Otto Graham was a member of the 1945-46 Rochester Royals’ NBL championship team and the 1946 Cleveland Browns AAFC championships squad.
The National Basketball Association is in its 80th year of operations starting in 1946 as the Basketball Association of America and becoming the NBA in 1949 after a consolidation with the National Basketball League. Unlike other sports who make it a point to highlight its history, the NBA office seems to think nothing happened prior to the arrival of Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan in the late 1970s and in the 1980s. But there was life before that and there was one player who won pro titles in football and in basketball in 1946.
After World War II, Rochester Royals owner Les Harrison brought athletes to Rochester, New York. His collection included baseball players Del Rice and Chuck Connors and an eventual Pro Football Hall of Famer, Otto Graham who led the Cleveland Browns to championships in both the All America Football Conference and the National Football League. Graham is the answer to a trivia question. He is the only athlete to win “major league” championships in basketball with the 1945-46 Royals of the National Basketball League and the 1946 Cleveland Browns of the All America Football Conference in the same calendar year.
The NBL was not a fulltime enterprise. Graham ended up with the Browns and Quarterbacked Paul Brown’s championship squad. Graham became a football superstar and one of football’s highest paid performers, something that was no going to happen in Rochester playing basketball.
“We won the championship in all four years there,” said Graham. “We played in the championship game six straight years in the NFL and won three of the six there. I went to college on a basketball scholarship. I didn’t even play football I played intramural football,” he said. I played with the Royals the season before the All America Football Conference had started. My teammates were Del Rice, Chuck Connors, the Rifleman of TV fame (both of whom also played Major League Baseball) Bob Davies, Red Holtzman, Fuzzy Levane and we won the championship.
“I think I’m the only guy to have played on a championship basketball team and football team in the same year (1946). I played in Fort Wayne, Indiana and in fact they did dominate professional basketball at that time. We knocked them off. It was fun. But basketball took up too much time and I couldn’t play football and basketball both, so I stuck with football.
“The NBL was the best league in the world. The Browns hadn’t started yet and the Browns and the All America Football Conference didn’t start until the fall of 1946. So I had nothing to do at that time, so after I started football, it overlapped with basketball and I didn’t go back.”
Both Bobby Wanzer and Graham agreed. The NBL caliber of ball was better than the BAA.
“Actually our league (the NBL) had the best teams,” Wanzer explained. “Us, Fort Wayne, Minneapolis, that was the savior.”
Rochester had been a strong basketball outpost. The Rochester Seagrams basketball team was one of the strongest independent operations in the United States and the team barnstormed the nation. The Seagrams became the Pros and the team was asked to join the National Basketball League in 1946 after the end of World War II. The team was renamed in Royals in a name the team contest and won the NBL Pennant in 1946-47. The Royals took home another flag in 1947-48 but lost a playoff game to Chicago and went home. The following season, the Royals finished with the best record in the NBL but lost to George Mikan and the Minneapolis Lakers in the NBL Finals three games to one.
The Royals and Lakers were BAA powerhouses. The Royals were 45-15 in 1948-49 but the team’s playing facility, the Edgerton Park Arena was strictly third rate and possibly dangerous for opposing players finishing lay ups. If the arena’s side doors were open, the player might have ended up in his uniform in the parking lot freezing during a cold and snowy Rochester winter.
“It was a regulation court but there was very little space between the end of the court and the swinging doors, you can run right out and end up in the snow,” Wanzer laughed. “You were lucky if it didn’t lock on you, you were out in the snow. The arena was a little way from the lake (Ontario) but it wasn’t the coldest building.”
Wanzer’s Royals did win a BAA championship despite the presence of Mikan in the league. The Royals beat the New York Knickerbockers in seven games in 1951. Mikan’s team had eliminated the Royals in the previous three playoffs.
“Well we had to beat them once in a while,” Wanzer laughed. “He (Mikan) was a great player. As I said the two best teams in basketball in those days was Minneapolis and us. Each year we would win the division or they would win it. In the playoffs, they always managed beat us but the one year we beat them and we went onto win the championship.”
Otto Graham might have continued his basketball career if the money was right with Rochester in the NBL although his teammate Fuzzy Levane said Otto planned to play just two years of pro basketball.
Graham was the highest paid player in the National Football League when his career ended in 1955. He made $25,000. In mid-1990s dollars, that $25,000 would have been worth about $400,000 according to Graham. The Browns received less than a $1,000 per man for winning the 1946 AAFC championship.
Graham said the entire the 1950 NFL championship season was the highlight of his career. Travel was limited to buses and trains in both football and basketball.
“Rochester is now out in Sacramento after going to Cincinnati and Kansas City and Fort Wayne is in Detroit. I remember one train trip. We played a ballgame in Rochester; we spent the night on a train, not a sleeper but sitting up all night long. I was so mad and we had to go to Oshkosh two nights later. That’s the way it was in those days. Our owner (Lester Harrison) wanted to save money.
“It’s tough to do both sports,” he said of Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson who played Major League Baseball and were in the NFL at the same time. “But if I was paid they kind of money they got, I would be tempted.”
Otto is not an afterthought in the history of the NBA. Graham is not even mentioned in the same conversation with Tom Brady and Joe Montana in the greatest Quarterbacks ever conversation. But Graham accomplished something that neither Brady nor Montana ever did. Win championships in the same year in two different sports.
From the book by Evan Weiner “From Peach Baskets to Dance Halls and the Not-so-Stern NBA”.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
