The Crash of the PBLA and the End of Minor League Basketball

Following World War II, millions of Americans were searching for new forms of entertainment, and spectator sports quickly became one of the most popular outlets. Professional basketball was still in its infancy, but the sport was beginning to grow rapidly as war-weary Americans looked for more entertainment options.

By 1946, three significant professional basketball leagues were operating in the United States.

The oldest was the American Basketball League, or ABL, which had existed in one form or another since the 1920s. The league had inconsistent attendance, however, and both fans and players sometimes had difficulty keeping track of which teams were actually participating from one season to the next.

The newest league was the Basketball Association of America, or BAA. It began play in 1946 with 11 teams, primarily along the Eastern Seaboard, although the league also included teams as far west as Chicago and Detroit.

The most established league was the National Basketball League, or NBL. The NBL was entering its 10th season under that name and featured many of the best professional basketball players in the country.

For years, the NBL and ABL had experienced relatively little direct competition. The ABL operated largely around New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, while the NBL was concentrated in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois and the Great Lakes region.

The arrival of the BAA changed that balance. Its large-city strategy put it in direct competition with both leagues and increased the instability already present in professional basketball.

The NBL had always exercised relatively loose control over its member teams. The league had nearly failed during its earlier days as the Midwest Basketball Conference because of many of the same organizational problems.

Scheduling was once largely left to individual teams. As long as a team met the league's minimum requirements, clubs could arrange much of their own schedule. That system created significant differences in the number and quality of games played, as well as enormous differences in revenue.

Players could also move between teams more freely than they would in later eras, and some players competed for teams in multiple leagues. By the end of World War II, the NBL had begun tightening its control over player contracts and scheduling, although some players still appeared elsewhere under assumed names.

A more organized schedule eventually reduced barnstorming and created greater balance among the league's teams, but the NBL's continuing instability gave Chicago American Gears owner Maurice White an opportunity to attempt something much more ambitious.

In 1946, White began exploring the creation of another league that could compete with the NBL, ABL and BAA.

His Chicago American Gears were one of the strongest teams in the NBL and featured one of the best players in professional basketball. White believed that combination gave him considerable leverage.

The Gears had entered the NBL in 1944 following the disappearance of an earlier Chicago franchise. Chicago had long been a market the NBL wanted to establish, but previous attempts had struggled.

During the Midwest Basketball Conference era, controversy involving Chicago's playoff qualification helped contribute to instability that eventually resulted in the league being reorganized as the NBL. Chicago later returned to the league, but World War II and poor management contributed to that franchise's demise.

The American Gears appeared to be different. For the first time, the NBL seemed to have a strong Chicago franchise with both a successful team and a player capable of attracting national attention.

The American Gears were led by former DePaul star George Mikan. Mikan joined the Gears in 1946 and quickly became the dominant player in professional basketball.

He was named to the All-NBL team and led Chicago to the NBL championship in 1947. Under normal circumstances, that championship might have marked the beginning of a long period of success for the Gears.

Instead, it became the beginning of the end.

Maurice White wanted greater control over the NBL. He first attempted to convince the league's ownership groups to make him president. White believed that controlling the team in the league's largest market and employing its biggest star gave him enough influence to demand a leadership role.

The other owners disagreed. The loose structure of the NBL, combined with opposition from Indianapolis Kautskys owner Frank Kautsky and others, prevented White from receiving enough support to become president.

An angry White responded by announcing that the American Gears would leave the NBL and join a new league of his own creation.

White's new league was called the Professional Basketball League of America, or PBLA.

The league was designed to include 16 teams, primarily across the Midwest and South. White's organization planned to control the teams and arenas, and the league proposed an ambitious 72-game schedule that would also include games played at neutral sites.

Its geographic footprint was enormous for a professional basketball league of the period.

The NBL itself stretched from Syracuse, New York, to Denver, Colorado, during this era, but Denver was a major geographic outlier. The PBLA, by contrast, attempted to operate across a wide territory extending from Atlanta and New Orleans in the South to Houston in the Southwest, Kansas City and St. Joseph in Missouri, Waterloo in Iowa, Chicago and Grand Rapids in the Midwest, and St. Paul in Minnesota.

The league also tried to include several smaller markets such as Waterloo, Iowa, and St. Joseph, Missouri.

Travel became a serious problem almost immediately.

Teams were expected to move between cities such as New Orleans, Chicago, Atlanta and Kansas City at a time when commercial air travel was far less practical and affordable than it would become in later decades.

The league also struggled to attract enough fans. Many of the best players remained in the NBL, while the rapidly expanding BAA was competing aggressively for other professional talent.

The PBLA's enormous geographic footprint, high travel costs, weak attendance and shortage of elite players created a financial structure that could not survive.

After only a few weeks of play, the league collapsed.

The collapse sent shock waves through professional basketball. The important lesson was not simply that another league had failed. The failure made it increasingly clear that the future of major professional basketball in the United States would likely be decided by the competition between the NBL and BAA.

The PBLA's plan was simply too ambitious for its time. The American sports economy was not yet large enough to support four major professional basketball leagues alongside the country's other major sports leagues and hundreds of smaller professional and semi-professional organizations.

Professional basketball itself was not yet popular enough to support that many competing leagues.

White was not necessarily wrong about the long-term potential of the cities he selected. Several PBLA markets eventually supported NBA, ABA or developmental-league basketball. Cities that appeared overambitious for professional basketball in 1947 would become viable markets decades later.

The NBL initially benefited from the PBLA's collapse because the league claimed the rights to the former PBLA players.

The NBL held a dispersal process in which the team with the worst record received the first opportunity to select players from the defunct league.

The previous season's weakest NBL club had been the Detroit Gems, who won only four games and were themselves close to disappearing. Owner King Boring sold the franchise to a group from Minneapolis.

The new Minneapolis ownership group used its position to acquire George Mikan.

The former Detroit Gems were transformed into the Minneapolis Lakers, and Mikan immediately became the centerpiece of the franchise. He led Minneapolis to the 1948 NBL championship.

The instability that continued to plague the NBL eventually pushed the Lakers and several other important franchises toward the rival BAA.

Minneapolis moved to the BAA before the 1948-49 season, joining other important former NBL franchises such as the Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne Pistons and Indianapolis Jets. The BAA had also previously added the Baltimore Bullets from the ABL.

Within two years of the PBLA collapse, the NBL itself was fighting for survival.

The league still had an important advantage: talent. Clubs such as the Syracuse Nationals continued to feature elite players, including Dolph Schayes.

Eventually, neither the NBL nor BAA could completely defeat the other. Instead, the surviving organizations came together in 1949 and formed the National Basketball Association.

The combination of the BAA and NBL finally brought a greater degree of stability to professional basketball.

Teams gained stronger control over player contracts, franchises became more firmly tied to one league, and professional basketball began moving toward a more centralized national structure.

That development made survival increasingly difficult for smaller leagues such as the ABL, which ceased operating in the early 1950s.

Ironically, however, the creation of the NBA soon produced another short-lived breakaway league.

After the NBA's first season, tensions developed between former BAA clubs in large cities and several former NBL organizations located in smaller markets.

Several teams eventually left and became part of the National Professional Basketball League, or NPBL.

The similarities between the PBLA and NPBL were striking. Both leagues grew out of disputes involving an established professional league, and many NPBL teams operated in markets similar to those targeted by the PBLA.

Like the PBLA, the NPBL could not create a sustainable national professional basketball structure. It failed to complete a normal full season before disappearing.

The collapse of the PBLA helped end the possibility that another large professional basketball league could immediately compete with the emerging NBA structure.

Even during the scandals and financial problems that affected professional basketball during the 1950s, no rival league was able to seriously challenge the NBA's position.

It would take roughly two decades before another national league presented a significant challenge.

That challenge came with the formation of the American Basketball Association in 1967. The ABA survived far longer than the PBLA and competed directly with the NBA for players and markets before four of its teams eventually joined the NBA in 1976.

The PBLA lasted only a matter of weeks, but its collapse had lasting consequences. Maurice White's failed attempt to build a national basketball empire helped send George Mikan to Minneapolis, strengthened the NBL temporarily, and became one more step in the chaotic process that ultimately produced the modern NBA.