Section 3.1
When and why the NBA formed
When and why did the NBA form?
The NBA was formed on August 3, 1949, when two rival leagues merged. But the league traces its own history back further: it treats June 6, 1946, the founding date of one of those two leagues, as its true birthday.National Basketball Association - WikipediaThe NBA was created on August 3, 1949, with the merger of the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL). The league later adopted the BAA's history and considers its founding on June 6, 1946, as its own.
Open source
That earlier league was the Basketball Association of America (BAA), founded on June 6, 1946, at a meeting at the Commodore Hotel in New York City.Basketball Association of America - WikipediaTo put this theory into practice, the BAA was founded at the Commodore Hotel in New York City on June 6, 1946.
Open source It was created by owners of major ice hockey arenas, who wanted to fill their venues on nights when there were no hockey games. These owners bet that big-city arenas and larger crowds could turn professional basketball into a bigger business than it had been.
Professional basketball did not start with the BAA. Before it existed, leagues such as the National Basketball League (NBL) already fielded professional teams, but these mostly used small venues like ballrooms and high school gyms rather than big arenas. The BAA's strategy of playing in large hockey arenas set it apart from these earlier, smaller-scale operations.
The game the NBA now recognizes as its first ever took place on November 1, 1946, between the Toronto Huskies and the New York Knickerbockers. The merger that created the NBA took place after the BAA's third season, in 1949, when the BAA and the NBL combined their teams into one league. When the NBA was formed, BAA president Maurice Podoloff became the new league's president, carrying over much of the BAA's leadership and structure.