National Basketball Association (NBA) is one of the most popular professional sports leagues in North America. This article will review the early years, how the league was formed but also what was the basketball landscape before the NBA.
Where basketball originated?
It is generally believed that modern basketball was first played in 1891 at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts where James Naismith, an instructor of the physical education class was looking for a way to keep its students busy and engaged during the winter time. The students generally found these classes boring compared to the football and lacrosse games they used to play during summer and fall days. The new game James Naismith presented to its students proved to be a huge success. The rest is history as they say.
Before NBA
The predecessor of the NBA is considered to be the Basketball Association of America (BAA). BAA was incorporated in 1946 and right away it challenged the hegemony of the nine-year old National Basketball League (NBL). It did this successfully by establishing itself in bigger cities than the NBL, which existed only in small Midwestern cities like Fort Wayne, Sheboygan and Akron. While the NBL held its games in small gymnasiums, the upstart BAA played its games in large major-market arenas such as the Boston Garden and New York City’s Madison Square Garden. By the 1948-49 season, the BAA had begun to attract some of the country’s best players, and four NBL franchises—Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Minneapolis and Rochester—moved to the BAA, bringing their star players with them. George Mikan, the biggest attraction in either league who by himself could virtually assure a team’s success, defected to the new league with the Minneapolis Lakers.
NBA was born
On August 3, 1949, representatives from the two leagues met at the BAA offices in New York’s Empire State Building to finalize the merger. Maurice Podoloff, head of the BAA since its inception, was elected head of the new league. The new NBA was made up of 17 teams that represented both small towns and large cities across the country. Through the 1950s, though, the number of teams dwindled, along with fan support, and by the 1954-55 season, only eight teams remained.
That year, the league transformed the game with the creation of the 24-second clock, making play faster-paced and more fun to watch. Fans returned, and the league, now financially solvent, expanded throughout the 1960s and ’70s. For example, in 1976 the NBA absorbed four teams from the American Basketball Association (ABA), which disbanded that year. The league added the ABA’s 3 point field goal beginning in 1979.
League Growth
By the early 1980s the NBA was plagued by money-losing franchises, low attendance, declining television ratings, and limited national appeal. The league soon rebounded under the leadership of David Stern, NBA commissioner from 1984, who helped transform it into an international entertainment company. Aggressive marketing highlighted star players such as Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and of course Michael Jordan. Other innovations included league limits on player salaries, lucrative broadcast rights for network and cable television , and expanded All-Star Game festivities.
Recent years
Since 2014 the NBA viewership saw the continuous year-over-year decline in NBA viewership. Between 2012 and 2019, the league lost 40 to 45 percent of its viewership. While some of it can be attributed to “cable-cutting”, other professional leagues, like the NFL and MLB have retained stable viewership demographics. While there may be some challenges for the NBA in the next few years, we can only wait and see what new innovations will be tried and implemented to keep NBA’s popularity at high levels. Meanwhile, the level of excitement around NBA events remain high enough to entice bettors with interesting betting lines.