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Today's National Basketball Association commands millions of spectators worldwide, and its many franchises are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But the league wasn't always so successful or glamorous: in the 1940s and 1950s, the NBA and its predecessor, the Basketball Association of America, were scrambling to attract fans. Teams frequently played in dingy gymnasiums, players traveled as best they could, and their paychecks could bounce higher than a basketball. How did the NBA evolve from an obscure organization facing financial losses to a successful fledgling sports enterprise by 1960? Drawing on information from numerous archives, newspaper and periodical articles, and Congressional hearings, The Rise of the National Basketball Association chronicles the league's growing pains from 1946 to 1961. David George Surdam describes how a handful of ambitious ice hockey arena owners created the league as a way to increase the use of their facilities, growing the organization by fits and starts. Rigorously analyzing financial data and league records, Surdam points to the innovations that helped the NBA thrive: regular experiments with rules changes to make the game more attractive to fans, and the emergence of televised sports coverage as a way of capturing a larger audience. Notably, the NBA integrated in 1950, opening the game to players who would dominate the game by the end of the 1950sdecade: Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, and Oscar Robertson. Long a game that players loved to play, basketball became a professional sport well supported by community leaders, business vendors, and an ever-growing number of fans.
In an age where teenage hoop stars sign multimillion-dollar endorsement deals before their first professional tip-offs, it's hard to imagine a time when basketball was among the least publicized of all professional sports. After the game's creation in 1891, establishing a viable professional league was an intense struggle, requiring decades of hard work and dedication from players, owners, coaches and fans. While the game evolved from two-handed set shots, fruit baskets, short-shorts and tiny gyms to slam dunks, shoe endorsements, global popularity and massive urban arenas, the NBA established itself as one of the world's dominant professional leagues. This work, the first comprehensive history of the National Basketball Association, offers a detailed look at how and why the NBA was able to overcome the obstacles that had crushed its predecessors and competitors to become the most successfully marketed league in professional sports. Covered here are Naismith's invention of the game; the rise and fall of the NBL, BAA, ABL and ABA; early teams like the Buffalo Germans and the Harlem Rens; basketball's Olympic debut in 1936; the first professional superstars; dominant franchises; and the current state of the league. Appendices offer lists of early professional basketball leagues and commissioners of the NBA, NBL and ABA.
This book examines the development and organization of the NBA and its clubs, how each club has performed in seasons and postseasons, and to what extent each has prospered and succeeded as a business enterprise despite competition for market share from other types of entertainment. Each chapter contains two core themes—Team Performance and Franchise Business. The former highlights how teams won division and conference titles and NBA championships while the latter analyzes and compares financial data including revenue, gate receipts, and operating income. The book also explores such things as when each franchise organized and why it joined the NBA, a brief profile of its current majority owner or ownership group, records of teams’ special coaches and players, attendances at home games, and how their arenas rank as venues for fans. This book explains why particular teams located in very large, large, midsized, or small markets win more games and titles than others and when and how frequently this occurs. In addition, it provides ways to individually—and by division or conference—compare basketball franchises from a financial perspective.
Howard Beck. Marc Stein. Jonathan Abrams. Chris Broussard. Ira Berkow. George Vecsey. Mike Wise. Selena Roberts. Lee Jenkins. All have graced the pages of The New York Times, entertaining readers with their probing coverage of the N.B.A.: a stage on which spectacular athletes perform against a backdrop of continuous social change. Now, their work and more is collected in a new volume, edited and annotated by Hall of Fame honoree Harvey Araton, tracing basketball's sustained boom from Magic and Bird to the present. Elevated provides a courtside seat to four decades of professional basketball. Both the iconic moments and those quieter, but no less meaningful times in between are here, from Wise riding around Los Angeles with a young Kobe Bryant on the eve of his first All-Star Game, to Stein declaring Giannis Antetokounmpo's "unspeakable greatness" to the world in a riveting profile. Rather than simply preserving the past, Elevated reexamines and further illuminates hoops history. This expertly curated collection features exclusive new writing by Araton and postscripts from the original journalists, revealing candid exchanges with NBA greats that didn't make the original newspaper edit and tracing the rise of a worldwide phenomenon from a contemporary vantage point.
In Young, Black, Rich, and Famous, Todd Boyd chronicles how basketball and hip hop have gone from being reviled by the American mainstream in the 1970s to being embraced and imitated globally today. For young black men, he argues, they represent a new version of the American dream, one embodying the hopes and desires of those excluded from the original version. Shedding light on both perception and reality, Boyd shows that the NBA has been at the forefront of recognizing and incorporating cultural shifts?from the initial image of 1970s basketball players as overpaid black drug addicts, to Michael Jordan?s spectacular rise as a universally admired icon, to the 1990s, when the hip hop aesthetic (for example, Allen Iverson?s cornrows, multiple tattoos, and defiant, in-your-face attitude) appeared on the basketball court. Hip hop lyrics, with their emphasis on ?keepin? it real? and marked by a colossal indifference to mainstream taste, became an equally powerful influence on young black men. These two influences have created a brand-new, brand-name generation that refuses to assimilate but is nonetheless an important part of mainstream American culture. This Bison Books edition includes a new introduction by the author.
For most of its existence, the National Basketball Association was a league filled with (almost) all American-born players. Players from overseas were looked at as less-skilled and not worth the risk. Americans playing overseas were looked at as those who couldn’t cut it in the NBA, now playing in, essentially, the minor leagues of basketball. But that’s no longer the case. Today, a full one-third of those in the league were born overseas. Out are the days of foreign-born players from unknown countries sitting at the end of the bench. Now, they’re the face of the franchise. A lottery draft pick. They are carrying the game into the new millennium. So the question remains: what brought about this change? How did the skillsets of players born overseas become comparable to those in the states? In The (Inter) National Basketball Association, author Joel Gunderson explores how the international game has become so integral to the growth of the NBA. It’s not, as former commissioner David Stern described at the 1985 NBA Draft, “America’s Game.” No longer does Team USA expect to steamroll through the Olympics. With stars such as Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece), Luka Doncic (Slovenia), Joel Embiid (Cameroon), Kristaps Porzingis (Latvia), and many more, the game of basketball has become a universal language. With almost forty different countries represented in the National Basketball Association today, the evolution of the sport has transcended across international waters. Teams no longer shy away from players born abroad, but instead welcome them with open arms. And for those who come over, not knowing the language, unfamiliar with the American lifestyle, they are now arriving with fluency in the most important language: basketball.
This Brief identifies and contrasts the groups of National Basketball Association (NBA) expansion franchises and of any teams that relocated from one metropolitan area or city to another from 1950 to 2013. It discusses historical differences and similarities in the teams’ markets and performances and then as members of divisions and conferences. It measures and compares the emergence, development, and success of the teams by analyzing demographic, economic and sport-specific data. It also discusses the respective mergers of the Basketball Association of America and National Basketball League in 1949, and the American Basketball Association and National Basketball Association in 1976. National Basketball Association Strategies makes an important, relevant, and useful contribution to the literature regarding professional sports operations and to the NBA’s short and long run business strategies in American culture. Besides numerous sports fans within metropolitan areas and extended markets of these NBA teams, the book’s audiences are sports historians and researchers, college and public libraries, and current and potential NBA franchise owners and team executives. This Brief may also be used as a reference or supplemental text for college and university students enrolled in such applied undergraduate and graduate courses and seminars as sports administration, sports business, and sports management.
Perfect for fans of Moneyball and The Book of Basketball, this vivid, thoroughly entertaining, and well-researched book explores the NBA’s surge in popularity in the 1970s and 1980s and its transformation into a global cultural institution. Far beyond simply being a sports league, the NBA has become an entertainment and pop culture juggernaut. From all kinds of team logo merchandise to officially branded video games and players crossing over into reality television, film, fashion lines, and more, there is an inseparable line between sports and entertainment. But only four decades ago, this would have been unthinkable. Featuring writing that leaps off the page with energy and wit, journalist and basketball fan Pete Croatto takes us behind the scenes to the meetings that lead to the monumental American Basketball Association–National Basketball Association merger in 1976, revolutionizing the NBA’s image. He pays homage to legendary talents including Julius “Dr. J” Erving, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan and reveals how two polar-opposite rookies, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, led game attendance to skyrocket and racial lines to dissolve. Croatto also dives into CBS’s personality-driven coverage of key players, as well as other cable television efforts, which launched NBA players into unprecedented celebrity status. Essential reading whether you’re a casual or longtime fan, From Hang Time to Prime Time is an enthralling and entertaining celebration of basketball history.
The National Basketball Association (NBA), founded over 75 years ago, is staging a 21st century takeover. Watched in 215 countries and territories worldwide, and with nearly one in three players born and trained overseas, it is no longer just about America. In this book, Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff shows how basketball's global takeover could not have happened without France, exploring its interactions with the United States and colonial legacies with francophone Africa and the Afro-Caribbean. Taking us back to the very beginnings of basketball, she shows how remnants of empire have shaped the game. Asking how and why so many French basketball players have joined the NBA and WNBA, Basketball Empire explores what this has meant for the league and the players themselves. Going behind the scenes, it follows the generations of men and women who, since 1950, have followed their passion for the game to create a basketball breeding ground. Including interviews with players, sports journalists, league directors and coaches past and present, it uncovers the transatlantic networks and complex Franco-American relations that have nurtured a mutual exchange of culture, technical skill and knowledge. These first-hand accounts, supported by media and government archives, show how these forms of sports diplomacy sowed the seeds of a basketball revolution and helped make the NBA a global cultural entity. Arguing that basketball is deeply indebted to France's colonial history and close, albeit complicated, relationship with the United States this book is about the creation of a cultural empire, and shows how sports can be the vehicle to build bridges between nations.