The real professional Basketball has been invented August 3, 1949 one can say
Hello guys - after a break as of serious things I am back with a birthday post! On this day in 1949 the two competing Basketball associations in the US called BAA (Basketball Association of America) and NBL (National Basketball League) joined forces to create one of the most popular leagues in global sports - the NBA (National Basketball Association). It was not an easy task and follows some years of battling to win fans and players. The first years after foundation also had their obstacles for all involved.
The merger was finalized in the office of BAA in the Empire State Building of New York and the league kicked-off with 17 teams from the entire country including big and small cities. Until 1955 the size of the league declined to 8 teams only and a lot supporters left but the turnround was achieved when the NBA created the 24-second clock which made the play much faster and attractive to the audience. That transformation made the league profitable and enabled them to expand in the 1960ies.
In the 1980ies the league saw again problems with a lack of fan interest, lower tv ratings but soon was re-vitalized when David Stern started to lead the NBA from 1984 and made it a global entertainment player by the use of agrresive marketing campaigns highlighting some star players such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson or Larry Bird. NowadaysNBA has tons of franchise partners and fans around the world that see NBA as the heart of Basketball as a sport.
Europe (or better Germany) and the NBA
Personally I have to say I liked to play Basketball in my youth but was not very good at it - might be because of my low height and the fact that I only have some feel for the ball in my feet. In Germany the Basketball boom and love for NBA started when we had our first German players there - the first one has been Detlev Schrempf which was seen as a superstar in good ole Germany - being the real first German to achieve success in this league.
Detlef has been born in the lovely city of Leverkusen, not far from Cologne and was playing college basketball in the US starting at the age 0f 18 already and was drafted into the NBA by the Dallas Mavericks in 1985. The same club later was hiring another German superstar. Detlev was three-time NBA All-Star and played a total of 16 NBA seasonsas well as for the German national basketball team. He achieved a special nickname as "Det - the Threat". Det was the one that paved the way for other young German players to enter the NBA later such as Dirk Nowitzki.
Nowitzki's NBA career is one of these small town boy dream careers - he has played already 20 seasons in the NBA and achieved 13-time All-Star, 12-time All-NBA Team member accomplishments and was the first European player to start in an All-Star Game as well as being the first one from Europe to be awarded as NBA Most Valuable Player Award and more and more and more. As part of the German national team he won some medals during World and European Championships - not to mention he became also lead scorer and MVP in both tournaments. A superstar in Germany.
Sources: History.com, Pixabay, Wikipedia
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