About NBA Hoops Online

NBAHoopsOnline.com is an independent basketball history website dedicated to preserving, documenting, and sharing the history of professional basketball. While the NBA is at the center of the site, NBA Hoops Online goes far beyond today's league, covering the teams, players, leagues, statistics, records, photographs, and stories that helped professional basketball develop into the game fans know today.

The site's goal is simple: to make basketball history accessible. That includes the famous moments and legendary players that every basketball fan knows, but it also means preserving the parts of the game's past that are increasingly difficult to find. Defunct franchises, forgotten leagues, obscure players, old schedules, historical rosters, draft results, records, photographs, and unusual events all have a place at NBA Hoops Online.

Our History

NBA Hoops Online traces its beginnings to 1997, when the internet looked very different from the one we know today. Basketball information online was limited, particularly for fans interested in the history of the sport rather than simply current scores and standings.

Over the years, the site evolved and expanded into NBAHoopsOnline.com. What began as a basketball website has grown into an extensive historical archive containing thousands of pages devoted to professional basketball.

The site's coverage includes the modern NBA and its franchises, but some of its most distinctive material explores basketball's earlier eras. NBA Hoops Online documents the Basketball Association of America (BAA), National Basketball League (NBL), American Basketball Association (ABA), National Professional Basketball League (NPBL), and numerous franchises that disappeared decades ago.

Teams such as the Anderson Packers, Sheboygan Red Skins, Waterloo Hawks, Chicago Stags, Providence Steamrollers, Pittsburgh Ironmen, Indianapolis Jets and the original Denver Nuggets are an important part of professional basketball history. NBA Hoops Online works to keep the stories of those teams available to future generations of basketball fans.

The site's historical research has also become a resource beyond its own pages. In 2025, for example, the Denver Gazette credited NBAHoopsOnline.com for historical Denver Refiners material and interviewed the site's founder about the original Denver Nuggets and the early NBA.

About Branigan Faurschou

NBA Hoops Online is operated by Branigan Faurschou, an independent basketball historian and researcher with a particular interest in the overlooked corners of professional basketball history.

Faurschou has spent years researching not only NBA history but also the leagues and franchises that preceded, competed with, and helped shape the NBA. That research ranges from major franchises and Hall of Fame players to teams and individuals whose stories have largely disappeared from mainstream basketball coverage.

His work has led to recognition as a basketball historian. The Denver Gazette, while researching former Waterloo Hawks and Denver Refiners player Leo Kubiak, identified Faurschou as the basketball historian who runs NBAHoopsOnline.com and quoted his research and perspective on the contraction of early NBA franchises. The newspaper also used historical material supplied by NBA Hoops Online in its coverage.

For Faurschou, basketball history is about more than championships, superstars, and statistics. The history of the sport also belongs to the forgotten players who appeared in only a handful of games, the small-market teams that disappeared after a season, the owners who kept early professional teams alive, and the leagues that helped establish professional basketball long before it became a multibillion-dollar industry.

Preserving Basketball History

One of the primary purposes of NBA Hoops Online is preservation. Information about early professional basketball can be surprisingly difficult to locate. Records are sometimes incomplete, photographs may be rare, team names changed frequently, franchises relocated or folded, and contemporary newspaper accounts can contradict modern historical databases.

NBA Hoops Online attempts to bring this scattered history together in one place.

The result is a site where a visitor can explore the history of today's NBA franchises and then continue backward into the BAA, NBL, ABA and other chapters of professional basketball. The site also maintains historical statistics, standings, rosters, draft information, records, photographs, articles and other reference material.

More Than the Modern NBA

Today's NBA did not appear overnight. Its history was built through decades of experimentation, competition, mergers, expansion, relocation and failure.

Understanding the NBA therefore requires understanding organizations such as the NBL and BAA, the 1949 consolidation that produced the NBA, the challenge presented by the ABA, and the many franchises that existed along the way. Even short-lived teams contributed players, executives, ideas and history to the development of professional basketball.

That broader view of the sport is what separates NBA Hoops Online from a website devoted only to today's standings, transactions and headlines.

An Independent Basketball Resource

NBA Hoops Online remains an independent website. It is not affiliated with the National Basketball Association or any NBA franchise.

That independence has allowed the site to develop around a passion for basketball history rather than simply following whatever happens to be receiving the most attention at the moment. Current NBA events have a place on the site, but preserving the history of the game remains its foundation.

After nearly three decades online, the mission remains much the same as it was when the project began in 1997: research the game, document its history, preserve information that might otherwise be forgotten, and make that history available to basketball fans around the world.

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