SWC75
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The anticipation for the first full season of the NBA must have been tremendous. The league combined the top teams of the BAA: the Philadelphia Warriors, the Washington Capitols and the Chicago Stags with the top teams from the now defunct NBL: the Minneapolis Lakers, (who had already won the last BAA title, having switched the year before), the Rochester Royals, the Fort Wayne Pistons and the Anderson Duffy Packers. Also in the mix were rising teams like the Syracuse Nationals, the New York Knicks and new team, the Indianapolis Olympians, with their owner-players Alex Groza, Ralph Beard, Wallace Jones and Cliff Barker, who had won two NCAA titles at Kentucky and then an Olympic gold medal, (with Bob Kurland’s help) in London.
Unfortunately, they were in an unwieldy 17 team league, referred to in the “The Sports Encyclopedia: Basketball” as “a far-flung hodgepodge called the National Basketball Association”. The Eastern Division consisted of Syracuse and the original BAA teams from Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington plus the Baltimore Bullets, who had started out in the ABL. The Central Division had the powerhouse Lakers with their main rivals from Rochester and Fort Wayne, along with Chicago and the St. Louis Bombers. The Western Division had Indianapolis, Anderson, “Tri-Cities”, representing Moline and Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, Sheboygan, Waterloo and Denver. It would have made more geographic sense to have Minnesota and Chicago out west and Anderson and Fort Wayne in the central but sports leagues aren’t famous for looking at maps. It was also too bad Syracuse and Rochester couldn’t be in the same division.
TSE:BB says “The demands of travel especially in an era before flying was common, led to an unbalanced schedule, with Eastern and Central teams slated for 68 games and Western teams for 62 games. To add to the confusion, Syracuse was a member of the Eastern Division but played a Western schedule of 62 games.” I wondered what they meant by “played a Western schedule”: did they just mean that they played 62 games or that they played primarily western teams? I checked in on Basketball reference.com:
1949-50 Syracuse Nationals Schedule and Results | Basketball-Reference.com
By my count, they played Indianapolis 9 times, Tri-Cities and Denver 7 times, Anderson, Waterloo and Sheboygan 6 times each. They played Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington twice each. So it’s true. They played a Western Division Schedule but their record was placed in the Eastern Division! It’s like we played an ACC schedule but won the Big East championship. Per the “Official NBA Basketball Encyclopedia”, “Syracuse, Anderson, Tri-Cities and Indianapolis added a couple of extra games, giving them 64 apiece.” The same book describes the schedule as “neither logical nor appealing to the public.” Larry Fox in the “Illustrated History of Basketball” called the NBA schedule “a small-time vaudeville circuit wheel.”
That schedule may have helped the Nationals to have the league’s best record and the best record the franchise ever had: 51 wins and 13 losses! They won 16 of their first 17 games and had a 41-8 record at one point. But the West had only two teams with winning records. But the Nationals did split two games against both the Lakers and Royals, who tied for the North Division lead at 51-17. The Nats had Dolph Schayes coming into his own as a star, averaging 17.1ppg. Alex Hannum, later to coach the team, (as well as the Hawks and the 76ers in the Wilt Chamberlain era), was the other forward. A gentleman named George Ratkovicz was the 6-7 225 center, (and the team’s second leading scorer at 13.1. Al Cervi, Billy Gabor and Paul Seymour made for a strong backcourt, although none of them scored in double figures. Another guard, Johnny Macknowski, did at 10.6.
This was not Syracuse’s greatest team, despite the numerical record. Here’s an excerpt from my history of the 1954-55 championship team, “Syracuse Wins World Series”, based on my reading of Ramsay’s and Baker’s books as well as other sources:
“The 1949-50 Syracuse Nationals had the best regular season record in the franchise’s history at 51-13. In fact that the NBA’s best record until the Celtics topped it a decade later. The 1954-55 Nationals finally broke through and won the NBA title. But nearly everybody involved with the team feels the peak was in the late 1950’s The ’49-’50 team accumulated their record in a bloated 17 team league that was the result of an awkward merger between the old BAA and NBL. Six of those teams would fold at the end the year. The 1954-55 team was a defense-oriented team that won a title between the era of the two great dynasties, Mikan’s Lakers and Russell’s Celtics. The 1958-59 team, by the end of the season and the 1959-60 team were offensive powerhouses that still knew how to play defense in a stronger league than in the earlier years.”
Mikan’s Lakers weren’t satisfied with winning the 1948 NBL title and the 1949 BAA title. They wanted the first NBA title, as well and strengthened themselves with four excellent rookies, 6-7 230 power forward, (maybe the first player to warrant that title), Vern Mikkelsen, 5-10 point guard Salter Martin, 6-2 shooting guard Bob Harrison, a boyhood friend of Paul Seymour, and a 6-3 forward “more suited for football” named Bud Grant.
It was a rough, physical team. Mikan dominated the middle, scoring 27.4 per game. Mikkelsen was a productive player with 11.6 but also an “enforcer”, who made sure Big George didn’t have to take on the tough guys of the league along. (David Ramsey compared him to Charles Oakley). Martin “seldom scored but played stingy defense and worked the ball to the Laker’s great frontcourt”. Mikan said of Martin”(Bob) Cousy never ran wild against us. He could never compare with Martin on defense.” Martin also held Rochester’s Bob Davies without a field goal in a key game. Harrison was another tough guy who “didn’t know much about basketball’s finesse or grace. He learned that the only way to win was to attack your opponent with everything at your disposal.”
Rochester somehow matched the Lakers, win for win with their fabulous backcourt of Bob Davies, Bobby Wanzer and center Arnie Risen, who was aided in taking on Minneapolis’ bulk by 6-5 240 Arnie Johnson and George Mikan’s 6-8 230 brother Ed. They beat the Lakers 87-62, 83-77 and 66-64 in Rochester but lost to them 80-95, 73-85 and 70-92 in Minneapolis. In fact both teams were 33-1 at home that season, 18-16 on the road. The Nationals were 34-1 at home and 17-12 on the road. And those were the best teams in the league. The Royals lost at home only to the Fort Wayne Pistons, 84-92, the Lakers only to the Chicago Stags, 82-96 and the Nats only to the Anderson Packers 75-77 in overtime.
This overwhelming home court advantage became critical for the playoffs because the Nats, having the best record in the league, had home field advantage in the playoffs over anyone they played. The Lakers broke the curse by beating the Royals in Rochester 78-76 to break the tie for the Central Division title. The Royal’s funk continued as they then lost at home to the Pistons again, 84-90 and then lost in overtime to them in Fort Wayne 78-79 in overtime to end their season in total frustration. (But wait till next year). The Lakers swept Chicago 2-0, swept Fort Wayne 2-0 and swept Anderson 2-0. Syracuse for some reason only had to win two series to get to the finals. At least they finally got a chance to play some eastern teams, sweeping the Warriors 2-0 and beating the Knicks, a coming team, 2-1. That set up the confrontation with the Lakers for the first NBA championship, one Syracuse had the inside track on due to home field advantage.
Mark Allen Baker in “Hoops Roots: Basketball in Syracuse” got heavy into the hyperbole: “Tenacious in the victory pursuit, Cervi’s dragoons dominated their combatants…Although seemingly undeniable and pre-destined, ahead lay Minneapolis and Mikan. Having won seven straight playoff games…the Lakers were tyrannizing and relentless. They, too, felt ordained.”
The first two games were in Syracuse, the Nats opportunity to take a commanding lead. David Ramsey in “Nats, a City, A team, An Era”: “Syracuse led. The Lakers Pollard dribbled the ball in the frontcourt, trying to kill time, (why?) when Cervi sneaked in for a steal. He dribbled toward an uncontested lay-up that might have clinched the game. But a whistle stopped him. Referees called a foul on (Nat’s reserve) center Ed Peterson for a foul against Mikan, who made a free throw. Momentum moved to the Lakers.”
Baker: “As the pendulum of momentum swung during with one minute remaining, the Nats were up by a bucket, 66-64. The Lakers then called a play for Jim Pollard. Rookie Bud Grant brought the ball up court and then passed it to his target. But Pollard was stanchly defended so he returned the ball to a stunned Grant. Confounded, Grant launched a “Hail Mary” to tie it up. The Central New York crowd just stood in disbelief.” (A quarter century later, Grant would witness another “Hail Mary”, one he didn’t like as much:
)
“Cervi then took things into his own hands; opting for a game-winning shot wasn’t unusual behavior for ‘Digger’ but successfully maneuvering around Mikan was. In a valiant move toward the basket, the shot was blocked by Mikan and retrieved by Grant, who quickly threw to rookie Bob Harrison, who popped a 40 footer for the win: 68-66, Lakers. The Nats were devastated, nobody more than Cervi.“ The Lakers had the road win they needed to negate the home field advantage.
Decades later, Al Cervi spoke to David Ramsey in his living room about that game and the play at the end. “To this day, as sure as I’m sitting in this room, I believe they took it from us….Someone swatted me across the arm. (when the lay-up was blocked).”Ramsey describes Cervi’s reaction, those many years later: “He has hopped out of his easy chair and is standing in the middle of his living room in suburban Rochester, a man in his 70s, who can’t forget, who won’t ever forget this moment from his past. “Swatted me right across the arm. And no call! No call!.. They took it from us.” That’s Al Cervi.
Ramsey also describes Harrison’s reaction to his 40 footer. “Harrison remembers how it felt to stand in the Fairgrounds Coliseum, a loud, nasty place and realize no one was making a sound. The crowd had bene stunned into silence. At first, joy filled Harrison’s heart. His teammates grabbed him, hugged him, shouted sweet things in his ear. Then he caught a look at Seymour, his best friend. Seymour trudged off the court, staring at the floor.” Harrison: “I was uneasy, since it was against him.” Ramsey: After the game, the two friends drove to downtown Syracuse and walked around for a while. They walked and talked, just as they had done back in Toledo…on those walks, they had talked about winning the Ohio state title, a vision that eventually came true. Once, they had chased a title together. Now, they were opponents. Only one of them could emerge as the champ.” Harrison: “I was embarrassed, sort of. I had enjoyed a long, wonderful friendship with Paul. I’m glad I had the opportunity to play the hero, but I felt bad for Paul.”
Was it a 40 footer or a 30 footer? This says 30 and it seems more likely:
1950 NBA Finals.mp4
Harrison describes it:
Bob Harrison describes his buzzer beater in 1950 NBA Finals
Baker: “The following day, the Nats once again stood before the Lakers at home, determined to vindicate their loss. Looming over the court was not only George Mikan but also a remarkable smoke screen so thick you could hardly see down court. The local press had leaked a story that the giant was allergic to smoke so not a soul in the Coliseum could be seen without a cigar or a cigarette. While it didn’t stop Mikan, who netted 32 points, it did slow down the Lakers, who lost 91-85.” Mikan had scored 22 of his points in the second half, after some of the smoke had cleared.
The Nats now had to play two games in Minneapolis, where the Lakers proved invincible, 77-91 and 69-77. Ramsey reports that Billy Gabor came down with the flu and didn’t play in game three but left his sickbed to play in game four and “throw a ball at referee John Nucatola”. Here’s an interesting tidbit: NBA courts were not standardized in those days and the one in Minneapolis was a good deal narrower than the one in Syracuse, which played into Mikan’s hands:
How The NBA Finals Have Changed: 1950 vs 2015? | 80Twelve
Backs to the wall, they came through with an 83-76 triumph in Syracuse. “Cervi ordered George Ratkovicz to hassle Mikan and it almost worked. An angry Mikan twice went after the Nats reserve center, (most sources have him, not Peterson, as the starter), and had to be pulled away.” Ramsey: “Syracuse fans didn’t much like Mikan. Of course they didn’t much like anyone who wasn’t a Nat.” Mikan: “Syracuse – now that was a town to end all towns. Great Italian dinners and rabid fans. I mean, they were crazy there.”
Cervi was still telling anyone who would listen that Syracuse would win but the Lakers closed them out in grand style in Minneapolis, 95-110. Cervi got thrown out of the game for calling Nucatola “a politician and a bum”. (I’m sure he called him a lot more than that.) The Lakers were the superior team but Syracuse players and fans will always wonder how things might have gone if they’d pulled out that first game and then played a seventh game back in Syracuse for all the marbles.
More changes were on the way for the 1950-51 season. The league did some addition by subtraction, eliminating Chicago, St. Louis, Anderson, Sheboygan, Waterloo and Denver. In addition, the Washington Capitols disbanded after a 10-25 start. Red Auerbach had left them the previous year after a disagreement with the owner. He then became the coach of the Tri-Cities Hawks. After a disagreement with that owner, he found an owner he could get along with, Walter Brown of the Celtics. But he immediately created controversy by not drafting Holy Cross hero Bob Cousy for the team. Instead he took 6-11 Charley Share of Bowling Green. When pressed about this he famously said : "Am I supposed to win, or please the local yokels?"
Cousy instead got drafted by Tri-Cites, “a place he had never heard of and that in reality did not exist”, (The Illustrated History of Basketball). The hawks traded him to Chicago, which had not yet folded. When they did just before the season began, there was a dispersal draft for the Stag’s players. The last here of them were Cousy, max Zaslofsky and Andy Phillip. The three teams involved were the Celtics, the Warriors and the Knicks. The one thing all three of them agreed upon was that they didn’t want Cousy. Maurice Podoloff, the commissioner, put the player’s names in a hat and had Ned Irish, Eddie Gottlieb and Walter Brown to draw the names from a hat. When Brown looked at the slip of paper and saw the name ‘Cousy’, "I could have fallen to the floor." Both Brown and Auerbach later changed their minds, as Auerbach had already done with Charlie Share when he managed to get Ed McCauley from the St. Louis Bombers Share never played for the Celtics. Cousy sure did.
This left the NBA with a more compact ten team league, with two five team divisions. It actually made some geographic sense: Boston, Syracuse, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore in the East and Rochester, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Tri-Cities and Minneapolis. I’m not sure why they got rid of Chicago and Sat. louis and kept Tri-Cities and Fort Wayne, but those last two franchises are still in the league as the Atlanta Hawks and Detroit Pistons. So are the Celtics and the Knicks. The Warriors are now Golden State, the Nationals the 76ers, the Royals the Sacramento Kings and, of course, the Lakers are in Los Angeles, where there aren’t as many lakes as In Minnesota. This version of the Baltimore Bullets is not the same on Wes Unseld used to play for: they went out of business early in the 1954-55 season. The Indianapolis Olympians were not long for this league, either. Of the franchises that survived, only the Celtics, Knicks and Warriors were original BAA teams. The 76ers, the Lakers, the Kings, the Pistons and the Hawks all trace their origin to the NBL.
The league also moved forward by inaugurating a mid-season All-Star game, just like baseball. Walter Brown was the big force behind the idea and the first All-Star game was played in Boston and was won by the East 111-94 in an upset, (somebody other than George Mikan’s team actually won something). The Celtics “Easy” Ed Macauley won the first MVP of the All-Star game. He was the leading scorer with 20 points to 19 for Joe Fulks and 15 apiece for Dolph Schayes and Paul Arizin, the Warriors new star. Alex Groza led the West with 17 points. The Hawks’ Frankie Brian had 14, Bob Davies 13, Mikan 12 and Vern Mikkelsen 11.
Schayes was the leading rebounder with 14 to Groza’s 13 and Mikan’s. Dolph also led in rebounds for the regular season with 1,080 for 16.4 per game, surprisingly more than Mikan’s 958 (But George again led in points with 1,932 (28.4). Dolph was only sixth in scoring with 17.0 per game, behind Mikan, Groza, Macauley, Fulks and Arizin. The addition of rebounds as an official stats underscored the value of the league’s big men. It also gave my “net points” formula a big boost: we no have points, rebounds and assists on the positive side vs. missed field goals, missed free throws, and personal fouls on the other side. All that’s missing are steals, blocks and turnovers, all low number stats and they are basically a wash, so from this season on, “net points” will look a lot more like it does today.
But all these changes, as significant as they may be, paled compared to the biggest change: the league decided to integrate. The NBL and the WPBT had been integrated, to an extent, anyway but the BAA had made a rule against using black players. By 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson, that was certainly antiquated. Red Auerbach’s second draft choice that year was Chuck Cooper of Duquesne. It was just like Red to be so totally dedicated to winning that he wouldn’t let other people’s prejudices stand in his way. Later he fielded the first all-black starting line-up.
Cooper was one of a triumvirate who together became the NBA’s Jackie Robinson. Chuck was the first black player drafted by an NBA team. The Knicks offered a contract to the Globetrotter’s Sweetwater Clifton and he accepted it, being the first black player to sign with an NBA team. But the first black player to play for and NBA team was Earl Lloyd, who had bene drafted by the Washington Capitols in the 9th round of the draft. Due to the schedule the Caps played a game in Rochester on October 31, 1950, before the Celtics or Knicks played a game. The Caps lost that one, 70-78:
Earl Lloyd becomes first black player in the NBA - Oct 31, 1950 - HISTORY.com
Syracuse.com had a great article on Lloyd when he died:
Earl Lloyd dead at 86; NBA's first black player was a world champion, in Syracuse
It’s fascinating that in that interview, Lloyd, who played at tiny West Virginia State, an all-black school, was concerned that he could not compete with white players, who were all the sports pages covered. He figured that they must be the best players in the world. Times sure have changed.
Another thing that changed was that fewer teams meant better teams, or at least more good ones and the balanced schedule meant that nobody went 51-13 or 51-17. The Lakers were as strong as ever but went 44-24. The Royals were the same Royals but their record wasn’t the same: 41-27. Those were still the best records in the league. The Nationals fell all the way to 32-34 and finished 4th. They actually had to play Eastern Division teams this year and three of them, the Warriors, Celtics and Knicks were all significantly improved and finished ahead of them.
People think the Knicks have had two good stretches in their history: The Reed-Frazier Era, (1967-74), when they had seven straight winning records, reached the NBA finals three times and won their only two titles and the Ewing Era, (1988-98), when they had 10 winning seasons in 11 years and made it to the finals once. But there was another strong period before that, (1948-54: Let call it the Lapchick Era, as Joe was the coach in all those years), when they had 6 straight winning seasons and went to three straight finals, (1951-53). The big names were 6-6 215 Harry, “The Horse” Gallatin, who often played center against much bigger men but more than held his own, (he averaged 13 points and 12 rebounds a game for his career), 6-5 forward Carl Braun, a good shooter who sometimes played in the backcourt,
6-5 210 Vince Boryla, another good shooter in 6-3 Ernie Vandeweghe, who married Colleen Kay Hutchins, Miss America 1952 and fathered Kiki, Max Zaslofsky, the old Chicago Stag gunner, Sweetwater Clifton, the former Globetrotter and Dick McGuire one of the best all-around guards in the league, whose little brother Al rode the bench.
Meanwhile, Red Auerbach turned the Celtics into a contender with his new acquisitions, the best of whom was the guy he didn’t want, Bob Cousy, who immediately became the best point guard in the league, dazzling the fans with his fancy dribbling and passing and scoring 15.6 points a game to boot. He was also a remarkable rebounder for his 6-1 size at 6.9 per game. He only finished 4th in assists with 4.9 but would go on to lead the league 8 times in a row. But the team’s leading scorer and rebounder was 6-8 190 ‘Easy’ Ed Macauley with 20.4/9.1. Chuck Cooper was a solid 6-5 forward, similar to Lloyd with 9.3/8.5.
The Philadelphia Warriors had found a second big scoring threat to go with Joe Fulks, who was starting to fade a bit at 18.7ppg. Paul Arizin, a 6-4 forward, scored 17.2 and rebounded 9.8. They’d gotten Andy Phillip in Podoloff’s Hat Draft and he led the league in assists at 6.3. His backcourt mate George Senesky was third with 5.3. It’s easy to accumulate assists with shooters like Fulks and Arizin on your team. It was the Warriors who won the East at 40-26 with the Celtics second at 39-30, and the Knicks third at 36-30 (game totals were off because the Washington team had folded in mid season).
The Nats still made the playoffs, (as they did every year of their existence) and they actually made another run at the title, knocking off the Warriors in Philly, 91-89 in OT and closing them out at home, 90-78. They traded home victories with the Knicks, (92-103 in New York; 102-80 in Syracuse) before the pivotal game. Ramsey: “With 10 seconds left and the score tied, Cervi drove to the basket. With time running out, Dick McGuire swatted his shot and forced overtime. Harry Gallatin won the game with a last second shot in overtime.” (75-77). Syracuse tied it again with a 90-83 in the State Fair Coliseum and led 70-58 in the Garden with 10 minutes left. They already had the news from the West, (see below), and maybe that caused them to lose focus on what they were doing. Ramsey: “The Nats, throwing the ball away, blew the lead and lost, 81-83.” Joe Lapchick: “I still can’t believe that pros of that caliber could let a big lead melt away.”
The “news from the west” was that the Rochester Royals had upset the Minneapolis Lakers. ‘Superman’ had fractured an ankle. He still tried to play on it, sprayed with ethyl chloride and, amazingly, scored 32 points in the final game. But the Royals, after losing the first tame in Minneapolis, 73-76 won three in a row, 70-66, 83-70, 80-75. It was a big deal to get the big guy out of there, (it was the only time Mikan played a full season and didn’t win the championship), but now teams had to deal with the Royals, who were a different team but nearly as good.
The Royals wiped the floor with the Knicks for three games, winning in Rochester 92-65 and 99-84. Then they won in New York 78-71 to take a 3-0 lead in the best of seven series. Teams have overcome that deficit in hockey and in baseball but no one has ever done it in basketball. The Knicks came the closest, despite being unable to play in Madison Square Garden, (which owned the team) because the circus was in town. They pulled out a 79-73 game in New York, a 92-89 game in Rochester and a 80-73 game in new York to tie the series. The Royals attempted to restore order, taking a 16 point lead in the final game in Rochester but the Knicks fought back again to tie the score with 40 seconds left. But Bob Davies drove to the basket and was fouled. He made two to give the Royals the lead. The rules at the time called for a jump ball after a made free throw in the last three minutes of the game. The Royals won that and scored again at the buzzer for a 79-75 win and the championship.
David Ramsey: “(Les) Harrison expected a parade in his hometown, a mammoth celebration, something. Nothing much happened. He flew to Miami, rested in the sun and wondered if pro basketball had a future in ‘little’ Rochester, New York.”
Basketball was achieving unprecedented level of popularity at this time, but as in football the greatest public interest was on the collegiate game, which had been around much longer than the professionals and was used to being on the front page of the sports section. On February 19, 1951 the CCNY basketball team was returning by train from Philadelphia after an impressive victory over Temple. They were the toast of the basketball world, having become the first team ever to win both the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same season in 1950, (both tournaments were held in Madison Square Garden and so could not take place simultaneously). At New Brunswick, New Jersey some gentlemen boarded the train and approached Coach Nat Holman, one the early stars of professional basketball as an Original Celtic. One of them said he was from the District Attorney’s office in New York and told Holman “I have some bad news for you Nat. I have to pick up some of your players.” There had been suspicion that points were being shaved in games in exchange for money from gamblers and even some lesser cases but when CCNY became involved, the dominos really started to fall. Eventually 32 players from seven different teams were found to have shaved points in 86 different games – and that was assumed to be the tip of the iceberg. This tainted college basketball but was a blessing in disguise for the pros. The fans figured that since the pro players were being paid good salaries, they would be unlikely to risk their positon by accepting a bribe so the pro game was assumed to be on the up and up.
Indeed there was no evidence of an NBA player accepting a bribe, although a referee named Sol Levy admitted taking $3,000, (he said he got ‘cold feet’ and “only went through the motions”). But that didn’t mean that NBA players hadn’t taken bribes when in college. One of them was Jack Molinas, a Pistons rookie who turned out to be the “mastermind” in the collegiate case from his days at Columbia and who was thrown out of the league for betting on games involving the Pistons even before he got a 10-15 year sentence for his role in the point shaving scandals. Adolph Rupp of Kentucky blamed everything on New York City crooks and bragged “Those gamblers couldn’t touch my players with a ten foot pole.” (Quotes from the Illustrated History of Basketball, by Larry Fox).
It was later found that Rupp was a friend of Ed Curd, “the biggest bookmaker in Lexington Kentucky and that Curd had had meals with the team. Further it was found that Kentucky players Alex Groza, Ralph Beard and later Bill Spivey, (a 7 foot center who lead Kentucky to the 1951 NCAA title), were involved in “fixes”, (although Spivey contested those claims all his life and was never convicted). Groza and Beard, who were the starts and part of the ownership of the Indianapolis Olympians, were banned from the league, as was Spivey. Spivey alter played for the ABL in its last season and in the Eastern League, which rose for its ashes. He then turned up in the new ABL in the early 60’s and then went back to the Eastern League after it folded. He had the opportunity to play against Wilt Chamberlain in a 1960 exhibition game and recorded 30 points and 23 rebounds to Wilt’s 31 points and 27 rebounds. Rupp assistant and future Kentucky coach Joe B. Hall said Spivey could have been one of the greatest of the game.
Alex Groza already was, averaging 22.5ppg and 10.7rpg over two seasons before he was banned. Ralph beard had bene one of the league’s top guards, averaging 15.9ppg and 3.8apg. With them, the Olympians were one of the league’s better teams. Without them, they became losers and folded after struggling on through the 1952-53 season.
There was one important statistical change this season- the league started to keep track of minutes played, which will allow me to compute “Net Points” per 48 minutes, although I will continue to rank players based on total net points.
Other than that, the league was stable- more stable than a pro basketball league had ever been, with the only change for the 1951-52 season being that the Tri-Cities Black hawks became the Milwaukee Hawks. Another form of stability came from the Minneapolis Lakers, who overcame their disappointment of the previous season to win the next three NBA titles. Rochester was still their main completion and the Royals won the Western title at 41-25 to the Lakers’ 40-26. Syracuse had a good comeback, also going 40-26 to win the East, (thanks in part to the arrival of 6-9 Red Rocha to play center), nipping the Celtics, who were 39-27, (after obtaining Bill Sharman from the Pistons and Brooklyn Dodgers to pair with Cousy in the backcourt) and the Knicks who were 37-29. (This was also the year the Nationals moved downtown into the brand-new War Memorial from the State Fair Coliseum, (which actually had a greater capacity but, “lacked the amenities”.)
In the playoffs, the Nats beat the Warriors, who had stumbled to a 33-33 record), in a best of three game series. The Knicks did the same to Boston, winning the finale 88-87 in two overtimes. The Knicks then won the opener in Syracuse and both games in New York to advance to the title series again. Max Zaslofsky and Connie Simmons led a comeback from a 16 point deficit in the opener to win 85-87. George King had two open shots and Al Cervi one in the final minute but they all missed. The Nats held onto their lead, 102-92 in game two but the Knicks won two “hard fought” decisions in New York, 92-99 and 93-100. The first game featured a brawl began by Al McGuire when he punched Dolph Schayes and ended when Dolph’s fat her Carl, ran onto the court to defend his son. Carl was the largest man on the court. The Lakers swept a starless Indianapolis team while the Royals did the same to Fort Wayne The Royals won the first game of the western series, 88-78 but the Lakers won the next three 83-78, 77-67 and 82-80.
The Knicks almost won the opener in Minneapolis, losing 79-82 in OT. Al McGuire made a shot and was fouled in regulation but the refs didn’t see his shot go in, (no replays then), and sent him to the line for two fouls shots, both of which he missed. Then they did win the second game there, 80-72 and returned to New York for two games there where they hoped to build up a commanding lead. But the Lakers beat them, 82-77. Then the Knicks won another classic, 90-89 in overtime. The Lakers won at home, 102-89. This was the Knicks turn in New York, 76-68. But the seventh game was an anti-climax, the Lakers sewing up the title at home, 82-65.
The league kept rolling along in 1952-53 with the same teams at the top: Minneapolis, Rochester, New York, Syracuse and Boston. The Lakers had the best record at 48-22 but the Knicks had their best team of the era at 47-23. The Nats were a half game behind them at 47-24 and the Celtics just behind them at 46-25. The Royals were 44-26. The Pistons were on the rise again at 36-33. Fred Zollner paid the best salaries, (and bought a DC-3 to fly his players to games), and had acquired Andy Phillip to run the show and Freddie Scolari to provide an outside game. 6-9 Larry Foust was one of the better big men in the league, backed up by Red Auerbach’s old draft pick, Charlie Share. Future Lakers coach Fred Shaus was a quality forward and baseball star Dick Groat came off the bench. In Philadelphia Joe Fulks was about done and Paul Arizin was in the military service. They did have an outstanding young center in 6-8 Neil Johnston but he didn’t get much help.
In the playoffs, the Piston upset the Royals, winning the clincher 67-65 in Rochester and took the Lakers to five games before losing. The Celtics knocked off the Nats in two games, the second a 105-111 four overtime game that was Bob Cousy’s finest hour: he scored a playoff record 50 points, including 30 of 32 free throws. There were a record 107 fouls called in this game, (a record that, hopefully, will never be broken). This game featured another famous brawl when Red Auerbach decided Paul Seymour was “roughing up” Cousy so Red sent in Bob Brannum to do the same to Dolph Shayes. Schayes and Brannum duked it out and both got thrown out of the game. Boston police stormed the court and Bill Gabor wound up taking on three of them. They finally got back to playing basketball and the Nats were up 77-76 and celebrating when the refs announced that Cousy had bene fouled at the buzzer. Bob converted the single free throw, (no one and one yet), to begin the overtimes. Five Nats fouled out. Syracuse wound up playing with three guys who had six fouls because the rules won’t allow a team to play with less than 5 players. The refs announced that if any of them fouled Cousy, it would be a two shot technical foul. The Celtics got down to five men themselves, three with 5 fouls. Chuck Cooper had 6. Cousy tied the third OT at the buzzer with a 25 footer. The Nats took a 104-99 lead in the fourth overtime. “But Cousy drew another foul, made the free throw, tipped in a missed shot, stole a Nationals pass and scored on a left-handed backhand lay-up” to tie it. The exhausted Nats effort finally collapsed and the Celtics extended the run to 1-11 to close out the game and win 105-111. Old Nats fans must have a sense of déjà vu decades later when SU lost to Arkansas on a technical foul at the buzzer, beat UCONN in6 overtimes and had a hate/hate relationship with Georgetown and John Thompson. They’d seen it all back in the 50’s.
But the also exhausted Celtics lost to the Knicks on four games. The Knicks won the opener in Minneapolis 96-88 but them got steamrolled in four straight games, although the two played in New York were close, 73-71 and 71-69. The Lakers took care of business at home after that first defeat, winning 90-75 and 91-84 in the finale.
The League signed a television contract for the first time prior to the 1953-54 season. Unfortunately they signed it with the Dumont Television network, which went out of business after a couple of years but at least the NBA was beginning to get national exposure.
The Indianapolis Olympians gave up the ghost for the 1953-54 season and the Baltimore Bullets were on life support at 16-56. The Milwaukee Hawks weren’t much better at 21-51 and neither were the Philadelphia Warriors at 29-43 so the season was played without much suspense, except for who would finish first in their divisions, which gave that team no advantage at all since the league had adopted still another bizarre playoff system. The top three teams in each division would play a double round robin and the two teams that the best in that rebound robin would then play a best of three series to determine who would then play for the championship. The idea was to lessen the importance of home field advantage. But ti also meant that team could be playing in a post season game that would be meaningless to them because they had already been guaranteed to move on. They would just be helping to determine who they would play in the best of three series.
The pennant races, had they mattered, would have been exciting. In the east, the Knicks were 44-28, the Celtics 42-30 and the Nationals the same. In the west, the Lakers, in the final year of Mikan’s reign, went 46-26, even though George had declined to the league’s fourth best scorer at 18.1. The Royals were second at 44-28 and the Pistons third with 40-32. Both Syracuse and Minneapolis swept their round robins and the Nats then won two from Boston to go into the final series at 6-0 in the post season. The Lakers did lose one game by one point to the Royals but Mikan triumphed over Rochester one more time.
That Syracuse made the final was something of a miracle. That they stormed into it on a 6 game winning streak and took the Lakers to a seventh game is almost unbelievable. In the final game against the Celtics, Dolph Schayes was undercut by Robert Harris on the Celtics on a drive to the basket and knocked unconscious. When he was revived he felts pain in his left wrist which, when x-rayed, proved to be broken. It provoked another brawl broken up by the Boston police.
Ramsey: “Schayes, blood trickling from his wrist from a cut over his left eye, returned to the court to shoot two free throws and then took his place on the bench. So did Paul Seymour, who had a sore thumb from all the punches he had thrown. The Nats were down by 10 points with two of their best players out. In one of the signature rallies in the franchise’s history, they roared back, fueled by the suspicion that Schayes’ fall to the floor had not been an accident….Syracuse shocked the Celtics 83-76 to earn a trip to the finals.” Danny Biasone called it his “greatest day in basketball.” Al Cervi: “In all my days in basketball, this day will always be supreme.” But a better day was to come.
The Nats had suffered an unusual number of injuries that year and after these later two, they were dubbed the “Bandage Brigade”. Mark Allen Baker: “The Syracuse Herald-Journal even ran a photograph of the team poised as a ‘fife and drum corps’ with Coach Al Cervi leading the injured brigade.” But they almost won Syracuse a title the year before the one we all know they won. And they almost did it against the Lakers. The first two games were in Minneapolis and the opener went about as you’d expect, the big, bad Lakers winning 68-79 as Dolph Schayes attempted just one shot and missed. But in Game 2, the Nats got 20 points from Wally Osterkorn, a 6-5 forward who was the team’s lowest scoring regular and a 40 foot buzzer shot from Seymour’s sore thumb at the buzzer that won it, 62-60.
Mikan dominated Game 3 in the War Memorial, leading the Lakers to a 67-81 win. Schayes was 0 for 4 from the field and got only 4 points from the foul line but reserve forward Bob Lavoy scored 18. It just wasn’t enough to overcome Mikan. But Schayes was back in game 4, his left wrist heavily bandaged, scoring 10 points. But Seymour was the story with 25 points while Mikan was held to just 12. The Nats tied up the series 80-69. Game 5 was also in Syracuse, (they’d adopted the baseball format of 2-3-2), and the Lakers again restored order, 73-84, and went home for the final two games in Minneapolis. The series seemed pretty much d decided.
Ramsey on Game 6: “Mikan scored 25 in the first half but the big man was beginning to show his age. The Nats ran him and he tired. He scored only 5 in the final two quarters. With 30 seconds left and the scored tied at 63, the Nats called time out and began to plot a final shot. Schayes had fouled out after scoring 15 points. In the huddle, he told Cervi “Get Jim Neal in the lineup and let him shoot. Cervi, for mysterious reasons, agreed with the strategy. Neal was a 6-11 rookie. He had scored one point the entire night and he was reluctant to take on the responsibility of playing hero. Schayes asked him, “You haven’t lost your confidence, have you? Neal said no…..Seymour passed the ball to the nervous Neal, who with 10 seconds left, fumbled it. Seymour battled a crowd of Lakers for the ball, seized it and passed it back to Neal. With three seconds left, Neal launched a one-handed set shot. It switched, and the Nats forced game seven.” Neal played one more season and then left pro basketball for the real world.
Reality came to the Nats, as well, the Lakers winning the final game 80-87, sending Mikan into retirement as a winner, as he had been 7 times in 8 years. He told Bud Vander Meer “You have a great bunch of guys who gave us the scare of our lives. Make sure you give them the credit they deserve.”
Baker: “For the Nationals, it had been an incredible run, an exhilarating display of athletic prowess and the quintessence of courage. To say that Syracuse fans were proud of their team would be an understatement.”
You Tube has this clip with highlights of Game 1 and considerable discussion of both teams and the state of pro basketball at this time:
1954 NBA Finals - Minneapolis Lakers vs Syracuse Nationals
Unfortunately, they were in an unwieldy 17 team league, referred to in the “The Sports Encyclopedia: Basketball” as “a far-flung hodgepodge called the National Basketball Association”. The Eastern Division consisted of Syracuse and the original BAA teams from Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington plus the Baltimore Bullets, who had started out in the ABL. The Central Division had the powerhouse Lakers with their main rivals from Rochester and Fort Wayne, along with Chicago and the St. Louis Bombers. The Western Division had Indianapolis, Anderson, “Tri-Cities”, representing Moline and Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, Sheboygan, Waterloo and Denver. It would have made more geographic sense to have Minnesota and Chicago out west and Anderson and Fort Wayne in the central but sports leagues aren’t famous for looking at maps. It was also too bad Syracuse and Rochester couldn’t be in the same division.
TSE:BB says “The demands of travel especially in an era before flying was common, led to an unbalanced schedule, with Eastern and Central teams slated for 68 games and Western teams for 62 games. To add to the confusion, Syracuse was a member of the Eastern Division but played a Western schedule of 62 games.” I wondered what they meant by “played a Western schedule”: did they just mean that they played 62 games or that they played primarily western teams? I checked in on Basketball reference.com:
1949-50 Syracuse Nationals Schedule and Results | Basketball-Reference.com
By my count, they played Indianapolis 9 times, Tri-Cities and Denver 7 times, Anderson, Waterloo and Sheboygan 6 times each. They played Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington twice each. So it’s true. They played a Western Division Schedule but their record was placed in the Eastern Division! It’s like we played an ACC schedule but won the Big East championship. Per the “Official NBA Basketball Encyclopedia”, “Syracuse, Anderson, Tri-Cities and Indianapolis added a couple of extra games, giving them 64 apiece.” The same book describes the schedule as “neither logical nor appealing to the public.” Larry Fox in the “Illustrated History of Basketball” called the NBA schedule “a small-time vaudeville circuit wheel.”
That schedule may have helped the Nationals to have the league’s best record and the best record the franchise ever had: 51 wins and 13 losses! They won 16 of their first 17 games and had a 41-8 record at one point. But the West had only two teams with winning records. But the Nationals did split two games against both the Lakers and Royals, who tied for the North Division lead at 51-17. The Nats had Dolph Schayes coming into his own as a star, averaging 17.1ppg. Alex Hannum, later to coach the team, (as well as the Hawks and the 76ers in the Wilt Chamberlain era), was the other forward. A gentleman named George Ratkovicz was the 6-7 225 center, (and the team’s second leading scorer at 13.1. Al Cervi, Billy Gabor and Paul Seymour made for a strong backcourt, although none of them scored in double figures. Another guard, Johnny Macknowski, did at 10.6.
This was not Syracuse’s greatest team, despite the numerical record. Here’s an excerpt from my history of the 1954-55 championship team, “Syracuse Wins World Series”, based on my reading of Ramsay’s and Baker’s books as well as other sources:
“The 1949-50 Syracuse Nationals had the best regular season record in the franchise’s history at 51-13. In fact that the NBA’s best record until the Celtics topped it a decade later. The 1954-55 Nationals finally broke through and won the NBA title. But nearly everybody involved with the team feels the peak was in the late 1950’s The ’49-’50 team accumulated their record in a bloated 17 team league that was the result of an awkward merger between the old BAA and NBL. Six of those teams would fold at the end the year. The 1954-55 team was a defense-oriented team that won a title between the era of the two great dynasties, Mikan’s Lakers and Russell’s Celtics. The 1958-59 team, by the end of the season and the 1959-60 team were offensive powerhouses that still knew how to play defense in a stronger league than in the earlier years.”
Mikan’s Lakers weren’t satisfied with winning the 1948 NBL title and the 1949 BAA title. They wanted the first NBA title, as well and strengthened themselves with four excellent rookies, 6-7 230 power forward, (maybe the first player to warrant that title), Vern Mikkelsen, 5-10 point guard Salter Martin, 6-2 shooting guard Bob Harrison, a boyhood friend of Paul Seymour, and a 6-3 forward “more suited for football” named Bud Grant.
It was a rough, physical team. Mikan dominated the middle, scoring 27.4 per game. Mikkelsen was a productive player with 11.6 but also an “enforcer”, who made sure Big George didn’t have to take on the tough guys of the league along. (David Ramsey compared him to Charles Oakley). Martin “seldom scored but played stingy defense and worked the ball to the Laker’s great frontcourt”. Mikan said of Martin”(Bob) Cousy never ran wild against us. He could never compare with Martin on defense.” Martin also held Rochester’s Bob Davies without a field goal in a key game. Harrison was another tough guy who “didn’t know much about basketball’s finesse or grace. He learned that the only way to win was to attack your opponent with everything at your disposal.”
Rochester somehow matched the Lakers, win for win with their fabulous backcourt of Bob Davies, Bobby Wanzer and center Arnie Risen, who was aided in taking on Minneapolis’ bulk by 6-5 240 Arnie Johnson and George Mikan’s 6-8 230 brother Ed. They beat the Lakers 87-62, 83-77 and 66-64 in Rochester but lost to them 80-95, 73-85 and 70-92 in Minneapolis. In fact both teams were 33-1 at home that season, 18-16 on the road. The Nationals were 34-1 at home and 17-12 on the road. And those were the best teams in the league. The Royals lost at home only to the Fort Wayne Pistons, 84-92, the Lakers only to the Chicago Stags, 82-96 and the Nats only to the Anderson Packers 75-77 in overtime.
This overwhelming home court advantage became critical for the playoffs because the Nats, having the best record in the league, had home field advantage in the playoffs over anyone they played. The Lakers broke the curse by beating the Royals in Rochester 78-76 to break the tie for the Central Division title. The Royal’s funk continued as they then lost at home to the Pistons again, 84-90 and then lost in overtime to them in Fort Wayne 78-79 in overtime to end their season in total frustration. (But wait till next year). The Lakers swept Chicago 2-0, swept Fort Wayne 2-0 and swept Anderson 2-0. Syracuse for some reason only had to win two series to get to the finals. At least they finally got a chance to play some eastern teams, sweeping the Warriors 2-0 and beating the Knicks, a coming team, 2-1. That set up the confrontation with the Lakers for the first NBA championship, one Syracuse had the inside track on due to home field advantage.
Mark Allen Baker in “Hoops Roots: Basketball in Syracuse” got heavy into the hyperbole: “Tenacious in the victory pursuit, Cervi’s dragoons dominated their combatants…Although seemingly undeniable and pre-destined, ahead lay Minneapolis and Mikan. Having won seven straight playoff games…the Lakers were tyrannizing and relentless. They, too, felt ordained.”
The first two games were in Syracuse, the Nats opportunity to take a commanding lead. David Ramsey in “Nats, a City, A team, An Era”: “Syracuse led. The Lakers Pollard dribbled the ball in the frontcourt, trying to kill time, (why?) when Cervi sneaked in for a steal. He dribbled toward an uncontested lay-up that might have clinched the game. But a whistle stopped him. Referees called a foul on (Nat’s reserve) center Ed Peterson for a foul against Mikan, who made a free throw. Momentum moved to the Lakers.”
Baker: “As the pendulum of momentum swung during with one minute remaining, the Nats were up by a bucket, 66-64. The Lakers then called a play for Jim Pollard. Rookie Bud Grant brought the ball up court and then passed it to his target. But Pollard was stanchly defended so he returned the ball to a stunned Grant. Confounded, Grant launched a “Hail Mary” to tie it up. The Central New York crowd just stood in disbelief.” (A quarter century later, Grant would witness another “Hail Mary”, one he didn’t like as much:
)
“Cervi then took things into his own hands; opting for a game-winning shot wasn’t unusual behavior for ‘Digger’ but successfully maneuvering around Mikan was. In a valiant move toward the basket, the shot was blocked by Mikan and retrieved by Grant, who quickly threw to rookie Bob Harrison, who popped a 40 footer for the win: 68-66, Lakers. The Nats were devastated, nobody more than Cervi.“ The Lakers had the road win they needed to negate the home field advantage.
Decades later, Al Cervi spoke to David Ramsey in his living room about that game and the play at the end. “To this day, as sure as I’m sitting in this room, I believe they took it from us….Someone swatted me across the arm. (when the lay-up was blocked).”Ramsey describes Cervi’s reaction, those many years later: “He has hopped out of his easy chair and is standing in the middle of his living room in suburban Rochester, a man in his 70s, who can’t forget, who won’t ever forget this moment from his past. “Swatted me right across the arm. And no call! No call!.. They took it from us.” That’s Al Cervi.
Ramsey also describes Harrison’s reaction to his 40 footer. “Harrison remembers how it felt to stand in the Fairgrounds Coliseum, a loud, nasty place and realize no one was making a sound. The crowd had bene stunned into silence. At first, joy filled Harrison’s heart. His teammates grabbed him, hugged him, shouted sweet things in his ear. Then he caught a look at Seymour, his best friend. Seymour trudged off the court, staring at the floor.” Harrison: “I was uneasy, since it was against him.” Ramsey: After the game, the two friends drove to downtown Syracuse and walked around for a while. They walked and talked, just as they had done back in Toledo…on those walks, they had talked about winning the Ohio state title, a vision that eventually came true. Once, they had chased a title together. Now, they were opponents. Only one of them could emerge as the champ.” Harrison: “I was embarrassed, sort of. I had enjoyed a long, wonderful friendship with Paul. I’m glad I had the opportunity to play the hero, but I felt bad for Paul.”
Was it a 40 footer or a 30 footer? This says 30 and it seems more likely:
1950 NBA Finals.mp4
Harrison describes it:
Bob Harrison describes his buzzer beater in 1950 NBA Finals
Baker: “The following day, the Nats once again stood before the Lakers at home, determined to vindicate their loss. Looming over the court was not only George Mikan but also a remarkable smoke screen so thick you could hardly see down court. The local press had leaked a story that the giant was allergic to smoke so not a soul in the Coliseum could be seen without a cigar or a cigarette. While it didn’t stop Mikan, who netted 32 points, it did slow down the Lakers, who lost 91-85.” Mikan had scored 22 of his points in the second half, after some of the smoke had cleared.
The Nats now had to play two games in Minneapolis, where the Lakers proved invincible, 77-91 and 69-77. Ramsey reports that Billy Gabor came down with the flu and didn’t play in game three but left his sickbed to play in game four and “throw a ball at referee John Nucatola”. Here’s an interesting tidbit: NBA courts were not standardized in those days and the one in Minneapolis was a good deal narrower than the one in Syracuse, which played into Mikan’s hands:
How The NBA Finals Have Changed: 1950 vs 2015? | 80Twelve
Backs to the wall, they came through with an 83-76 triumph in Syracuse. “Cervi ordered George Ratkovicz to hassle Mikan and it almost worked. An angry Mikan twice went after the Nats reserve center, (most sources have him, not Peterson, as the starter), and had to be pulled away.” Ramsey: “Syracuse fans didn’t much like Mikan. Of course they didn’t much like anyone who wasn’t a Nat.” Mikan: “Syracuse – now that was a town to end all towns. Great Italian dinners and rabid fans. I mean, they were crazy there.”
Cervi was still telling anyone who would listen that Syracuse would win but the Lakers closed them out in grand style in Minneapolis, 95-110. Cervi got thrown out of the game for calling Nucatola “a politician and a bum”. (I’m sure he called him a lot more than that.) The Lakers were the superior team but Syracuse players and fans will always wonder how things might have gone if they’d pulled out that first game and then played a seventh game back in Syracuse for all the marbles.
More changes were on the way for the 1950-51 season. The league did some addition by subtraction, eliminating Chicago, St. Louis, Anderson, Sheboygan, Waterloo and Denver. In addition, the Washington Capitols disbanded after a 10-25 start. Red Auerbach had left them the previous year after a disagreement with the owner. He then became the coach of the Tri-Cities Hawks. After a disagreement with that owner, he found an owner he could get along with, Walter Brown of the Celtics. But he immediately created controversy by not drafting Holy Cross hero Bob Cousy for the team. Instead he took 6-11 Charley Share of Bowling Green. When pressed about this he famously said : "Am I supposed to win, or please the local yokels?"
Cousy instead got drafted by Tri-Cites, “a place he had never heard of and that in reality did not exist”, (The Illustrated History of Basketball). The hawks traded him to Chicago, which had not yet folded. When they did just before the season began, there was a dispersal draft for the Stag’s players. The last here of them were Cousy, max Zaslofsky and Andy Phillip. The three teams involved were the Celtics, the Warriors and the Knicks. The one thing all three of them agreed upon was that they didn’t want Cousy. Maurice Podoloff, the commissioner, put the player’s names in a hat and had Ned Irish, Eddie Gottlieb and Walter Brown to draw the names from a hat. When Brown looked at the slip of paper and saw the name ‘Cousy’, "I could have fallen to the floor." Both Brown and Auerbach later changed their minds, as Auerbach had already done with Charlie Share when he managed to get Ed McCauley from the St. Louis Bombers Share never played for the Celtics. Cousy sure did.
This left the NBA with a more compact ten team league, with two five team divisions. It actually made some geographic sense: Boston, Syracuse, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore in the East and Rochester, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Tri-Cities and Minneapolis. I’m not sure why they got rid of Chicago and Sat. louis and kept Tri-Cities and Fort Wayne, but those last two franchises are still in the league as the Atlanta Hawks and Detroit Pistons. So are the Celtics and the Knicks. The Warriors are now Golden State, the Nationals the 76ers, the Royals the Sacramento Kings and, of course, the Lakers are in Los Angeles, where there aren’t as many lakes as In Minnesota. This version of the Baltimore Bullets is not the same on Wes Unseld used to play for: they went out of business early in the 1954-55 season. The Indianapolis Olympians were not long for this league, either. Of the franchises that survived, only the Celtics, Knicks and Warriors were original BAA teams. The 76ers, the Lakers, the Kings, the Pistons and the Hawks all trace their origin to the NBL.
The league also moved forward by inaugurating a mid-season All-Star game, just like baseball. Walter Brown was the big force behind the idea and the first All-Star game was played in Boston and was won by the East 111-94 in an upset, (somebody other than George Mikan’s team actually won something). The Celtics “Easy” Ed Macauley won the first MVP of the All-Star game. He was the leading scorer with 20 points to 19 for Joe Fulks and 15 apiece for Dolph Schayes and Paul Arizin, the Warriors new star. Alex Groza led the West with 17 points. The Hawks’ Frankie Brian had 14, Bob Davies 13, Mikan 12 and Vern Mikkelsen 11.
Schayes was the leading rebounder with 14 to Groza’s 13 and Mikan’s. Dolph also led in rebounds for the regular season with 1,080 for 16.4 per game, surprisingly more than Mikan’s 958 (But George again led in points with 1,932 (28.4). Dolph was only sixth in scoring with 17.0 per game, behind Mikan, Groza, Macauley, Fulks and Arizin. The addition of rebounds as an official stats underscored the value of the league’s big men. It also gave my “net points” formula a big boost: we no have points, rebounds and assists on the positive side vs. missed field goals, missed free throws, and personal fouls on the other side. All that’s missing are steals, blocks and turnovers, all low number stats and they are basically a wash, so from this season on, “net points” will look a lot more like it does today.
But all these changes, as significant as they may be, paled compared to the biggest change: the league decided to integrate. The NBL and the WPBT had been integrated, to an extent, anyway but the BAA had made a rule against using black players. By 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson, that was certainly antiquated. Red Auerbach’s second draft choice that year was Chuck Cooper of Duquesne. It was just like Red to be so totally dedicated to winning that he wouldn’t let other people’s prejudices stand in his way. Later he fielded the first all-black starting line-up.
Cooper was one of a triumvirate who together became the NBA’s Jackie Robinson. Chuck was the first black player drafted by an NBA team. The Knicks offered a contract to the Globetrotter’s Sweetwater Clifton and he accepted it, being the first black player to sign with an NBA team. But the first black player to play for and NBA team was Earl Lloyd, who had bene drafted by the Washington Capitols in the 9th round of the draft. Due to the schedule the Caps played a game in Rochester on October 31, 1950, before the Celtics or Knicks played a game. The Caps lost that one, 70-78:
Earl Lloyd becomes first black player in the NBA - Oct 31, 1950 - HISTORY.com
Syracuse.com had a great article on Lloyd when he died:
Earl Lloyd dead at 86; NBA's first black player was a world champion, in Syracuse
It’s fascinating that in that interview, Lloyd, who played at tiny West Virginia State, an all-black school, was concerned that he could not compete with white players, who were all the sports pages covered. He figured that they must be the best players in the world. Times sure have changed.
Another thing that changed was that fewer teams meant better teams, or at least more good ones and the balanced schedule meant that nobody went 51-13 or 51-17. The Lakers were as strong as ever but went 44-24. The Royals were the same Royals but their record wasn’t the same: 41-27. Those were still the best records in the league. The Nationals fell all the way to 32-34 and finished 4th. They actually had to play Eastern Division teams this year and three of them, the Warriors, Celtics and Knicks were all significantly improved and finished ahead of them.
People think the Knicks have had two good stretches in their history: The Reed-Frazier Era, (1967-74), when they had seven straight winning records, reached the NBA finals three times and won their only two titles and the Ewing Era, (1988-98), when they had 10 winning seasons in 11 years and made it to the finals once. But there was another strong period before that, (1948-54: Let call it the Lapchick Era, as Joe was the coach in all those years), when they had 6 straight winning seasons and went to three straight finals, (1951-53). The big names were 6-6 215 Harry, “The Horse” Gallatin, who often played center against much bigger men but more than held his own, (he averaged 13 points and 12 rebounds a game for his career), 6-5 forward Carl Braun, a good shooter who sometimes played in the backcourt,
6-5 210 Vince Boryla, another good shooter in 6-3 Ernie Vandeweghe, who married Colleen Kay Hutchins, Miss America 1952 and fathered Kiki, Max Zaslofsky, the old Chicago Stag gunner, Sweetwater Clifton, the former Globetrotter and Dick McGuire one of the best all-around guards in the league, whose little brother Al rode the bench.
Meanwhile, Red Auerbach turned the Celtics into a contender with his new acquisitions, the best of whom was the guy he didn’t want, Bob Cousy, who immediately became the best point guard in the league, dazzling the fans with his fancy dribbling and passing and scoring 15.6 points a game to boot. He was also a remarkable rebounder for his 6-1 size at 6.9 per game. He only finished 4th in assists with 4.9 but would go on to lead the league 8 times in a row. But the team’s leading scorer and rebounder was 6-8 190 ‘Easy’ Ed Macauley with 20.4/9.1. Chuck Cooper was a solid 6-5 forward, similar to Lloyd with 9.3/8.5.
The Philadelphia Warriors had found a second big scoring threat to go with Joe Fulks, who was starting to fade a bit at 18.7ppg. Paul Arizin, a 6-4 forward, scored 17.2 and rebounded 9.8. They’d gotten Andy Phillip in Podoloff’s Hat Draft and he led the league in assists at 6.3. His backcourt mate George Senesky was third with 5.3. It’s easy to accumulate assists with shooters like Fulks and Arizin on your team. It was the Warriors who won the East at 40-26 with the Celtics second at 39-30, and the Knicks third at 36-30 (game totals were off because the Washington team had folded in mid season).
The Nats still made the playoffs, (as they did every year of their existence) and they actually made another run at the title, knocking off the Warriors in Philly, 91-89 in OT and closing them out at home, 90-78. They traded home victories with the Knicks, (92-103 in New York; 102-80 in Syracuse) before the pivotal game. Ramsey: “With 10 seconds left and the score tied, Cervi drove to the basket. With time running out, Dick McGuire swatted his shot and forced overtime. Harry Gallatin won the game with a last second shot in overtime.” (75-77). Syracuse tied it again with a 90-83 in the State Fair Coliseum and led 70-58 in the Garden with 10 minutes left. They already had the news from the West, (see below), and maybe that caused them to lose focus on what they were doing. Ramsey: “The Nats, throwing the ball away, blew the lead and lost, 81-83.” Joe Lapchick: “I still can’t believe that pros of that caliber could let a big lead melt away.”
The “news from the west” was that the Rochester Royals had upset the Minneapolis Lakers. ‘Superman’ had fractured an ankle. He still tried to play on it, sprayed with ethyl chloride and, amazingly, scored 32 points in the final game. But the Royals, after losing the first tame in Minneapolis, 73-76 won three in a row, 70-66, 83-70, 80-75. It was a big deal to get the big guy out of there, (it was the only time Mikan played a full season and didn’t win the championship), but now teams had to deal with the Royals, who were a different team but nearly as good.
The Royals wiped the floor with the Knicks for three games, winning in Rochester 92-65 and 99-84. Then they won in New York 78-71 to take a 3-0 lead in the best of seven series. Teams have overcome that deficit in hockey and in baseball but no one has ever done it in basketball. The Knicks came the closest, despite being unable to play in Madison Square Garden, (which owned the team) because the circus was in town. They pulled out a 79-73 game in New York, a 92-89 game in Rochester and a 80-73 game in new York to tie the series. The Royals attempted to restore order, taking a 16 point lead in the final game in Rochester but the Knicks fought back again to tie the score with 40 seconds left. But Bob Davies drove to the basket and was fouled. He made two to give the Royals the lead. The rules at the time called for a jump ball after a made free throw in the last three minutes of the game. The Royals won that and scored again at the buzzer for a 79-75 win and the championship.
David Ramsey: “(Les) Harrison expected a parade in his hometown, a mammoth celebration, something. Nothing much happened. He flew to Miami, rested in the sun and wondered if pro basketball had a future in ‘little’ Rochester, New York.”
Basketball was achieving unprecedented level of popularity at this time, but as in football the greatest public interest was on the collegiate game, which had been around much longer than the professionals and was used to being on the front page of the sports section. On February 19, 1951 the CCNY basketball team was returning by train from Philadelphia after an impressive victory over Temple. They were the toast of the basketball world, having become the first team ever to win both the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same season in 1950, (both tournaments were held in Madison Square Garden and so could not take place simultaneously). At New Brunswick, New Jersey some gentlemen boarded the train and approached Coach Nat Holman, one the early stars of professional basketball as an Original Celtic. One of them said he was from the District Attorney’s office in New York and told Holman “I have some bad news for you Nat. I have to pick up some of your players.” There had been suspicion that points were being shaved in games in exchange for money from gamblers and even some lesser cases but when CCNY became involved, the dominos really started to fall. Eventually 32 players from seven different teams were found to have shaved points in 86 different games – and that was assumed to be the tip of the iceberg. This tainted college basketball but was a blessing in disguise for the pros. The fans figured that since the pro players were being paid good salaries, they would be unlikely to risk their positon by accepting a bribe so the pro game was assumed to be on the up and up.
Indeed there was no evidence of an NBA player accepting a bribe, although a referee named Sol Levy admitted taking $3,000, (he said he got ‘cold feet’ and “only went through the motions”). But that didn’t mean that NBA players hadn’t taken bribes when in college. One of them was Jack Molinas, a Pistons rookie who turned out to be the “mastermind” in the collegiate case from his days at Columbia and who was thrown out of the league for betting on games involving the Pistons even before he got a 10-15 year sentence for his role in the point shaving scandals. Adolph Rupp of Kentucky blamed everything on New York City crooks and bragged “Those gamblers couldn’t touch my players with a ten foot pole.” (Quotes from the Illustrated History of Basketball, by Larry Fox).
It was later found that Rupp was a friend of Ed Curd, “the biggest bookmaker in Lexington Kentucky and that Curd had had meals with the team. Further it was found that Kentucky players Alex Groza, Ralph Beard and later Bill Spivey, (a 7 foot center who lead Kentucky to the 1951 NCAA title), were involved in “fixes”, (although Spivey contested those claims all his life and was never convicted). Groza and Beard, who were the starts and part of the ownership of the Indianapolis Olympians, were banned from the league, as was Spivey. Spivey alter played for the ABL in its last season and in the Eastern League, which rose for its ashes. He then turned up in the new ABL in the early 60’s and then went back to the Eastern League after it folded. He had the opportunity to play against Wilt Chamberlain in a 1960 exhibition game and recorded 30 points and 23 rebounds to Wilt’s 31 points and 27 rebounds. Rupp assistant and future Kentucky coach Joe B. Hall said Spivey could have been one of the greatest of the game.
Alex Groza already was, averaging 22.5ppg and 10.7rpg over two seasons before he was banned. Ralph beard had bene one of the league’s top guards, averaging 15.9ppg and 3.8apg. With them, the Olympians were one of the league’s better teams. Without them, they became losers and folded after struggling on through the 1952-53 season.
There was one important statistical change this season- the league started to keep track of minutes played, which will allow me to compute “Net Points” per 48 minutes, although I will continue to rank players based on total net points.
Other than that, the league was stable- more stable than a pro basketball league had ever been, with the only change for the 1951-52 season being that the Tri-Cities Black hawks became the Milwaukee Hawks. Another form of stability came from the Minneapolis Lakers, who overcame their disappointment of the previous season to win the next three NBA titles. Rochester was still their main completion and the Royals won the Western title at 41-25 to the Lakers’ 40-26. Syracuse had a good comeback, also going 40-26 to win the East, (thanks in part to the arrival of 6-9 Red Rocha to play center), nipping the Celtics, who were 39-27, (after obtaining Bill Sharman from the Pistons and Brooklyn Dodgers to pair with Cousy in the backcourt) and the Knicks who were 37-29. (This was also the year the Nationals moved downtown into the brand-new War Memorial from the State Fair Coliseum, (which actually had a greater capacity but, “lacked the amenities”.)
In the playoffs, the Nats beat the Warriors, who had stumbled to a 33-33 record), in a best of three game series. The Knicks did the same to Boston, winning the finale 88-87 in two overtimes. The Knicks then won the opener in Syracuse and both games in New York to advance to the title series again. Max Zaslofsky and Connie Simmons led a comeback from a 16 point deficit in the opener to win 85-87. George King had two open shots and Al Cervi one in the final minute but they all missed. The Nats held onto their lead, 102-92 in game two but the Knicks won two “hard fought” decisions in New York, 92-99 and 93-100. The first game featured a brawl began by Al McGuire when he punched Dolph Schayes and ended when Dolph’s fat her Carl, ran onto the court to defend his son. Carl was the largest man on the court. The Lakers swept a starless Indianapolis team while the Royals did the same to Fort Wayne The Royals won the first game of the western series, 88-78 but the Lakers won the next three 83-78, 77-67 and 82-80.
The Knicks almost won the opener in Minneapolis, losing 79-82 in OT. Al McGuire made a shot and was fouled in regulation but the refs didn’t see his shot go in, (no replays then), and sent him to the line for two fouls shots, both of which he missed. Then they did win the second game there, 80-72 and returned to New York for two games there where they hoped to build up a commanding lead. But the Lakers beat them, 82-77. Then the Knicks won another classic, 90-89 in overtime. The Lakers won at home, 102-89. This was the Knicks turn in New York, 76-68. But the seventh game was an anti-climax, the Lakers sewing up the title at home, 82-65.
The league kept rolling along in 1952-53 with the same teams at the top: Minneapolis, Rochester, New York, Syracuse and Boston. The Lakers had the best record at 48-22 but the Knicks had their best team of the era at 47-23. The Nats were a half game behind them at 47-24 and the Celtics just behind them at 46-25. The Royals were 44-26. The Pistons were on the rise again at 36-33. Fred Zollner paid the best salaries, (and bought a DC-3 to fly his players to games), and had acquired Andy Phillip to run the show and Freddie Scolari to provide an outside game. 6-9 Larry Foust was one of the better big men in the league, backed up by Red Auerbach’s old draft pick, Charlie Share. Future Lakers coach Fred Shaus was a quality forward and baseball star Dick Groat came off the bench. In Philadelphia Joe Fulks was about done and Paul Arizin was in the military service. They did have an outstanding young center in 6-8 Neil Johnston but he didn’t get much help.
In the playoffs, the Piston upset the Royals, winning the clincher 67-65 in Rochester and took the Lakers to five games before losing. The Celtics knocked off the Nats in two games, the second a 105-111 four overtime game that was Bob Cousy’s finest hour: he scored a playoff record 50 points, including 30 of 32 free throws. There were a record 107 fouls called in this game, (a record that, hopefully, will never be broken). This game featured another famous brawl when Red Auerbach decided Paul Seymour was “roughing up” Cousy so Red sent in Bob Brannum to do the same to Dolph Shayes. Schayes and Brannum duked it out and both got thrown out of the game. Boston police stormed the court and Bill Gabor wound up taking on three of them. They finally got back to playing basketball and the Nats were up 77-76 and celebrating when the refs announced that Cousy had bene fouled at the buzzer. Bob converted the single free throw, (no one and one yet), to begin the overtimes. Five Nats fouled out. Syracuse wound up playing with three guys who had six fouls because the rules won’t allow a team to play with less than 5 players. The refs announced that if any of them fouled Cousy, it would be a two shot technical foul. The Celtics got down to five men themselves, three with 5 fouls. Chuck Cooper had 6. Cousy tied the third OT at the buzzer with a 25 footer. The Nats took a 104-99 lead in the fourth overtime. “But Cousy drew another foul, made the free throw, tipped in a missed shot, stole a Nationals pass and scored on a left-handed backhand lay-up” to tie it. The exhausted Nats effort finally collapsed and the Celtics extended the run to 1-11 to close out the game and win 105-111. Old Nats fans must have a sense of déjà vu decades later when SU lost to Arkansas on a technical foul at the buzzer, beat UCONN in6 overtimes and had a hate/hate relationship with Georgetown and John Thompson. They’d seen it all back in the 50’s.
But the also exhausted Celtics lost to the Knicks on four games. The Knicks won the opener in Minneapolis 96-88 but them got steamrolled in four straight games, although the two played in New York were close, 73-71 and 71-69. The Lakers took care of business at home after that first defeat, winning 90-75 and 91-84 in the finale.
The League signed a television contract for the first time prior to the 1953-54 season. Unfortunately they signed it with the Dumont Television network, which went out of business after a couple of years but at least the NBA was beginning to get national exposure.
The Indianapolis Olympians gave up the ghost for the 1953-54 season and the Baltimore Bullets were on life support at 16-56. The Milwaukee Hawks weren’t much better at 21-51 and neither were the Philadelphia Warriors at 29-43 so the season was played without much suspense, except for who would finish first in their divisions, which gave that team no advantage at all since the league had adopted still another bizarre playoff system. The top three teams in each division would play a double round robin and the two teams that the best in that rebound robin would then play a best of three series to determine who would then play for the championship. The idea was to lessen the importance of home field advantage. But ti also meant that team could be playing in a post season game that would be meaningless to them because they had already been guaranteed to move on. They would just be helping to determine who they would play in the best of three series.
The pennant races, had they mattered, would have been exciting. In the east, the Knicks were 44-28, the Celtics 42-30 and the Nationals the same. In the west, the Lakers, in the final year of Mikan’s reign, went 46-26, even though George had declined to the league’s fourth best scorer at 18.1. The Royals were second at 44-28 and the Pistons third with 40-32. Both Syracuse and Minneapolis swept their round robins and the Nats then won two from Boston to go into the final series at 6-0 in the post season. The Lakers did lose one game by one point to the Royals but Mikan triumphed over Rochester one more time.
That Syracuse made the final was something of a miracle. That they stormed into it on a 6 game winning streak and took the Lakers to a seventh game is almost unbelievable. In the final game against the Celtics, Dolph Schayes was undercut by Robert Harris on the Celtics on a drive to the basket and knocked unconscious. When he was revived he felts pain in his left wrist which, when x-rayed, proved to be broken. It provoked another brawl broken up by the Boston police.
Ramsey: “Schayes, blood trickling from his wrist from a cut over his left eye, returned to the court to shoot two free throws and then took his place on the bench. So did Paul Seymour, who had a sore thumb from all the punches he had thrown. The Nats were down by 10 points with two of their best players out. In one of the signature rallies in the franchise’s history, they roared back, fueled by the suspicion that Schayes’ fall to the floor had not been an accident….Syracuse shocked the Celtics 83-76 to earn a trip to the finals.” Danny Biasone called it his “greatest day in basketball.” Al Cervi: “In all my days in basketball, this day will always be supreme.” But a better day was to come.
The Nats had suffered an unusual number of injuries that year and after these later two, they were dubbed the “Bandage Brigade”. Mark Allen Baker: “The Syracuse Herald-Journal even ran a photograph of the team poised as a ‘fife and drum corps’ with Coach Al Cervi leading the injured brigade.” But they almost won Syracuse a title the year before the one we all know they won. And they almost did it against the Lakers. The first two games were in Minneapolis and the opener went about as you’d expect, the big, bad Lakers winning 68-79 as Dolph Schayes attempted just one shot and missed. But in Game 2, the Nats got 20 points from Wally Osterkorn, a 6-5 forward who was the team’s lowest scoring regular and a 40 foot buzzer shot from Seymour’s sore thumb at the buzzer that won it, 62-60.
Mikan dominated Game 3 in the War Memorial, leading the Lakers to a 67-81 win. Schayes was 0 for 4 from the field and got only 4 points from the foul line but reserve forward Bob Lavoy scored 18. It just wasn’t enough to overcome Mikan. But Schayes was back in game 4, his left wrist heavily bandaged, scoring 10 points. But Seymour was the story with 25 points while Mikan was held to just 12. The Nats tied up the series 80-69. Game 5 was also in Syracuse, (they’d adopted the baseball format of 2-3-2), and the Lakers again restored order, 73-84, and went home for the final two games in Minneapolis. The series seemed pretty much d decided.
Ramsey on Game 6: “Mikan scored 25 in the first half but the big man was beginning to show his age. The Nats ran him and he tired. He scored only 5 in the final two quarters. With 30 seconds left and the scored tied at 63, the Nats called time out and began to plot a final shot. Schayes had fouled out after scoring 15 points. In the huddle, he told Cervi “Get Jim Neal in the lineup and let him shoot. Cervi, for mysterious reasons, agreed with the strategy. Neal was a 6-11 rookie. He had scored one point the entire night and he was reluctant to take on the responsibility of playing hero. Schayes asked him, “You haven’t lost your confidence, have you? Neal said no…..Seymour passed the ball to the nervous Neal, who with 10 seconds left, fumbled it. Seymour battled a crowd of Lakers for the ball, seized it and passed it back to Neal. With three seconds left, Neal launched a one-handed set shot. It switched, and the Nats forced game seven.” Neal played one more season and then left pro basketball for the real world.
Reality came to the Nats, as well, the Lakers winning the final game 80-87, sending Mikan into retirement as a winner, as he had been 7 times in 8 years. He told Bud Vander Meer “You have a great bunch of guys who gave us the scare of our lives. Make sure you give them the credit they deserve.”
Baker: “For the Nationals, it had been an incredible run, an exhilarating display of athletic prowess and the quintessence of courage. To say that Syracuse fans were proud of their team would be an understatement.”
You Tube has this clip with highlights of Game 1 and considerable discussion of both teams and the state of pro basketball at this time:
1954 NBA Finals - Minneapolis Lakers vs Syracuse Nationals
