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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 2230291, member: 289"] 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. [/QUOTE]

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