The Rise of the National Basketball Association

4. Shakedown (1951-54)

4 Shakedown (1951–54) With the NBL gone, along with some of the original BAA franchises, the surviving owners hoped consolidation would provide stability if not prosperity . However, the elimination of six weak teams did not immediately create prosperity for the remaining NBA teams. Three more teams folded before the league settled into an eight-team circuit. The owners, seeking to reduce costs and bolster attendance, decided to rely on doubleheaders. They also worried about the growing roughness of league games and worked on trying to improve the product. Attendance Blues NBA president Maurice Podoloff attributed the attendance doldrums of 1951– 52 to football, television, and public distrust of basketball emanating from the point-shaving scandal in college basketball. He also admitted that the general economic conditions during the Korean War and inadequate promotional efforts contributed to the downturn. His plaint echoed those of Major League Baseball owners facing steep declines in attendance after 1949. Hockey owners , too, faced shrinking crowds.1 Although modern critics of the NBA decry its marketing of individual stars instead of teams, the tactic is as old as the league itself. Ever since the league enticed George Mikan and the Lakers from the NBL, it has emphasized marquee players. The famous Madison Square Garden marquee, “Tonite: George Mikan vs. The New York Knicks,” is as vital today as it was in the early 1950s.2 Perhaps Knicks fans were sore at George for humiliating their centers, as he had set scoring records against them. Mikan and the Lakers, however, had not been a particularly popular draw at Madison Square Garden between 1949 and 1951, as the team never attracted more than 10,000 fans for any of its games there. Even in Minneapolis, with its mid-sized arenas, the team rarely generated crowds in excess of 10,000. But during Mikan’s three remaining full-time seasons, he and the Lakers drew Garden crowds in excess of 16,000 three times and proved one of the better draws.3 Sportswriter Leonard Koppett believed that Bob Cousy, the 6ʹ1˝ guard was a key player in popularizing the game. While most fans could not relate to the NBA centers, Cousy, while still taller than the average American male, was not a “pituitary freak.”4 “What the big men did, however successful, was the result of natural endowment; what Cousy did, looking so small among them, constituted the triumph of the common man. . . . Cousy did so much to establish, in the American imagination, the status of pro basketball . Black players were still few, so it was Cousy who displayed a truth that was already a cultural norm among the blacks and would be, eventually throughout the game: that in basketball, style is as important to the fan as sheer result.” The addition of Cousy and Ed Macauley transformed the Celtics into a winning team, albeit one that fell short of advancing to the NBA finals until Red Auerbach added Bill Russell. Boston fans responded by boosting attendance at the Boston Garden by more than 60 percent between 1949–50 and 1950–51.5 Owners began to realize that a player did not have to be like Mikan to draw crowds. Ben Kerner, owner of the struggling Milwaukee Hawks, found that when he inherited rookie Frank Selvy from the defunct Baltimore Bullets he received an attendance boon, if only temporarily. Selvy scored thirty-five points in his first home game with the Hawks. In the next game 5,026 paid attendees watched Selvy score thirty-one points. Kerner gushed, “That’s just under 9,000 paid for two games. The best week I’ve ever had here. I’ve gone eight, nine games before without drawing many more than that altogether.”6 He certainly needed an attendance boost. He had transferred his Tri-Cities Blackhawks to Milwaukee for the 1951–52 season. While the Blackhawks played thirty-five home games in 1950–51, Kerner scheduled only twenty home games for 1951–52. When the Boston Braves baseball team transferred to Milwaukee for the 1953 season, fans flocked to see them, leaving the moribund Hawks even less appreciated. Then again, the Hawks were a poor team on the court. 88 . chapter four attempts to boost the gate The sad truth for BAA owners was that their product simply did not generate large enough crowds to be profitable. Owners, especially of teams in smaller cities, quickly grasped this...