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.
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A new NBA season is nearly upon us, so what better time to take a quick trip back to the origins of the game? Connie Kirchberg's new book, Hoop Lore: A History of the National Basketball Association, takes us on just such a journey. So sit back, relax, and let's go back to a time when you needed a ladder to play "Basket Ball" . . .so you could get the ball out of the basket.
A Canadian theology student by the name of James Naismith invented our favorite sport on or about December 21, 1891 as an exercise of the body and mind at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts. Now, well over a century later, that same city houses the basketball Hall of Fame, where fans from all over the country go to see their heroes enshrined. Kirchberg's book takes us from one extreme to the other, and covers everything in between.
Basket Ball was a very different game from what we enjoy today. Very few baskets were actually scored during the course of the game, and all rules were off once someone had scored. The payoff for doing so was often a hard elbow and an express trip to the floor. Nonetheless, Basket Ball quickly replaced volleyball as the YMCA's most popular sport, and soon caught fire in gyms across the country.
Read about the early growing pains of the sport, which saw league after league go under before the National Basketball Association ultimately became the official league of Naismith's invention. Haven't heard of the Buffalo Germans? They were the very first basketball dynasty . . .read all about them in Kirchberg's book.
It wasn't until the professional leagues adopted the standardized rules that college campuses had established that pro basketball began to catch on . . .and even then it took a while. Americans loved baseball and were beginning to enjoy football, but basketball was still a distant third in the 1920's. The birth of the ABL would change that. The league's first season - a 30-game schedule - saw eight of nine teams complete the entire schedule intact, making it the first pro hoops league to accomplish such a feat.
Kirchberg takes us through the births and deaths of the Basketball Association of America, the National Basketball League, including the emergence of the first true basketball star: George Mikan. And then, after 53 years of interleague battles and racial tension, the National Basketball Association was born. It helped that collegiate basketball was embroiled in a scandal over gambling and point shaving, but whatever it took, professional basketball was here to stay.
Bob Cousy, Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West - all household names today, but in the 1950's they were the men who laid the groundwork for today's NBA. In the 60's Oscar Robertson, Lenny Wilkens, and Bill Russell kept the ball rolling . . .so to speak . . .as the NBA faced its first real competition when the ABA started up. Find out how Dr. J became the force that joined the nation's two largest basketball leagues in Hoop Lore.
Kermit Washington's blow to Rudy Tomjanovich's face threatened to ruin the hard-fought market gains basketball had made since the NBA became the one and only hoops league. Fortunately for the sport, Larry Bird was about to burst onto the scene and show fans that basketball was much more than a thuggish brawl. Magic Johnson's arrival emphasized this even more, and their rivalry ultimately became the bedrock of the NBA's foundation. Michael Jordan's domination of the 1990's made the NBA everyone's favorite sport.
Hoop Lore takes you through it all - the rough days of Basket Ball's inception to the modern era of glory and worldwide expansion. Connie Kirchberg has done a masterful job of telling the inside story of the history of the greatest game on hardwood. -- Bill Ingram, Hoopsworld.com
About the Author
Connie Kirchberg is a freelance writer specializing in biographies and popular American culture. She is the coauthor of Elvis Presley, Richard Nixon, and the American Dream (1999, with Marc Hendrickx). She lives in Fresno, California.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of a Kind-Comprehensive History,
By KM (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hoop Lore: A History of the National Basketball Association (Paperback)
From Naismith and the creation of basketball to multimillion dollar deals and Lebron James.
But other than just being comprehensive Kirchberg's book is also fascinating and well-written. She does an excellent job of keeping you interested by combining information on the cultural impact of Basketball as well as a bit of humor along the way. Hoop Lore effectively combines the history of a subject into a concise neat little packet. A must read for anyone who loves basketball!
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