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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 2230292, member: 289"] 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: [URL="http://nbahoopsonline.com/teams/Xdefunct/IndianapolisOlympians/index.html"]Indianapolis Olympians[/URL] 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. [MEDIA=youtube]OwxcnT8pVuM[/MEDIA] 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: [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbImnPtU6ww"]Bob Kurland.flv[/URL] 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. [URL="http://stewthornley.net/mplslakers_trotters.html"]Minneapolis Lakers vs. Harlem Globetrotters[/URL] 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. [/QUOTE]

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