The 2021-22 NBA season is the 75th Anniversary of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Last Monday night’s game between the Toronto Raptors at the New York Knicks was of major significance not just for both squads but the league.
The date of Nov. 1, 1946, the New York
Knickerbockers played the Toronto Huskies in front of a crowd of 7,090 people
at Maple Leaf Gardens (now Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre) in the first game
of the then called Basketball Association of America, renamed National
Basketball Association (NBA) three seasons later.
The lower level of the arena is now
Loblaws supermarket, as Raptors’ head coach Nick Nurse learned when he first
moved into Toronto.
“I lived right up there by Maple Leaf
Gardens I think my first year in Toronto and now it’s a grocery story,” Nurse
said. “I went in there, I saw the sign on the pillar there and I was taking
pictures of that going, ‘Man, that’s incredible.’ Like, I don’t even know that.”
The Knicks in the 68-66 win were led by
the 14 points from the late Leo Gottlieb, while the late Ossie Schectman scored 11
points, which included scoring the first points in the history of “The Association,”
which Schectman said that it was “quite a thrill.”
The late Harry Miller of the Huskies said that
the only reason Schectman scored that inaugural hoop was because he “wasn’t
guarding him.”
The late Ed Sadowski of the Huskies had a
game-high 18 points, while the late George Nostrand scored 16 points.
Nostrand was not only a key figure on the
hardwood that first NBA game, the 6-foot-8 big man was the featured figure in
the league’s promotion of the inaugural contest between the Knicks and Huskies in
the NBA’s attempt to lure fans to the sport.
In that promotional photo stated that any
fan that was taller than Nostrand would be admitted to the game for free. That
was only after they applied for the free admission at the Toronto Basketball
Club Office on the day before the game rather than just showing up and be measured
alongside the Nostrand standee-as if they were trying to get on an amusement
park ride.
Fans that were under 6-foot-8 had to
purchase a ticket, which then cost from $.75, $1.25, $2.00, and $2.50.
During the infancy of the NBA, pro hockey
was the most popular sport.
The late great Ralph Kaplowitz, who played
in the NBA from 1946-48 with the Knicks and then Philadelphia (now Golden
State) Warriors said back in 1992 that playing in the first game in NBA history
was “exciting” because those 7,090 in attendance at Maple Leaf Gardens were not
use to seeing basketball players that when the players gathered for the jump ball
to start the game, it used to be called a “face-off.”
Along with the difference in ticket price being 30-40 times that, the other difference today compared to three quarters of a century ago, the team that represented Toronto in 2021 in the Raptors (who were an expansion franchise 27 seasons back), the Huskies were disbanded after the league’s inaugural season in 1946-47.
Then there the on-court attire from head
to toe has completely changed from 1946 to now from the length of the players
shorts going from being truly short to the length where they come down right to the knees. The shoe
technology has improved from when Chuck Taylor All-Star kicks were just
performance shoes rather than being casual fashion.
The technology is extremely different today
from how we watch and follow the NBA-going from watching games on television
first in black and white to color and now in high definition, to super slow-motion
phantom cameras that allow fans to view games and the amazing feats of athleticism
were viewed as awkward when the NBA first began.
“None of the writers really believed that
we were better than the college teams,” the late Bud Palmer, who played for the
Knicks from 1946-49 said back in 1989. “So, we actually had to do to their gyms
to prove that we were better than the college teams.”
The late Hall of Fame broadcaster Harry
Glickman echoed those same sentiments saying back in 1996 that there were many
questions of whether the NBA could be a “major league sport” at its outset.
“The youngster was to see us play, this
wouldn’t really think we were playing basketball,” Schectman said of playing in
that first NBA game. “We didn’t have the individual style of play. We didn’t
have the size and the agility and the talent that they have today.”
On top of that we can now watch/stream
games on our computers, laptops, and phones.
To put into context the evolution of the coverage
of the NBA at the start compared to now, the box score in the newspaper from
the game the night before featured a player’s points, made field goals and free
throws made. How each player’s position was displayed in the newspaper was also
different as well. Rather than point guard (PG), shooting guard (SG), small
forward SF and power forward (PF) were called left guard, right guard, left
forward and right forward . The center spot has remained the same being list by
the letter C.
There was no three-point line in the league until the 1979-80 season and has been a big part of the league ever since, especially over the last few seasons. Today, we get a plethora of statistics in actual time as well as detailed player-tracking stats within an hour after the final buzzer that can tell you how fast a player moved on the hardwood to the number of dribbles of the ball by player and how close a defensive player was to an offensive player when defending their shot attempt.
The one major difference from that first
NBA game compared to the league now is that all the players that played in that
inaugural NBA game were all Caucasian as “The Association” did not break the
color barrier until the late Hall of Famer Earl Lloyd became the first African
American player to play in an NBA game on Oct. 31, 1950.
In the 113-104 win by the Knicks (6-3)
last Monday night versus the Raptors (6-4), forward/guard Svi Mykhailiuk of the
Raptors and Frenchman Evan Fournier of the Knicks were the only players out of
the ten that started the game that were not black.
That victory by the Knicks was not only a
celebration of the NBA’s first game 75 years ago but a major reminder to all of
us how far the game and league has grown, especially in terms of how inclusive
the league has become where today we have a plethora of players, coaches, and
people in the front office people that are a plethora of races.
During the first quarter of the game, the
Knicks honored four of their legendary players that made the 75th
Anniversary team that the NBA recently announced in Hall of Famers in Knicks
color analyst for Madison Square Garden (MSG) network Walt “Clyde” Frazier,
Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, Bob McAdoo and Peter DeBusschere, the son of the late
Dave DeBusschere during the first quarter.
“This is truly a remarkable time,” NBATV analyst,
Hall of Famer, and two-time NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons in 1989 and
1990 Isiah Thomas said on Monday night about the impact of that first NBA game.
“We also have to compliment the NBA on moving society forward, you know. Breaking
down barriers during that time…”
“We look at where basketball is at today.
The impact that it’s has had in society. The impact that it’s had across the
globe, and it all started here. I mean, this is like the beginning of not only
the game but also the world changing game that basketball has become.”
Three quarters of a century ago, the first
professional basketball game between the New York Knicks at the Toronto Huskies
took place on Nov. 1, 1946. That game would grow into a melting pot of talented
players, who would made extraordinary plays on the floor and how a league
through its ability to evolve not just on the floor but who had a remarkable
impact off the floor not just in the United States but across the globe. It has
brought people together.
“It was a thrill being an original Knick, you
know,” the late Sidney “Sonny” Hertzberg, who played for the Knicks in 1946-47
said back in 1989. “Like any good house it’s built on a strong foundation and we
built at least I was a pathfinder. I was there at the beginning.”
“Never dreamed. Never in my wildest dreams
ever thought that it would elevate to the way it is today,” Schectman said of
how popular in the NBA game has become.
“You feel a little bit like a pioneer
coming West in a Conestoga Wagon or ‘Louis and Clark,’” Palmer said. “I mean, I
wouldn’t be as proud if basketball had become defunct or gone downhill. But
look at the NBA right now.”
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