Basketball: From NCAA Fast Times to NBA Fast Breaks

BASKETBALL: FROM NCAA FAST TIMES TO NBA FAST BREAKS

Limited Popularity

At the start of the 1950s Basketball was a local and regional spectator sport in America. While it is true that this distinctly American game (invented by James Naismith, a Canadian at the Springfield, Massachusetts, YMCA Training College) had gained favor throughout the world, basketball remained a game that, for sports fans at least, simply filled the space in the winter between football and baseball seasons. National interest in basketball was restricted to the late spring, when both the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament were played.

Crooked Collegians

College basketball saw perhaps both its finest and its worst hour of the decade in 1950. In the spring City College of New York (CCNY), which had gone 17-5 during the regular season pulled off the singular feat of winning both the National Invitational Tournament (NIT)—CCNY 69, Bradley 61—and the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA)—CCNY 71, Bradley 68. Both final games were played in the mecca of basketball, Madison Square Garden in New York City, and both were intense games, hard fought to the final buzzer. CCNY'striumph was tarnished when it was learned that the team had on several occasions shaved points and controlled point spreads, which was the basis for betting. They were not alone. Before the dust had settled on the basketball scandals, CCNY, New York University (NYU), Long Island University (LIU), Manhattan, and—all in New York City—Toledo, Kentucky, and Bradley were implicated. Clair Bee, LIU's coach and author of the "Chip Hilton" adolescent sports novels was put in the position of having to admit that, at least at the college level, sports do not always build character. Even Hollywood got into the act by rushing through production of the B movie The Basketball Fix (1951).

Sources of Corruption

There is a variety of explanations for what went wrong in college basketball: the decay in the quality of life in urban areas; the loosening of moral standards throughout society after World War II; the hustling of naive college boys by smooth city gambling sharks; the growing number of college athletes from impoverished families; and some observers even blamed the influence of desegregation and a distinctly "black" morality. The most reasonable explanation is that college basketball had become commercialized, and gamblers seized the opportunity to exploit the national interest. The financial temptation to a corruptible coach was hard to resist. The coaches escaped any significant scrutiny though, and they were absolved of responsibility for cheating. The players took the blame and were banned from playing in the professional leagues.

The Birth of the NBA

The sudden loss of interest in college basketball finally had presented a great opportunity for professional basketball to seize the center stage, and by the end of the decade the pros had captured the attentions of basketball fans. But in 1950 professional basketball was in crisis, the National Basketball League (NBL, 1937-1949) and Basketball Association of American (BAA, 1946-1949), had folded and a new seventeen-team league NBA was formed. The next year the NBA started with eleven teams but ended with ten when Washington disbanded in mid season. In 1954 the NBA was reduced to eight teams located in Syracuse, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Fort Wayne, Minneapolis, Rochester, and Milwaukee. By 1959 the Fort Wayne franchise had moved to Detroit, and the Rochester and Milwaukee franchises had been replaced by Cincinnati and Saint Louis. Franchise stability was hardly the hall-mark of the early NBA. There were, however, extremely important developments in professional basketball that assured continued growth and interest.

Integration

The first important commitment made by the NBA was to integration. From the first season, when the Boston Celtics drafted Duquesne's Chuck Cooper, several franchises actively pursued black Basketball stars. Before the end of the decade the league's most heralded players were black.

Fast Breaks and Defense Make Dynasties

The second important commitment made by the NBA was to changing the style of the game. During the early part of the decade, when the league was still searching for an identity, Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics redefined offense with behind-the-back and "no-look" passes that befuddled opponents and sent fans into a frenzy. Cousy's and the Celtics' philosophy (outlined in his 1975 memoír, The Killer Instinct) was to get the ball up the floor as quickly as possible and intimidate the opposition. The success of this style of play was assured when the Celtics acquired the rights to draft Bill Russell.

Bill Russell

Russell had led San Francisco to two straight NCAA titles (1955 and 1956) and had dominated the U.S. Olympic team in Melbourne. When he joined the Celtics, the impact was immediate. Russell's style of assertive defense and rebounding allowed him to get the ball to Cousy in the open court before the opposition could prepare to defend. The Boston Celtics won the 1957 NBA title in Russell's rookie year, lost it the next year (when Russell was injured), and then proceeded to win ten more championships over the next eleven years, including eight in a row (1959-1966). In a decade of professional sports dynasties, the Boston Celtics were simply the best.

Time Races On: The Advent of the Shot Clock

While the Boston Celtics were always an exciting team to watch, the rest of the teams in the NBA needed help attracting fans. A simple rule change provided the levels of excitement fans craved. It added speed and action to the game. On 22 November 1950 Fort Wayne beat Minneapolis 19—18. In another game that season, Indianapolis beat Rochester 75—73 in six overtimes. These games may have been close, but they were boring. The fans who came to watch NBA basketball were not excited by the tactic of stalling. They were also not excited by purposeful fouling and rough play. They wanted action. It was not until 1954, however, that the league finally took the advice of Syracuse Nationals owner Danny Biasone and adopted the twenty-four-second shot clock. Biasone reasoned that since NBA teams averaged a shot about once every eighteen seconds anyway, a rule that forced this pace would eliminate stalling at the end of games. The league also adopted the policy of limiting each team to six fouls in each quarter.

Results

The result of these two changes was immediate and lasting. In the first year of the new rules the average score per team per game jumped more than thirteen points and by the end of the decade all teams were averaging more than one hundred points a game. On 27 February 1959 the Russell-Cousy Celtics beat the Minneapolis Lakers 173—139.

Source:

Stanley Cohen, The Game They Played (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977).