It was the year 1891, when Canadian physical education instructor James Naismith, then teaching at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, thought it a splendid idea to have his students throw a melon-sized leather ball into a bucket raised up high on a wooden pole. And just like that, the game of basketball was born. Little did Naismith know then that his invention, just over 100 years later, would grow into one of the most popular sports around the globe, a multi-billion dollar industry, and produce some of the world’s most famous athletes ever.
During his lifetime, Naismith actively sought to popularize the sport, and in the process, among other achievements, he set the foundation for one of the most successful basketball programs in North American College Basketball history at the University of Kansas. Later, Naismith witnessed Basketball premier at the Olympics during the games held in Berlin in 1936, as well as the birth of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) in 1939. Today, his legacy lives on as the namesake for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t until 55 years after Naismith had invented the game, at a time when professional basketball was played mostly in small arenas or even high school gymnasiums, that a bunch of ice hockey arena owners set the course for basketball to make it big. Intent on maximising profits, they decided to start their own league that would bring professional basketball from its dusty gyms into their grand arenas on nights these would otherwise have remained empty. And thus, in New York City on June 6 1946, at the hands of several ice hockey moguls, the National Basketball Association (NBA), today the most competitive basketball league in the world, was formed as the Basketball Association of America (BAA).
The first ever NBA (BAA) game was held on November 1 1946 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Canada. It featured the Toronto Huskies and the New York Knickerbockers. In front of a crowd of 7000, Ossie Schectman scored the opening basket for the Knickerbockers - the first ever basket scored in NBA history, and his team went on to win the game 68-66. Sadly, the Huskies disbanded in 1947, after only one season. The Knickerbockers, meanwhile, grew up to become one of the most valuable basketball franchises in the NBA, playing their home games in perhaps the second most famous stadium in the world after the Colosseum in Rome: Madison Square Garden.
The BAA in 1946, however, unlike its present day counterpart, was not the only professional basketball league around, let alone the one featuring the greatest talent. For example, one of the most successful franchises in NBA history, the Los Angeles Lakers (then Minneapolis Lakers), during the early days of the BAA competed in the National Basketball League (NBL), one of two rival leagues wrestling for supremacy during the 1930s and '40s. After winning the NBL championship in 1948, the Lakers joined the BAA and immediately went on to win the BAA championship the following year; the same year the BAA officially rebranded as the NBA.
'The Monster'
Following the team's championship victory in their inaugural NBA season in 1949, the Minneapolis Lakers built a dynasty by winning another four titles in 1950, 1952, 1953 and 1954. The team’s dominance was rooted in the play of their star big man, George 'The Monster' Mikan, arguably the league’s brightest star and crowd puller at the time. Standing 2,08 m tall, Mikan towered over much of his competition at a time when the majority of NBA players were short, quick and specialising in midrange jumpshots. Mikan’s game, in contrast, was tailored to playing close to the basket. He had perfected one particular offensive move that proved so effective it would become a staple in the offensive arsenal of NBA players to this day: the hook shot. Combined with his size and agility, Mikan's hook shot had become nearly unblockable, allowing him to dominate games by efficiently scoring over smaller defenders, and elevating him to national stardom. In fact, Mikan’s dominance during this time was so complete that it prompted the NBA to introduce several rule changes aimed at mitigating his superiority. These changes would forever transform how basketball was played thereafter.
Seeing as Mikan was nearly unstoppable once he received the ball close to the basket, the ‘Mikan rule’ was introduced in the 1951-52 season. By widening the paint - the designated area under and in front of the basket in which offensive players can only remain for up to three seconds - from approximately 1.8 m to 3.6 m, its goal was to make it harder for players to position themselves close to the basket. The rule did indeed succeed at slowing down Mikan’s production. Somewhat anyway. His scoring average dropped from 28 points per game (ppg) during the 1950-51 season to 24 ppg during the 1951-52 season (bear in mind, the 1950 Lakers only scored 79.5 ppg as a team). However, he remained a dominant force on the basketball court, as evidenced by the Lakers still winning the championship in 1952, '53 and ‘54.
“The Pistons gave pro basketball a great black eye.”
Unknown writer for the St. Paul Dispatch following the infamous 19-18 win by the Fort Wayne Pistons over the Minneapolis Lakers during the 1950-51 NBA season.
The second rule change was in no small part fuelled by teams' fear of Mikan's dominant offensive play. This fear was never more on display than during one memorable game between Mikan’s Minneapolis Lakers and the Fort Wayne Pistons (now Detroit Pistons) in the 1950-51 season. The Pistons, in a desperate attempt to keep the Lakers (i.e., Mikan) from scoring after they had taken a 19-18 lead early in the fourth quarter, instead of trying to score themselves, proceeded to stall the game by passing the ball back and forth among each other for minutes on end. There was no rule limiting teams' possession times, and thus neither team scored any more baskets and the Pistons went on to win the game with a final score of 19-18. It remains the lowest scoring game in NBA history. Mikan had scored 15 - 83.3% - of the Lakers’ 18 points, the highest percentage by any player ever.
Unfortunately for basketball fans in those days, the Pistons’ stalling tactics did not remain an isolated event, but rather they found their way into teams’ routine fourth quarter game plans. This rendered games borderline unwatchable and pushed the sport to the brink of commercial ruin. Enter the 24-second shot clock. Introduced by the 1954 season, the 'Shot clock era' saw the way in which basketball was played fundamentally change, as teams were forced to play faster. This in turn resulted in higher scoring, more exciting games, and ultimately a happier and growing fanbase. According to former Boston Celtics Superstar player Bob Cousy, 'the shot-clock saved the league'.
However, despite Mikan’s perfection of arguably the most iconic, old school basketball move ever, as well as the rule changes his dominance helped bring along, perhaps the most noticeable difference between NBA basketball during Mikan’s era and that of today is of a more depressing nature: the color of the players’ skin.
Today, the NBA is considered one of the most racially diverse professional sports leagues, with approximately 75% of players being of African-American descent, ca. 17% white, 2% latino, and approximately 0.5% Asian. In the United States of the ‘40s and ‘50s, on the other hand, racial segregation very much extended onto the playing fields of professional sports leagues. As a consequence, the player pool, including Mikan, was predominantly, and until 1950 exclusively, white. But when Earl Lloyd stepped on the court for the Washington Capitols on October 31 1950, he became the first African-American to play in an NBA game.
All the same, the overall dominance of white players (albeit in numbers only) - from today's perspective an utterly absurd situation for the NBA to be in - remained largely unchanged up until the 1960s when style of play became faster, more athletic, and increasingly above the rim, mainly fuelled by the emergence of African-American players, lead by the likes of Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson.
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