Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
It started in 1946 with 11 teams and 160 players. The shot clock was nearly a decade away, the 3-point line was a couple generations away. Buildings were smaller. So were the players. And it wasn't even called the National Basketball Association.
The NBA, 75 years ago, was different in almost every imaginable way.
Over the coming months, The Associated Press will look back at what the league was on and off the court, how it became what it is and where it'll be going over the next 25 years as it moves toward the century mark.
The series will recall those humble beginnings, with Ossie Schectman -- who scored the first basket in league history -- making $60 a game. It'll show how what was happening in the country seemed to mirror what was happening in the league, from the league's path toward integrating in the 1950s, to its stance on social issues and race relations today.
In those earliest of years, teams lost plenty of money. Some of the inaugural franchises only had inaugural seasons, folding after Year 1. There was no robust following and the NBA had little to no impact on societal issues.
And all the players were white.
"None of us who were playing at that time knew what this would be," Schectman, who played for the original New York Knicks, said in a 2010 interview, three years before his death. "We didn't know if this was going to work out and become something."
Schectman scored the first basket in Basketball Association of America history; it wasn't called the NBA until three years later, but the NBA counts those years as part of its own. It was an underhand layup for the Knicks in a game at the Toronto Huskies on Nov. 1, 1946, the first two points of 13.7 million in league history and counting.
In time, Schectman got his answer: The NBA, indeed, would become something.
Today, the 30 NBA franchises are worth at least $100 billion combined, possibly much more than that. The league has a fan base that stretches to each corner of the globe and a reputation of being a leader when it comes to social issues.
Richard Lapchick, the son of former New York Knicks coach Joe Lapchick and researcher on social and racial issues within sport, said the league's platform has always provided an opportunity to be a conduit for change -- perhaps never more so than now.
"I genuinely believe that the NBA, with Adam Silver as its current leader, is in this for the right reasons and has the support of the largest integrated labor force in America in terms of percentage of the population," Lapchick said. "They're also very wealthy, so they can use their resources -- and this is new -- to invest in social justice campaigns in their communities."
There has been a major commitment by players to spark change in recent years, from additional and almost unprecedented levels of support for historically Black colleges and universities, to LeBron James leading a voting rights and registration push that wound up playing a significant role in the 2020 presidential election.
Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer believes he knows why basketball tends to make such an impact on society.
"I'll say something a little silly," Ballmer said. "How many sports can you really see the players? Football, you've got helmets on. Baseball players are quite remote, in center field. Even soccer, hockey, you have guys who are moving super-fast with helmets. People can relate to the players in basketball. You can see them. You can feel them.
"There's fewer players which means you get more interviews and get to know certain personalities more than you would in just about any other sport," he added. "Actually, that's a significantly important aspect of why basketball becomes much more at the forefront of societal change."
Like with many things, the early days were the toughest.
The Philadelphia Warriors -- now the Golden State Warriors -- won the league's first title in 1947, over the Chicago Stags. By the time the next season started, four of the 11 original teams had folded; the league added a team from Baltimore and played with eight franchises for the second season.
A 60-game schedule was pared down to 48 to save money on travel. Maurice Podoloff, a hockey executive who was the BAA's first president and ultimately the first NBA commissioner, was tasked with saving the league and winning a battle with the rival National Basketball League for players and attention.
In May 1948, the battle was won. Four teams left the NBL -- Indianapolis, Rochester, Fort Wayne and Minneapolis, who had arguably the biggest name in basketball at the time with George Mikan -- for the BAA.
"Maurice Podoloff charted the unknown for the NBA," the late David Stern, who was the NBA commissioner for 30 years, said when Podoloff died. "He took an idea and nurtured professional basketball through its formative years. It is through the efforts of sporting pioneers like Podoloff that the NBA has become an everyday part of the American sporting scene."
By 1949, the NBA had turned a corner. The league was up to 17 teams, more than doubling what it was. Teams were turning profits. The rebranding to the NBA was complete. And with the evolution in the boardrooms complete, it was time to evolve on the floor as well.
While the race barrier had been broken -- Wat Misaka, a Japanese-American player, was drafted and played for the Knicks in 1947 -- it was barely noticed, in part because he played only three games. The first Black players were three years away from joining the league, changing the face of the game for good.
As the country was changing, moving on fromthe Second World War and into the civil rights movement, the NBA was in lockstep. Change then led to unrest and division, just as it did in recent years across the U.S. But the NBA pressed on, then and now.
"That's what this country is all about and should be about," NBA great and Basketball Hall of Famer Jerry West said. "It's about fair play. And for years, there hasn't been a lot of fair play in this country. I think the NBA has been a front-liner in that, and it's great to see."
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.