The Basketball Association of America And National Basketball League merged on August 3rd, 1949.
October 29th is just another day on the National Basketball Association schedule and there will not be a 75th first league game anniversary ceremony honoring members of the Denver Nuggets and the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, a team coached by Red Auerbach. The Denver-Tri-Cities contest in Moline, Illinois was the first game in the history of the National Basketball Association. The NBA does not acknowledge the game as its first, insisting that the league started in 1946 and the first NBA game was a New York Knickerbockers-Toronto Huskies match on November 1st, 1946. The New York and Toronto franchises were part of the Basketball Association of America. The NBA of 1949 bears no resemblance to the NBA of today.
The Denver Nuggets franchise lasted one year in the NBA. The Denver franchise started play in the National Basketball League in 1948 and joined the BAA following a merger of the NBL and BAA on August 3rd, 1949. The new NBA had 17 franchises but the league had numerous financial problems. Denver was out of the league after the 1949-50 season ended. The Tri-Cities franchise moved to Milwaukee in 1951 and was relocated to St. Louis in 1955 after the team owners could not get people to see Milwaukee Hawks’ basketball. The St. Louis franchise moved to Atlanta in 1968. The NBA was down to 10 teams by the start of the 1950-51 season. The NBA’s low point came on November 27th, 1954 when the owners of the Baltimore Bullets franchise folded the team. According to the NBA record book, that Bullets team never existed despite playing 14 games. The NBA of those days had no real following and teams would play wherever someone set up a court and money could be made. Sort of like the 2024 NBA preseason with a game in Abu Dhabi and in other places.
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The official NBA history is pretty fuzzy.
