This isn’t how basketball was meant to develop. The Basketball Association of America was founded in 1946 by a group of ice hockey arena owners with the simple objective of filling vacant buildings during the winter when ice wasn’t needed. Nobody in that room was considering billion-dollar franchise valuations, international television rights, or long-term sneaker deals. All they had to do was sell tickets on non-skating nights.
On November 1, 1946, the NBA’s inaugural game took place at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Canada. Ossie Schectman of the New York Knickerbockers made the first basket against the Toronto Huskies. It wasn’t a very glamorous beginning, but it was one. The National Basketball League, a rival league that had been in operation since 1937 in smaller Midwestern cities like Fort Wayne and Sheboygan, was difficult for the early BAA to distinguish itself from.
On August 3, 1949, representatives of the two leagues met at the BAA offices in New York’s Empire State Building and decided to merge due to the intense rivalry between them. With 17 teams, a mix of large and small cities, and no assurance that any of it would survive, the National Basketball Association was born.
It almost did not. Fan interest was low, and franchises were collapsing through the early 1950s. Of those 17 teams, only eight remained by the 1954–55 season. That figure is almost depressing: eight teams were once struggling to survive in the same league that now commands the second-highest revenue of any professional sports organization in the world.
A change in the rules was what changed things, at least in part. The NBA adopted the 24-second shot clock in 1954. Before that, winning teams could just hold the ball and run out of time, making games frustratingly slow and low-scoring. The shot clock made the game genuinely enjoyable to watch by forcing action and shooting. The fans returned.
George Mikan, a 6’10” center who won five titles between 1949 and 1954 and was widely regarded as the league’s first true superstar, led the Minneapolis Lakers to their first true dynasty. However, Boston was solely responsible for the period that shaped the NBA’s initial identity.
Even by the standards of professional sports domination, what transpired after Bill Russell joined the Celtics in 1957 was astounding. Boston won 11 titles in 13 seasons, including eight titles in a row from 1959 to 1966, an unprecedented run in American professional sports. Russell’s rivalry with Wilt Chamberlain, who joined the league in 1959 and set records like 55 rebounds in one game and 100 points in another, gave the sport something it sorely needed: real star power with real stakes.
The 1970s were a time of growth and upheaval. Four of the American Basketball Association’s teams—the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New York Nets, and San Antonio Spurs—were absorbed when the NBA and ABA combined in 1976. The three-point line and a new, more expressive style of basketball were introduced by the ABA, and both eventually found their way into the NBA’s identity. However, the league also had to deal with dwindling TV viewership and players’ well-known drug use during this time. Looking back, most people may not realize how close the NBA of the late 1970s was to collapsing.
A college rivalry that grew into something much bigger was largely responsible for saving it. After competing against one another in the NCAA championship game, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird joined the NBA in 1979. In the 1980s, their professional careers—Bird with the Boston Celtics and Magic with the Los Angeles Lakers—produced three NBA Finals meetings and revived the league’s cultural momentum.
It was truly captivating to watch Magic’s quick, improvisational style contrast with Bird’s exact, nearly unyielding fundamentalism. Understanding this, Commissioner David Stern, who took over in 1984, focused the league’s marketing on specific figures. With the arrival of Michael Jordan, the NBA became a global phenomenon.
Looking back at that trajectory, there’s a sense that the NBA’s history is more of a string of near-misses and improbable rescues than a straight line of advancement. Examples include the introduction of a shot clock just in time, a merger that barely survived, and two players from opposite ends of the nation who just so happened to detest losing. All of those moments quietly piled on top of one another to create the league that exists today, with 30 franchises, billion-dollar broadcast deals, and players from dozens of nations.
