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On this day in New York · June 6, 1946

Basketball Gets a Big League, at a Midtown Hotel

Nineteen hockey-arena men gathered at a hotel by Grand Central, put a price of a thousand dollars a team on pro basketball, and handed the whole thing to a hockey man to run.

The facts

Date
June 6, 1946
Location
Commodore Hotel, East 42nd Street, next to Grand Central Terminal
First president
Maurice Podoloff, who chaired the meeting and was already president of the American Hockey League
Franchise fee
$1,000 per team

On June 6, 1946, nineteen team owners and arena promoters met at the Commodore Hotel on 42nd Street, next to Grand Central Terminal, and voted the Basketball Association of America into existence. The push came mainly from Walter Brown of the Boston Garden, who wanted a way to fill his arena on the nights the Bruins weren't skating. Franchises went out to Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and other cities that afternoon, and New York's own bid, filed by Ned Irish for Madison Square Garden, was held over and then approved before the meeting closed. To run the new league, the owners elected Maurice Podoloff, who was already president of the American Hockey League and had been chairing the very meeting that just gave him a second job.

In their words

The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.

  1. The chairman called to the attention of the members the fact that the newly organized Association was a major league in every possible measure of the term.

    From the minutes of the BAA's organizational meeting, June 6, 1946

    Source: APBR (Association for Professional Basketball Research)

  2. Maurice Podoloff was elected President of BAA.

    From the minutes of the BAA's organizational meeting, June 6, 1946

    Source: APBR (Association for Professional Basketball Research)

Why it still matters

That meeting is the direct ancestor of the NBA, which the BAA became after absorbing a rival league in 1949. The hotel didn't outlast the league's name either: three decades later a young Donald Trump bought the fading Commodore and reopened it as the Grand Hyatt, the deal that first put his name on Manhattan real estate.

Sources

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