1946–47 BAA season

• 1. Introduction

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  The 1946-47 BAA season began on the 1st of November, 1946, in a hockey arena in Toronto, when the New York Knicks beat the Toronto Huskies 68-66 in front of 7,090 spectators. Ossie Schectman scored the very first basket of the new Basketball Association of America. Decades later, that shot would be recognized as the first basket in NBA history. But on that night, nobody in Maple Leaf Gardens fully grasped what had just started. The league had only been assembled weeks before, with 11 teams and a 60-game schedule. Buffalo and Indianapolis had already backed out before the opening tip-off. Three of the original franchises would fold before a second season ever began. And yet from this fragile and improvised beginning, a league emerged that would eventually become the most watched basketball competition on earth. How did a sport still working out basic rules about fouls, defense, and game length turn one chaotic inaugural season into the foundation of the NBA?

• 2. A League Born Incomplete

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  Thirteen teams had been planned when the BAA was first conceived. Buffalo's entry was never truly considered serious, even by the representatives of that team, partly because they would have faced competition from a newly created National Basketball League team, the Buffalo Bisons. Indianapolis presented a more complicated case. The city already sat in a state crowded with professional basketball: the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, the Indianapolis Kautskys, and the newly added Anderson Duffey Packers all competed in the rival National Basketball League. Venue problems compounded the pressure, and Indianapolis withdrew before the season began. There is an unconfirmed suggestion that the Indianapolis squad eventually relocated to Detroit to become the Detroit Falcons, though the record is not certain on this point. What is certain is that the BAA launched with 11 teams instead of the intended 13, a gap that reflected the unstable ground beneath the entire venture. The league was divided into Eastern and Western divisions, but the Western Division would prove the more precarious half. Every single member of that division had folded operations by 1950.

• 3. Rules Still Being Written

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  On the 5th of November, 1946, a practice shot by Chuck Connors shattered the backboard at the Boston Arena before the Chicago Stags and Boston Celtics had even tipped off for their home opener. Staff spent an extra hour retrieving a spare hoop and backboard from the nearby Boston Garden, which was occupied at the time by a rodeo show. That match, when it finally started, ended with the Stags winning 57-55. Two days earlier, on the 2nd of November, the Detroit Falcons had lost their home debut to the Washington Capitols 50-33. Those 33 points stood as the league record for fewest points scored in a single game until the 22nd of November 1950, when an NBA match ended 19-18. The rules themselves were still in flux. Players fouled out after five fouls, not the six that became standard later. On the 7th of November, five Pittsburgh Ironmen fouled out against Philadelphia, leaving both teams to finish in an unusual four-on-four arrangement. Head coach Paul Birch refused an offer from the Warriors to reinstate one of his fouled-out players, keeping the game under those strange conditions. Philadelphia won 81-75. On the 11th of January, 1947, the league banned zone defenses entirely, reversing an earlier decision to permit them, to the displeasure of the Ironmen and Birch. On the 11th of December, 1946, the BAA experimented with 60-minute games played in 15-minute quarters, with the foul limit expanded to six for that match. Chicago defeated Cleveland 88-79. The experiment ran for only two more games before being abandoned.

• 4. The Men Who Scored

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  Joe Fulks of the Philadelphia Warriors finished the season with 1,389 points, leading the league by totals, which was how scoring titles were determined before the 1969-70 season. Ernie Calverley of the Providence Steamrollers led the league with 202 assists, also measured by totals rather than averages. Bob Feerick of the Washington Capitols led the field goal percentage category at .401, and his teammate Fred Scolari topped free throw percentage at .811. The All-BAA First Team included Max Zaslofsky of the Chicago Stags at guard, Bones McKinney and Bob Feerick of the Washington Capitols at forward and forward, Fulks at forward, and Stan Miasek of the Detroit Falcons at center. The second team featured John Logan of the St. Louis Bombers, Calverley, Chick Halbert of the Chicago Stags, Frankie Baumholtz of the Cleveland Rebels, and Scolari. Scoring over 100 points in a game was a genuine rarity. On the 1st of January, 1947, the St. Louis Bombers became the first team to reach that mark, posting 103 points against the Chicago Stags. That feat occurred only nine times across the entire season, with the Stags achieving it four times, the most of any team, and the Warriors recording it twice.

• 5. A Surprise in the Stands

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  On the 11th of November, 1946, the New York Knicks hosted their first home game of the season at Madison Square Garden against the Chicago Stags. The Knicks lost in overtime, 78-68. Nobody in the building that night would have paid particular attention to one young man in the paying audience. Jack Molinas attended that game with friends. He would go on to become an NBA All-Star, then a point-shaver, and eventually a figure described as a gangster. His presence in the crowd on opening night at Madison Square Garden became one of the stranger footnotes of early basketball history, a reminder that the audiences filling those arenas in 1946 contained futures that nobody could predict. The coaching staff of several teams was also in flux during the season. The Cleveland Rebels replaced Dutch Dehnert with Roy Clifford mid-year. Glenn M. Curtis gave way to Philip Sachs in Detroit. Toronto ran through a sequence of coaches: Ed Sadowski departed, followed by interim stretches under Lew Hayman and Dick Fitzgerald, before Red Rolfe eventually took over.

• 6. Western Division, Final Game

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  When the regular season ended, the Chicago Stags and the St. Louis Bombers were tied for first place in the Western Division, both at 38-22. The BAA responded by scheduling an impromptu 61st regular season game on the 31st of March, with Chicago as the home team. The Stags won in overtime, 73-66, claiming the Western Division title. In the East, Washington had dominated with a 49-11 record, a runaway margin that made that division's race far less dramatic. The BAA playoffs offered no byes. Western champion Chicago and Eastern champion Washington immediately met in a long semifinal series, with Washington holding home-court advantage. Chicago won the sixth game in Washington, one day before Philadelphia completed its own two shorter series against other runners-up. The Philadelphia Warriors then beat the Chicago Stags 4 games to 1 in the BAA Finals, becoming the first champions of the Basketball Association of America.

• 7. What Survived

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  Four teams folded before the BAA's second season: the Toronto Huskies, the Pittsburgh Ironmen, the Cleveland Rebels, and the Detroit Falcons. Toronto and Pittsburgh both ceased operations after the inaugural 1947 BAA draft concluded. Every team in the original Western Division had shut down by 1950. By 1951, only three franchises from the inaugural season remained active in the NBA: the Boston Celtics, the New York Knicks, and the Philadelphia Warriors, the latter having moved west to become the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco. After the BAA's third season, in 1948-49, the league merged with the National Basketball League to form the National Basketball Association. The NBA formally recognizes those three BAA seasons as part of its own history. That recognition makes Ossie Schectman's opening basket on the 1st of November, 1946, not just the first points scored in the Basketball Association of America, but the first points in the history of the NBA itself.