Basketball dates to the late nineteenth century. In 1891, a Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) Training School instructor named James Naismith (1861–1939) hung a pair of peach baskets on a gymnasium track railing and urged those in attendance to toss balls into the baskets, thus inventing the game. Throughout the early twentieth century, various professional basketball leagues were born, and many quickly failed. Two of the most enterprising were the American Basketball League (ABL), which began in 1925 and folded during the 1930s, and the National Basketball League (NBL), formed in 1937. Then in 1946, came the formation of the Basketball Association of America (BAA). Three years later, the East Coast– based BAA merged with the Midwest-based NBL. The merger resulted in the formation of the National Basketball Association (NBA), history's most successful and enduring pro basketball league.

At first, the NBA was a hodgepodge of seventeen teams, representing...