could score, too. As captain of the 1946 NBL champions Rochester Royals, Cervi was one of four double-figure scorers and the next year tied the great Bob Davies for the team lead at 14.4ppg but played a dozen more games and not only led the league in points but set an NBL record, (that would be vaporized by Mikan the next year). The following year Davies just nipped Al, 14.6 to 14.3. When Al jumped to Syracuse, he scored almost as much as his rookie star, Dolph Schayes, 12.2 vs. 12.8. He was still a double figure scorer at 10.2 as the 32 year old “old man” of the powerful 1950 Nats. It helped that Al was an excellent free throw shooter, 79% overall, including 84% in his NBA years. He also averaged nearly 5 assists a game for that 1950 team, before age and injuries caught up with him. Al was a fine all-round guard, not just a “Digger”, which was his nickname. His image actually under-rates him. Al was all-NBL three years in a row.

Al had briefly played with the Buffalo Bisons of the NBL in that league’s first year as a 5-11 170, 20 year old. He played for the Rochester Royals for 8 seasons, including several years when they were an independent team before they even joined the NBL. He also played service ball during a stint in the Army Air Corps, so he was already 28 years old when his ‘official’ record, (save for his early appearance in Buffalo), begins: we’re just looking at the second half of his career, unless we are looking at this:
AL CERVI - Pro Basketball Encyclopedia

Mark Allen Baker in “Hoops Roots: Basketball History in Syracuse” quotes Balzac: “There is no such thing as a great talent without great willpower.” Baker suggests that if the 19th French author had been living in Central New York in the post war era, he would have been a big fan of Al Cervi. “If Digger was intimidated by anyone, ti was rarely seen. It was his tenacity and defensive skills that would drive the club and he knew it.” But Cervi could take “things into his own hands: opting for a game winning shot wasn’t unusual behavior for Digger”.”Cervi was a player who thrived on competition and loved all 202 games of it in a Nats uniform. With his trademark fortitude in tow, he left the floor as one of the greatest defensive players in history.”


HAL TIDRICK was a 6-1 guard who played for three teams, (the Toledo Jeeps, the Indianapolis jets and the Baltimore Bullets), in 3 years and then retired. He averaged 9 points game for his big league career. He had some minor league play during the war. He made a name for himself by being the high scorer in the 1943 WPBT, (his team, the Dayton Dive Bombers finished 4th). He is listed as being born in 1915 so apparently he didn’t start playing pro basketball until he was 27. .
HAL TIDRICK - Pro Basketball Encyclopedia

Here’s Hal, ready for anything: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Hal_Tidrick.jpeg/220px-Hal_Tidrick.jpeg


6-5, 205 GENE ENGLUND was the star when Wisconsin won it’s only NCAA title in 1941, breaking the Big ten scoring record. He played for the Oshkosh All-Stars until they went out of business, except for a single year with the ABL’s Brooklyn Eagles. He played forward alongside of Cowboy Edwards and sometimes spelled him at center, eventually taking over the position in a time when much bigger centers were becoming the norm. Despite the disadvantage he scored in double figures four times.
GENE ENGLUND - Pro Basketball Encyclopedia


BOB CALIHAN was “Mr. Basketball” in Detroit. He starred as a collegian for the Detroit Titans, then played for the Detroit Eagles when they won the 1941 WPBT. After the war he joined George Mikan and Bobby McDermott on the Chicago-American gears as they won the 1947 NBL title. He wound up his pro career in 1949 with the Nationals and went on to coach the University of Detroit basketball teams for 21 years. “Calihan was a capable defender and strong rebounder, but offense was his forte. He usually played with his back to the basket on the right side of the court from where he launched graceful left-handed hook shots with deadly efficiency.”
BOB CALIHAN - Pro Basketball Encyclopedia


BUDDY JEANNETTE is a forgotten figure but he was one of the top guards and player-coaches of the 1940’s. The 5-11 point man was All-NBL four times and played on three championship teams, with Sheboygan in 1943 and Fort Wayne in 1944-45. He then became player-coach of the ABL’s Baltimore Bullets and led them to their fantastic 31-3 regular season in 1946-47 and the second BAA championship in 1947. He later coached Georgetown to the NIT and coached the Pittsburgh Pipers of the ABA.
BUDDY JEANNETTE - Pro Basketball Encyclopedia

Wikipedia: “Jeannette was widely regarded as the premier backcourt player between 1938 and 1948.“
Jockbio.com: “a 5-11 ball-handling genius who had a knack for winning games, championships, and MVP awards. Buddy played the point and read the floor like no one else in basketball, and he had that special talent for turning good teams into great ones.”
Buddy Jeannette made Baltimore a big league town


Basketball’s JOHNNY LOGAN is not the same person as baseball’s Johnny Logan, a shortstop for the brave’s championship teams of the late 50’s. This Johnny Logan was a high scoring, (four years of at least 12ppg) 6-2 guard for the St. louis Bombers of the BAA and later for the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, who he also coached, (Now the Atlanta Hawks).

Wikipedia has this cryptic statement: “Logan was murdered in his apartment. He was stabbed in the back by Ken Norton. Norton was never charged. On his death bed he was close to confessing. He pulled through and his where-a-bouts remain unknown.” No references are given for this statement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Logan_(basketball)
I can find no reference to this nor to any murder committed by either Ken Norton the former basketball Coach at Manhattan or the boxer Ken Norton.

The only internet link I can find on Logan that doesn’t just repeat what is on Wikipedia verbatim is this:
https://www.psacard.com/cardfacts/basketball-cards/1948-bowman/john-logan-7/3501


ASH RESNICK is in this listing because he had an outstanding season in the last year the ABL was truly a major league, (if barely). He scored 16.1ppg for Trenton in 1946-47 to lead the league and the Tigers won the championship in the absence of the team that had dominated all season, the 31-3 Baltimore Bullets who were off playing in the WPBT. Resnick had no other remotely comparable season.
http://probasketballencyclopedia.com/player/ash-resnick/

Resnick seems to have had an interesting career working for Las Vegas casinos after his basketball playing days were over:
http://www.thephillygodfather.com/a...ston-muhammad-ali-and-a-man-named-ash-resnick


JOE FULKS, (pronounced ‘Joe Faulks’), was the BAA’s first s tar, making headlines with his scoring achievements and his unique style of shooting “twisting pivot shots”. These were jump shots, not two hand set shots. We’d probably call then turn-around jumpers today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxCrtdPNSc

He could also do the set shot but he didn’t shoot upward from the hip like few see other players from that era. He fully extended his arms before releasing the ball. Since Joe was 6-5, (I’ve seen him reported as 6-6), this made the shot unblockable by a perimeter player and thus undefendable. Joe’s height relative to the players who would have been guarding him would be like a 6-9 or 6-10 player today, (think Tyler Lydon but with more mobility). His jumper had a high arch to it but then most of them in that era did. With a high arch, the ball has to come down just right or it will have too much force to drop in. That may account, in part for the low shooting percentages for that era, despite the lack of aggressive perimeter defense. In fact the low shooting percentages might account for the lack of aggressive perimeter defense: if they want to try it far from the basket – let them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDzfNbS_LbU
(Those two are the only clips of Joe in action I could find.)

Fulks had been in the Marines and seen service at Iwo Jima after a productive but unheralded career at tiny Murray State college in Kentucky. He’d also played service ball where the old SPHA, Petey Rosenberg saw him and recommended him to Eddie Gottlieb, who told the press: “You’ve probably never heard of his but I believe he has the potentialities of a great scorer.” He was right.
The Sports Encyclopedia: Pro Basketball: “Fulks set the league on its ear with a machine gun jump shot that baffled conventional defenses. Gottlieb had the Warriors feed Fulks as much as possible.”

Joe scored 23.2 points per game, 7 more than the runner up, Bob Feerick. He scored 41 points in one game. In the BAA finals, he scored 37 points in game one against Chicago and 34 points more in the clincher. He had a 47 point game the next year and then toped that with an incredible 63 point outburst in 1949, setting a record that would last a decade. Joe was 27 for 56 in that game, 48.2% from the field, far above his normal shooting percentage. I remember seeing Pete Maravich play in college against Kentucky. He scored tt points but was 19 for 51 from the field: 37.3%. That was lower than his teammates shooting percentage and much lower than Kentucky’s, who won, 120-81. Joe Fulks didn’t have the fancy dribbles or passes Pete had but I think of the that Maravich game and the prolific gunning gives me an image of what watching Joe Fulks play must have been like.

The thing that jumps out at you when you look at Joe’s numbers are the enormous number of shots he took. In 1946-7, he attempted a league-leading 1,557 shots, 35% more than anyone else in the league and 90% more than anyone else on his team. He did lead the team with a 30.5% shooting percentage but that wasn’t in the top ten of the league and was almost 10% behind the leader, Bob Feerick, 9who was not a tall center and hit 40.1%). The next year, in a season shortened from 60 to 48 games, Joe attempted 1,258 shots, 9% more than anybody else in the league and 61% more than anyone on his own team. His shooting percentage dipped to 25.9%, a figure exceeded by three other members of the Warriors starting line-up. In his highest scoring season, 1948-49, he attempted 1,689 shots, 13% more than second place George Mikan and 101% more than anyone on his team. His shooting percentage went up to 31.3% and he scored 26.0ppg. But two teammates shot as well and Ed Sadowski, (remember him?), shot 41%. It’s the tremendous number of missed shots – and the fact that the BAA was the first league to record them- that pulls his ranking so far down in “net points”.

Fulks’ output then sharply declined. He scored 14.2 in 1949-50, rose to 18.7 the next year, then 15.1, 11.9 and 2.3. And he wasn’t old He was born October 26, 1921. Improvements in the league talent after the merger with the NBL and of the Warrior’s roster as they picked up Paul Arizin and then Neil Johnson meant that the Warriors had options besides feeding Jumpin’ Joe’ jumpers all the time. His star shown brightly for those first three seasons but then the game just sort of passed Joe by.

Wikipedia: “Upon Fulks's retirement, he returned to Marshall County, Kentucky where he lived the remainder of his life. He worked at the Kentucky State Penitentiary as the prison recreation director. Fulks was shot and killed on March 21, 1976, by Gregg Bannister, the son of his girlfriend, Roberta Bannister, during an argument over a handgun”. What an ironic way for a gunner to go.

 

[tipphill]

thanks for taking the time to post this. although i never saw any of that era, i did become a nats fan in 1959 when i was 10yrs old. saw many of their games from the stage at the war memorial, including the blow out of the knicks on a christmas night. i forget what year that was 1960? maybe? my brother and i took the bus from bryant ave on tipphill down to the game. cold and snowy!!!

 

[SWC75]

thanks for taking the time to post this. although i never saw any of that era, i did become a nats fan in 1959 when i was 10yrs old. saw many of their games from the stage at the war memorial, including the blow out of the knicks on a christmas night. i forget what year that was 1960? maybe? my brother and i took the bus from bryant ave on tipphill down to the game. cold and snowy!!!

New York Knicks at Syracuse Nationals Box Score, December 25, 1960 | Basketball-Reference.com

The Nats a were one point away from having TEN double figure scorers.