| Sport | Basketball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1935 (as MBC) October 6, 1937 (as NBL) |
| First season | 1935–36 (as MBC) 1937–38 (as NBL) |
| Ceased | October 6, 1937 (became NBL) August 3, 1949 (merged withBAA to formNBA) |
| No. of teams | 38 (overall) |
| Country | United States |
| Last champion | Anderson Duffey Packers (1st title) |
| Most titles | Akron Firestone Non-Skids Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons Oshkosh All-Stars (2 each) |
TheNational Basketball League (NBL) was one of the oldest professionalbasketball leagues created in the United States. Originally established in 1935 during what was considered to be the height of theGreat Depression as theMidwest Basketball Conference, it changed its name to the NBL on October 6, 1937, weeks before it was set to begin what was to have been its third season of play under that name, effectively becoming a proper professional league in the process.
Before the NBL was created, the best basketball teams were created as barnstorming operations like the former ABLOriginal Celtics team, theNew York Renaissance, theHarlem Globetrotters, and thePhiladelphia Sphas (the last of whom also played in the original rivalingAmerican Basketball League as well after previously being of the Eastern Basketball League).[1] After the 1948–49 season, its twelfth and final season of existence under that name, it ended up merging operations with the more newly establishedBasketball Association of America (BAA) to form theNational Basketball Association (NBA) to hold many of the best professional basketball teams for the modern-day era, with the BAA being considered both the official recordholders and the starting point of the NBA over the longer-lasting NBL (despite its longer starting point), with few recognitions from the NBL's days being properly recognized by the NBA in the present day.
Five current NBA teams trace their history back to the NBL: theAtlanta Hawks (formerly the Buffalo Bisons/Tri-Cities Blackhawks), theDetroit Pistons (formerly the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons), theLos Angeles Lakers (formerly theDetroit Gems/Minneapolis Lakers), thePhiladelphia 76ers (formerly the Syracuse Nationals), and theSacramento Kings (formerly the Rochester Royals, though their earliest history went as far back as 1923 by the days of the RochesterSeagrams), with five former BAA/NBA teams also tracing their roots to the NBL in theIndianapolis Jets (formerly the Indianapolis Kautskys), theAnderson Packers (formerly the Anderson Duffey Packers), theoriginal Denver Nuggets (not to be confused with the currentDenver Nuggets NBA team that exists from the formerDenver RocketsABA team), theSheboygan Red Skins, and theWaterloo Hawks, as well as one more team that was originally meant to be an NBL expansion team later joining the NBA as an expansion team instead in theIndianapolis Olympians. Another NBL team that is still active, albeit not as a professional team, is theAkron Goodyear Wingfoots, who left the NBL duringWorld War II to become aNational Industrial Basketball League team before becoming anAmateur Athletic Union Elite club.
As of 2025, despite merging with the BAA to form the NBA, the NBA ended up adopting the BAA's history and records instead of the NBL's history up until at least 1946, if not alongside the BAA's history up until 1949 due to the BAA being considered a more prestigious professional basketball league at the time due to them having the teams that played in larger, more prestigious venues and cities than the NBL did.[2] As a result of this decision, the NBA does not recognize the NBL's history and records in its own record books, similar to how the NBA doesn't recognize much of the history of theAmerican Basketball Association, which it also merged with in 1976, nor its own records as well.
The NBL was initially founded as the Midwest Basketball Conference (MBC) in 1935. The league was created byFrank Kautsky (who owned Kautsky'sGrocery store inIndianapolis) andPaul Sheeks (who was the athletic and recreation director for theFirestone Tire and Rubber Company inAkron, Ohio), who both wanted to resurrect a defunct professional basketball league that both teams Kautsky and Sheeks owned and operated (which were theIndianapolis Kautskys andAkron Firestone Non-Skids respectively) had played for during the 1932–33 season called the National Professional Basketball League (which had started out with nine teams competing there (with teams joining the Indianapolis Kautskys and Akron Firestone Non-Skids (supposedly named the Akron Firestones at that time) including theToledo Crimson Coaches Tobaccos (the only other winning team that season), theAkron Goodyear Wingfoots (supposedly named the Akron Goodyear Webfoots that season), Fort Wayne Chiefs, Muncie Whys, South Bend Guardsmen, Kokomo Kelts, and Lorain Fisher Foods), but went down to five teams near the end of its sole season of play following the dropouts of Lorain, Kokomo, Muncie, and South Bend, with the Goodyear team only having 6 games played in that league[3]), but they admittedly created the new league with no real plan of action outside of being what can be considered an amateur or semi-professional basketball league of sorts (with the players there also working for the sponsorship they had played for under this time) with good competition in mind. One of the ways they made sure the sport was competitive was by eliminating rules that basketball previously had which slowed the game down significantly (such as having a jump ball after every foul shot, if not every shot in general), which helped make sure the game's action remained consistent with its flow in its first season (with the following season later removing jump balls after every basket made in general), as well as implementing rules that would (mostly) be used to help become the set predecessors for modern-era basketball to this day as opposed to the roughhouse sport that it was considered to be back in that period of time.[4] Games played in at least their first season were done on the weekends (usually Sunday afternoons) since teams could schedule non-league games on later days of their weeks, partially due toblue laws in the United States and appealing to people in relation to them.
During their two seasons under the Midwest Basketball Conference name, they had a total of 16 different teams competing throughout the league (though two of them were slated to be a rebranding of a different team from the first to the second season[5]), with as many as 12 teams, but as few as 8 (later 9) teams competing at any given time during their regular seasons. The teams that competed in the MBC mostly involved business-owned teams (alongside the aforementioned Kautskys andFirestone Non-Skids, businesses like Hed-Aids, U.S. Tire, Inc., theYoung Men's Hebrew Association (labeled as the Y.M.H.A.), theDayton Metropolitan Clothing Stores, Cooper Buses (being the onlyCanadian-based team to enter the MBC coming fromWindsor, Ontario, thus making the MBC the first ever international basketball league in existence ahead of theBasketball Association of America), and the Duffy Florals later on had teams in their inaugural season, withGoodyear, Altes Lagers (representing a rebranding from the Hed-Aids to the Altes Lagers for the Detroit franchise), the Miami Valley Brewing Company (representing a rebranding from the Metropolitans to the London Bobbys[6]), theColumbus Athletic Supply (using the same name for their team),General Electric, and HyVis Oil (being referred to as HyVis Oilers sometimes) having teams for the following season afterward, withSeagram initially having the Rochester Seagrams (laterSacramento Kings) be included there before reneging on joining the MBC due to travel concerns[7]) being joined alongside a couple of independently ran teams in theBuffalo Bisons barnstorming team (though they previously played inthe original American Basketball League and New York State Basketball League alongside independent play before joining the MBC (and by extension, the NBL afterward)) and theWhiting Ciesar All-Americans (with Ciesar in question being team owner and car dealer Eddie Ciesar) during their two seasons of play under that name.[8] The community working aspect of those teams in particular would prove to be a major driving point for the MBC and later NBL's success throughout their existence as a league, with small profits being a secondary factor in mind for some of these team owners when compared to the interest of the game and helping the local community within the area.[9] The first champions of the MBC, the Chicago Duffy Florals, were considered controversial champions due to their late status as a team that joined the MBC (which had them upset more established clubs in the Firestone Non-Skids and Kautskys despite the Detroit Hed-Aids looking more like a proper team for the round-robin playoffs instead), while the second and final champions of the MBC, theAkron Goodyear Wingfoots, owned by theGoodyear Tire and Rubber Company that was also stationed inAkron, would sweep the Fort Wayne General Electrics (owned byGeneral Electric, who primarily operated in New York, but set their team up in theirFort Wayne, Indiana area) 2–0 and became one of the inaugural teams of the MBC turned NBL alongside the Kautskys, Firestone Non-Skids, and General Electrics (among 13 total teams to start out the inaugural NBL season, most of which were originally holdovers from the MBC, with the inaugural MBC champion Chicago Duffy Florals, the Detroit Hed-Aids / Altes Lagers, and Indianapolis U.S. Tires not joining the NBL by the 1937–38 season alongside the Windsor Cooper Buses from the inaugural season; those three teams in question were soon replaced by theOshkosh All-Stars, Kankakee Gallagher Trojans, and Richmond King Clothiers (later known as the Cincinnati Comellos after three games played into their only season of existence) by the start of the NBL's debut season) when their transition to the National Basketball League was made official.[10][11] The league officially changed its name from the Midwest Basketball Conference to the National Basketball League on October 6, 1937, weeks before the start of their new season by that time, in an attempt to both attract a larger audience by becoming a more professional basketball league by comparison to their original starting point and to avoid further confusion with theBig Ten Conference, which was often referred to as the Midwest Conference.[12]
The NBL was created, in part, by three major corporations:Firestone,Goodyear, andGeneral Electric, with Firestone'sPaul Sheeks in particular being a key contributor in its creation. Alongside them,Frank Kautsky of Kautsky's Grocery was considered a major contributor to the creation of the league as well. The league was primarily made up ofGreat Lakes area small-market and corporate-based teams, with many of these businesses (either large or small) in question (such as Firestone, Goodyear, General Electric,Kautsky's Grocery, theColumbus Athletic Supply (again, using the same name as the team there in this specific case),Dayton Metropolitan Clothing Stores,[13] King Clothier, HyVis (Penn) Oil, White Horse Motors, theZollner Piston Company (later Zollner Pistons, LLC), Jim WhiteChevrolet ofToledo,Studebaker (via theUnited Auto Workers Association),Chase Brass, the Allmen Transfer & Moving Company, the American Gear & Manufacturing Company,Willys-Overland Jeep Plant (representingJeep specifically), the American Gear Company, Duffey Meat Packing, Inc., and theDow Chemical Company) being a key factor in deciding whether certain teams (and by extension, the league as a whole at certain points) would succeed or fail throughout most of its existence since some of these businessmen saw the NBL's profits as secondary in nature to the love of the game of basketball and/or being something that's ultimately a great thing for the communities of the places that had the sports teams in question.[14] However, it would ultimately be the teams that would be considered independently owned and not owned by another business (meaning teams that didn't put their business affiliation either as a part of or alongside their actual team name in question) that would end up having the biggest long-term survival beyond the NBL's existence, with the few teams that had relied on their business ownership in the past sacrificing it as a part of their team name(s) in order to survive as best as they could, with at least one of them still doing so to the present day.
The league began their operations in a rather informal manner. Scheduling was originally left to the discretion of each of the teams that were in the NBL, so long as the team in question played at least twelve games total, with four of them being held on the road. (Initially, each team was meant to play a total of 20 games for their inaugural season, but only one team did that in theFort Wayne General Electrics, with one team having as low as nine total games played, meaning schedule creations for the NBL was more slapdash in nature early on in its existence.) Not only that, but there were rare occasions whereforfeits were involved with official NBL games in its first few seasons (the first season saw theAkron Firestone Non-Skids be declared winners once over the Columbus Athletic Supply and the Fort Wayne General Electrics be declared winners twice (once over the Columbus Athletic Supply and once over theIndianapolis Kautskys), the second season saw theHammond Ciesar All-Americans be declared losers to either the Warren Penns or Cleveland White Horses (date of the game in question is currently unknown to know which team Hammond was going to face off against before declaring forfeiture), and the fourth season saw both theChicago Bruins and Toledo Jim White Chevrolets each get a victory and defeat by forfeiture). However, the number of games played in the NBL ended up increasing on a more consistent, yearly basis as the popularity of professional basketball and the NBL grew in the United States of America (especially within the Great Lakes area). Games in the NBL had consisted either of four ten-minute quarters or three fifteen-minute periods, with the choice being made by the home team (alongside whether to use the center jump after each made possession during the first season). Some of the teams were considered independently owned and operated, while others were owned by companies that also found jobs for their players after the NBL's season concluded. Two of the best teams that were owned under an independent basis were both based inWisconsin with theOshkosh All-Stars andSheboygan Red Skins (both of whom would enter the NBL by December of their respective join years of 1937 and 1938) having some of the best success in the entire league, while one of the most successful business-owned team was theFort Wayne Zollner Pistons, who first joined the NBL in 1941 despite first existing back in 1937 and were owned byFred Zollner's locally owned and operated Zollner Piston Company.
Originally, the NBL's headquarters were located inAkron, Ohio (home of the Goodyear Wingfoots and Firestone Non-Skids franchises), with their first commissioner in question being Hubert Johnson fromDetroit,Michigan, withLon Darling, owner and general manager of theOshkosh All-Stars, being the President of the NBL soon afterward.[15][16] Following Johnson's tumultuous early tenure (which lasted until 1940), the NBL would move their headquarters toChicago,Illinois for most of their existence going forward, with them having Chicago newspaper sports editorLeo Fischer acting as the president of the NBL from 1940 until at least 1944, though it has been reported that he stayed with the NBL under that role until at least 1946. When the NBL had a new rivaling league appear in theBasketball Association of America (BAA), the NBL implemented the return of the commissioner role withPurdue University's men's basketball head coachWard Lambert taking on the role of the NBL's commissioner from 1946 until 1948 with Paul Walk (a new co-owner of theIndianapolis Kautskys) supposedly taking on the NBL's president role during that time as well (which angeredChicago American Gears owner Maurice White (due to him wanting to be the president of the NBL himself) to the point of leaving the NBL to creating a short-lived rivalingProfessional Basketball League of America in response to their decision) andLeo Ferris (general manager of theBuffalo Bisons turned Tri-Cities Blackhawks) became the league's vice president as well. By the time the final season of the NBL commenced, the NBL decided to move their headquarters away from Chicago and intoWest Lafayette, Indiana in order to cut down on costs, withSheboygan Red Skins manager/head coachDoxie Moore being the final commissioner of the league in its final season (though Chet Roan from theUniversity of Minnesota was suggested as the only other possible option that felt more likely at first before the Lakers and three other teams jumped leagues due to Moore being viewed with disfavor in not just Sheboygan, but two other NBL places as well[17]) and Leo Ferris of theTri-Cities Blackhawks being the league's final president in that same season as well.
In 1946, the Basketball Association of America (BAA) was incorporated as some newly founded competition, which resulted in a three-year battle with the NBL to win both players and fans along the way. The BAA played its games in larger cities and venues, which was seen as a major boom for the younger league. However, NBL tended to have the bigger stars and the community support that was seen as necessary on their ends.[18] NBL teams also dominated theWorld Professional Basketball Tournament, which was an annual invitational tournament held inChicago and sponsored by theChicago Herald American. NBL teams won seven out of ten editions of the tournament, with theFort Wayne Zollner Pistons being the biggest winners of the tournament during this time with three straight championships from 1944 to 1946, while theDetroit Eagles,Oshkosh All-Stars,Indianapolis Kautskys, andMinneapolis Lakers all won the event at least once each alongside three all-black teams in theNew York Renaissance, theHarlem Globetrotters (who still exist to this day), and theWashington Lichtman Bears (who may or may not have had ties to the Renaissance franchise) that were independent from the NBL during this time.
On August 3, 1949, representatives from the 12-year-old NBL and 3-year-old BAA met at the BAA offices in New York'sEmpire State Building to help finalize a merger.Maurice Podoloff, the president of the BAA, became the president of the newly-createdNBA whileIke Duffey, who was theAnderson (Duffey) Packers' team owner turned president of the NBL, became their chairman.[19][20] The new National Basketball Association (NBA) was made up of 17 teams that represented both the smaller, developing towns that best represented the NBL and larger cities that had primarily represented the BAA across the country, though an 18th team in theOshkosh All-Stars (who were slated to move elsewhere inWisconsin, primarilyMilwaukee, and potentially have a team name change) had also been slated to join the NBA initially before withdrawing from the newly-established league by September or October 1950. The NBA claims the BAA's history as its own and considers the 1949 deal as an expansion, not as a merger. For example, atNBA History online, its table of one-line "NBA Season Recaps" begins at the 1946–47 BAA season without comment.[21] It also celebrated the "NBA at 50" anniversary in 1996, with the announcement of its 50 Greatest Players among other things occurring by that time.[22][23]
Due to the implementation of the BAA-NBL merger in question, the NBA does not recognize the NBL's records and statistics outside of certain circumstances.[23] As such, the records and statistics of the BAA and NBL prior to the merger in 1949 are considered in the official history of the NBA only if a player, coach, or team participated in the newly formed NBA after 1949 for one or more seasons.[24][25]
Excluding the two seasons of play as the Midwest Basketball Conference, the history of the NBL falls into three eras, each of which contributed significantly to the growth of professional basketball and the emergence of theNBA alongside the brief MBC era. The early era of the NBL saw the dominance of teams inAkron, Ohio alongside what could be considered as the first basketball dynasty of sorts, which was centered on theOshkosh All-Stars and their centerLeroy "Cowboy" Edwards. The middle years of the NBL saw the emergence of theFort Wayne Zollner Pistons franchise, who alongside team ownerFred Zollner, were later instrumental in the survival during theWorld War II period of time when it was down to only four teams at times alongside the creation of the NBA during its infancy. The final period of note during the NBL's existence centered on the late era after World War II's conclusion, which focused onGeorge Mikan and the emergence of the big man in basketball, as well as saw the creation of a few other teams in the NBL that still exist to the NBA to this day (albeit under new names for each team).[26]
The first season of the NBL in its more proper name saw thirteen teams competing in a two division format, with theOshkosh All-Stars being a last-minute December entry to the league while being joined alongside the Kankakee Gallagher Trojans (who were completely amateurish in nature, to the point where no one that played there played on a notable basketball team beforehand nor joined another professional team afterward since most of them were students in Kankakee's Gallagher Trade School there) and Richmond King Clothiers (later becoming the Cincinnati Comellos on January 5, 1938 after three games played that season due to high expenses from the original Richmond owners at the time) and seeing a few MBC teams rebranding themselves (some under a more professional basis) like the Pittsburgh Y.M.H.A. team that originally focused on being aHebrew-focused basketball team becoming thePittsburgh Pirates to honor theMLB team ofthe same name while also moving out of being an exclusively Hebrew-based team to include other ethnicities and religions (though mostly white players withChristianity) in mind, the Warren HyVis Oils becoming the Warren Penns, and the Dayton London Bobbys returning to their original Dayton Metropolitans name alongside the rest of the previously surviving MBC teams with the two Akron-based teams alongside the teams in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Whiting, Columbus (which had their roster primarily based off of the 1936–37Otterbein College basketball roster's starting line-up[27]), and Buffalo (the last of whom ended up returning to the now-rebranded NBL after previously leaving the MBC in its second and final season under that name). A similar instance of a new team joining by December occurred in its second season with theSheboygan Red Skins (who had rebranded to that name after most recently going by the Enzo Jels name at the time) joining the NBL byNew Year's Eve of 1938 after previously seeing the original Buffalo Bisons squad alongside Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Fort Wayne (with the General Electrics squad), and Kankakee all leaving the NBL after its first season was done (with the Warren Penns later rebranding into the Cleveland White Horses on February 10, 1939 near the end of their second season).[28] Their next season saw the NBL get a bit more stability in mind with theChicago Bruins (a formerABL team owned byChicago Bears ownerGeorge Halas) replacing the Pittsburgh Pirates NBL team and the Cleveland White Horses (formerly known as the Warren Penns) rebranding themselves into theDetroit Eagles before their fourth season of operations saw them work under a one division operation with seven teams at hand with theIndianapolis Kautskys leaving the league to experiment with themselves under how they'd operate as an independent team again (the Detroit Eagles initially left also due to home arena issues, but they returned to the NBL after seeing them get their home arena issues resolved properly[29]). For the final season representing their early years (before the U.S.A. enteredWorld War II in December 1941), the NBL still had seven teams competing in one division, but numerous changes would be involved with the Indianapolis Kautskys returning to operations there alongside theFort Wayne Zollner Pistonsworks team and Toledo Jim White Chevrolets (operating as the Toledo White Huts in non-NBL operating games) being new teams joining the NBL, while also seeing the likes of the Akron Firestone Non-Skids, Detroit Eagles, and Hammond Ciesar All-Americans leaving the league either by folding operations or by becoming a barnstorming team in the case of the Detroit Eagles.
The early history of the NBL focused primarily on two locations above all others:Akron, Ohio andOshkosh, Wisconsin. For Akron, the city had two works teams in the Goodyear Wingfoots and Firestone Non-Skids representing some of the best teams in the NBL's first few seasons of existence. Their excellence would later be proven by both of them winning at least one championship in the NBL's first three seasons of existence, with the Goodyear Wingfoots claiming the inaugural championship in 1938 (alongside the second and final MBC championship in 1937) and the Firestone Non-Skids winning the next two years after their inaugural NBL championship victory with back-to-back wins in 1939 and 1940. As for the small city of Oshkosh, they would have theOshkosh All-Stars, who entered the NBL as an independent franchise following an independent championship win over theNew York Renaissance and not long afterward appeared in the NBL's championship series for five consecutive years (1938–42). They ended up winning only two titles during that time (which were the final years of that stretch in 1941 and 1942), with the All-Stars franchise being led by a rugged 6'4" (1.93 m) center namedLeroy "Cowboy" Edwards back in a time when players over that height were very rare. Edwards was a consensus NCAA "All American" and Helms Foundation "College Player of the Year" as a member of the 1934–35University of Kentucky Wildcats. He left Kentucky after two years to pursue a professional basketball career, which was unheard of at the time. He led the NBL in scoring for three consecutive seasons, which happened in the NBL's first three seasons of play. He set numerous NBL and professional basketball scoring records and is generally credited with the introduction of the "3 second rule" in basketball, which is still in existence today. Edwards played in all 12 NBL seasons with the Oshkosh All-Stars (with Edwards being joined by fellow championship teammateCharley Shipp as the only players to play in the NBL for all twelve seasons of its existence), and retired from professional play just prior to the NBL's merger with the BAA to form the NBA.
Once the NBL concluded their 1941–42 season, more Americans were called up to action to serve the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, which helped lead to a significant drop off of available teams competing in the NBL from seven to five teams to start the 1942–43 season with the Akron Goodyear Wingfoots and Indianapolis Kautskys both suspending operations due toWorld War II and the Chicago Bruins' spot being bought out by a new team operated byStudebaker (and paid for by theUnited Auto Workers Association) called theChicago Studebaker Flyers (sometimes shortened out to the Chicago Studebakers) for this season (though it's slated by some that the Bruins and Studebaker Flyers are actually the same franchise, just operated by different people[30]), before ending the season with four total teams due to the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets folding operations on December 14, 1942 due to poor operations as a team while struggling to compete under wartime conditions (with the1943 World Professional Basketball Tournament later showcasing only three NBL teams left by then due to the Studebaker Flyers folding both due to inconsistent home location play and a misunderstanding regarding an argument involving a black player and a while player during a practice of theirs confusing racial tension with general annoyance during a team practice). The following season after that saw them compete with four teams once again (this time for a full season), only instead of the Chicago Studebaker Flyers, aworks team was placed in Cleveland that was operated by theChase Brass and Copper Company called theCleveland Chase Brassmen as the newest fourth team there alongside the All-Stars, Red Skins, and Zollner Pistons. Near the end of the wartime period, the NBL would see itself safely expand their operations back into a two division system again, but with six teams involved with thePittsburgh Raiders returning to the league under a new name and theChicago American Gears joining up alongside them, with the Chase Brassmen being renamed to the Cleveland Allmen Transfers as well due to the Allmen Transfer & Moving Company acquiring the Cleveland squad from the Chase Brass and Copper Company. It's also during this time that NBL players would become taller than what they first started out to be, to the point where they had to implement the goaltending rule to deter defensive centers from getting long blocks in their league. In what later became their NBL's final season of play while operating under wartime conditions, the NBL would expand itself even further with eight teams again with the Indianapolis Kautskys returning to play again in exchange for the Pittsburgh Raiders, as well as theRochester Royals (formerly operating as an independent team named the Rochester Seagrams, the Rochester Eber Seagrams, and Rochester Pros) andYoungstown Bears (taking over operations for the Pittsburgh Raiders officially) being new additions to the league for the 1945–46 season that sawWorld War II come to a close.
TheFort Wayne Zollner Pistons—nicknamed so because they were owned byFred Zollner, whose company madepistons for engines—were led by tough veteranBobby McDermott, who was a known outlier of many of the NBL's players by this time for being what was considered to be a sharpshooter (for the standards of 1930s and 1940s era basketball) while playing as a guard despite him being a high school dropout when he entered the NBL (leavingFlushing High School in New York after only a year of attendance there to play basketball alongside doing work on his end). The Pistons finished second in 1942 and 1943 before winning the league title in 1944 and 1945. Like many teams of that era, it was not uncommon for Fort Wayne to play its games in taverns, armories, junior high or high school gyms, or even ballrooms.
Under Zollner, the Pistons franchise would eventually play an important role in the survival and growth of the NBL, as well as its future successor in the NBA. Zollner's financial support of the NBL helped the league stay afloat during its tumultuous, most challenging years yet due to the effects ofWorld War II. At times, Zollner and his Pistons were considered the only team that would be making some sort of profit in the league, meaning he would have to be willing to share out his revenue sources with the rest of the teams during the times where they went down to as few as four teams just to make sure the rest of the league survived to play for another season while the war commenced. Meanwhile, his cooperative nature as a businessman would help lead to the creation of the NBA, as well as make sure that league stayed afloat during its tumultuous, most challenging years in its early history as well.
Challenging the Zollner Pistons and Oshkosh for supremacy were theSheboygan Red Skins. Beginning in 1941, the season before Fort Wayne joined the NBL, Sheboygan appeared in five out of six championship series match-ups in the NBL. They lost to Oshkosh in the 1941 NBL Finals, but beat Fort Wayne for the title in 1943 despite barely having an above-average record that year before losing to the Zollner Pistons in 1944 and 1945 and then being swept in the 1946 NBL Finals by one of the league's newest members, the powerhouseRochester Royals, who boasted Hall of FamersAl Cervi,Bob Davies andRed Holzman.
Entering the post-World War II era years properly, the NBL would enter their first post-war season with it having the most amount of teams in the league since its first season under the NBL name with twelve teams competing in the Eastern and Western Division, with theSyracuse Nationals buying out the spot that was originally held by the Cleveland Allmen Transfers and theAnderson Duffey Packers,the newest rendition of the Buffalo Bisons (later moving during the season to become theTri-Cities Blackhawks byChristmas 1946),Detroit Gems, andToledo Jeeps all joining the NBL's first season when they began their rivalry with the new, upstartBasketball Association of America (with thePittsburgh Raiders being considered for a potential return alongside teams of interest in cities likeMilwaukee,St. Louis,Minneapolis, andDayton, Ohio). It's during this period of time that the NBL started to implement some improvements to their overall structure (such as financing, scheduling of exhibition and regular season games, and full-time officiating) and new features that would currently exist in modern-day basketball leagues like theNational Basketball Association, such as a drafting system (though no known record for the NBL's drafts have been officially kept, at least as of 2025) and a free agency system of sorts. In their second season under that era (which later turned out to be its penultimate season of existence), the NBL would see the defending championChicago American Gears leave the league to create an ambitious, yet ultimately short-lived rivaling professional basketball league of their own called theProfessional Basketball League of America and the Youngstown Bears leave the NBL altogether, though they would also see theDetroit Gems rebrand themselves into theMinneapolis Lakers following the wretched season they had under their original name (though recent Lakers history tends to omit their history as the Detroit Gems in the NBL, for good reason) and even see one lastworks team be added to the league in the Flint Dow A.C.'s (formerly known as the Midland Dow Chemicals before joining the NBL and later changed their team name to the Midland Dow A.C.'s at some point in the season, to the point where they sometimes get misconstrued into being named the Flint/Midland Dow A.C.'s instead) with theDow Chemical Company's involvement at hand (TheLos Angeles Red Devils, who were an integrated franchise that famously featuredJackie Robinson as a player, were also considered for expansion, though they were ultimately denied in part due to them being very far away from everyone else inLos Angeles,California.[31]). Following the start of what was to be their final season of operations, the NBL would see four of their teams in Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and Rochester jump ship from the NBL to the BAA, with two more attempts from Toledo and Oshkosh failing to join up with them in the process. As a result of the sudden switch-up from those four teams, the NBL had to operate in their final season of play with nine total teams at hand with the Toledo Jeeps and the Dow works team that operated in the state ofMichigan folding operations andthe original Denver Nuggets team that first started out in theAmateur Athletic Union (who also were the only non-Great Lakes area team to join the NBL due to them operating inDenver,Colorado), theHammond Calumet Buccaneers, theWaterloo Hawks, and the Detroit Vagabond Kings (who folded operations after only winning two games on December 17, 1948 and were replaced by theDayton Rens, an all-black team that would be considered the first professionally integrated team in a formerly all-white league since they previously operated as theNew York Renaissance before that point in time, yet inherited the record that the Detroit Vagabond Kings held that season in the process) being the final new teams to join the NBL in its final season of play (though the NBL also considered teams coming back toChicago and Dayton once again, as well as new teams going toDes Moines,Louisville,St. Paul, andWilkes-Barre[32]). One more team was planned to be created for the league in what was to be its 1949–1950 season in theIndianapolis Olympians as a hard replacement to the old Indianapolis Kautskys NBL (laterIndianapolis Jets BAA) franchise, but before they could begin such a plan, the NBL would merge with the BAA to create the modern-dayNational Basketball Association, with most of the teams from the NBL's final season of play alongside the Olympians joining the newly formed league.
The NBL's third and final era was dominated byGeorge Mikan, the 6'10" (2.08 m), three-timeNCAA "All-American"center fromDePaul University inChicago. As a rookie, he led theChicago American Gears to the 1947 NBL championship, but before the next season officially began, owner Maurice White pulled his team out of the league and formed his own ambitious 24-team circuit (though it ultimately was cut down to 16 teams before it officially began) called theProfessional Basketball League of America. That venture quickly failed, and the American Gears were shut out on returning to the NBL, but the former American Gears players were allowed to return to the NBL in a dispersal draft of sorts, with Mikan being signed up by the NBL'sMinneapolis Lakers (who actually retained the original history of the previousDetroit Gems franchise despite their wretched 4–40 record the previous season), where he teamed with the versatileJim Pollard to win the 1948 NBL championship. It's also during this period of time where the structure of both the NBL (including its operating structure and schedule making) and the teams that would later survive ended up taking form into something akin to the newly created and rivalingBasketball Association of America, as alongside the creation of the Minneapolis Lakers from the prior Detroit Gems, the 1946–47 season also saw the creation of some key teams that would eventually play a part in the NBL's future merger with theSyracuse Nationals, the second rendition of theBuffalo Bisons (who became theTri-Cities Blackhawks byChristmas 1946), and theAnderson Duffey Packers, who were all joined alongside theToledo Jeeps.
After the 1947–48 season concluded, Mikan's Lakers quit the NBL to join the newly rivalingBasketball Association of America (BAA), along with three other NBL clubs: the Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons (removing the Zollner branding from the team entering the BAA since that league doesn't allow for sponsorships as team names), and Indianapolis Kautskys (renamed to the Indianapolis Jets due to the no sponsorships as team names rule in the BAA). Originally, the Lakers felt content with staying in the NBL at first, but when the Zollner Pistons and Kautskys franchises left the NBL to join the BAA, the Lakers ended up reconsidering the notion of joining the BAA in the end, with the Rochester Royals being added into the mix later on. Two other NBL teams in theOshkosh All-Stars andToledo Jeeps also tried to apply for entry into the BAA alongside these four teams, but both Oshkosh and Toledo ended up being rejected by the BAA instead of approved by them (with their rejections also being joined alongside the creation of the plannedBAA Buffalo team that never got created and failed BAA expansion teams inLouisville, Kentucky andWilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), which later led to the Jeeps franchise folding operations entirely.
The NBL would end up creating a few more new teams to take the spots left behind by the four teams that jumped leagues, with a couple of them inthe original Denver Nuggets (formerly of theAmateur Athletic Union) and theWaterloo Hawks later contributing to the NBA's history. Not only that, but they added an all-black team in December 1948 during its final season, when one of its replacement clubs, the Detroit Vagabond Kings, folded. That franchise was awarded to a famous barnstorming team, theNew York Rens, who were composed entirely of African-Americans, to play out the rest of their season inDayton, Ohio, as theDayton Rens. On August 3, 1949, after a three-year battle with theBasketball Association of America (BAA) for fans and players alike, the NBL merged with the BAA and became theNational Basketball Association.[33] The merger in question saw six of the NBL's remaining nine teams of play (the Anderson (Duffey) Packers, the original Denver Nuggets, the Sheboygan Red Skins, the Syracuse Nationals, the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, and the Waterloo Hawks) alongside a planned NBL expansion team in theIndianapolis Olympians joining the BAA's ten surviving teams to create a new seventeen team league, with the NBL's cuts featuring the all-black Dayton Rens due toracial segregation purposes, theHammond Calumet Buccaneers due to them being especially poor as a franchise and being primarily in close proximity to theChicago Stags BAA-turned-NBA franchise, and most surprisingly of all, theOshkosh All-Stars. Originally, the Oshkosh franchise was considered to be a part of the BAA-NBL merger that became the NBA as the eighth NBL team joining the league there (though they would have had to move toMilwaukee orGreen Bay in order to officially play in the NBA, with Milwaukee being the most likely option of the two locations), but they ultimately dropped out of the NBA by September or October 1949 due to ownership having doubts on their personal success in the newly-established league and being involved with a new location like that, which later led to them folding operations entirely due to Lon Darling dying from a heart attack in 1951. A few years after the merger, the NBA adopted the BAA's history as its own history moving forward there, with the NBL's history being considered more of an afterthought outside of a select few moments in mind.[34]
The NBL contributed significantly to the foundation of the NBA, but it also had major accomplishments in other areas, most notably in offering opportunities for African-American players. The first known instance of an African-American player being involved with the league was back in the MBC days when Hank Williams of the Buffalo Bisons (formerly a star of the Buffalo Colored Giants) became the first player to join an established professional league since the early 1900s occurred with both the New York State League and New England League.[35] In the 1942–43 season, with many players serving in the U.S. Armed Forces due toWorld War II, two NBL clubs, the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets and theChicago Studebaker Flyers, filled their rosters by signing up African-American players—five years beforeJackie Robinson would break baseball's color barrier with theBrooklyn Dodgers. Neither team ended up faring well in the process, however. Toledo signed several black players to start the season, includingBill Jones, who had starred at theUniversity of Toledo, but the team lost its first four games and folded operations early in its season due to financial difficulties on Jim White's end as the team owner. Meanwhile, Chicago stocked its roster with several members of theHarlem Globetrotters, who worked during the week at theStudebaker plant and received their payments from theUnited Auto Workers Association, but that franchise also folded operations after compiling an 8–15 record and being eliminated by the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons in the 1943 NBL playoffs. Other teams in later years would end up signing African-Americans for their rosters, with some of them being key members for success for good measure. By the end of the NBL's existence, during its final season of play, the league would allow for an all-black team to participate in its league amongst teams that were mostly all-white themselves with theDayton Rens (previously known as theNew York Rens) taking on a spot in the league in the middle of their final season of play.
Five currentNational Basketball Association (NBA) teams trace their history back to the NBL. Three teams joined the BAA in 1948: theMinneapolis Lakers (formerly theDetroit Gems and now theLos Angeles Lakers), theRochester Royals (now theSacramento Kings), and the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons (now theDetroit Pistons). Two more teams were part of the merger that created the NBA in 1949: theBuffalo Bisons/Tri-Cities Blackhawks (now theAtlanta Hawks), and theSyracuse Nationals (now thePhiladelphia 76ers).
Five former NBA teams also trace their history back to the NBL: theAnderson Packers (known as theAnderson Duffey Packers in the NBL),Denver Nuggets (who bare no relation to the currentDenver Nuggets team with the same name),Indianapolis Jets (formerly known as theIndianapolis Kautskys),Sheboygan Red Skins andWaterloo Hawks played in the NBL/BAA/NBA. The Jets played in the BAA for the1948–49 BAA season only, essentially being the only early NBL-to-BAA transfer that didn't survive the move there; the remaining teams in question all played for the1949–50 NBA season only. Anderson, Denver (deciding to rebrand themselves as theDenver Frontier Refiners by this time), Sheboygan, and Waterloo joined theNational Professional Basketball League that they helped create in the 1950–51 season, though that season would end prematurely with every team there folding operations not long afterward if they hadn't done so already during the season.
The NBL also created theIndianapolis Olympians franchise for what would have been the 1949–50 NBL season after the Indianapolis Jets franchise folded operations. When the NBL and BAA merged, this team joined the NBA without playing a single NBL game. The Olympians franchise would exist for four seasons in the NBA, being considered a playoff team in each season of play there, but ultimately folded operations in 1953 following the aftermath of the1951 college basketball point-shaving scandal revealing in Olympians playersRalph Beard andAlex Groza being involved in that scandal back in their days of playing in theUniversity of Kentucky, which subsequently led to Beard and Groza being forced to sell their shares on the team that they had at the time at a significant loss.
Also still surviving to the present day are theAkron Goodyear Wingfoots, the league's last champions under the MBC name in 1937 and their first champions under the NBL name in 1938. The Wingfoots suspended operations forWorld War II and were not included in the NBL/BAA merger years afterward since they never decided to return to the NBL after the war ended. Instead, they decided to enter into theNational Industrial Basketball League (NIBL) alongside theFort Wayne General Electrics (though the General Electrics would only play for one season there due to them being winless that season), which in 1961 became theNational AAU Basketball League (NABL). The Wingfoots are still anAAU Elite team in the present day for the NABL.
| ^ | Denotes a franchise that is currently active, present day NBA |
Note: The years 1940–1944 would operate with the NBL being played with no divisions at hand. As such, any division labeling for those seasons would be based on presumptions relating to the general area that the team(s) in question would fit in more by comparison.
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