The NBA swam upstream the first six years of its existence (1947-1954).

• Overshadowed by the college game, the league struggled to gain recognition in the northeast, where all its franchises were located, and had almost zero visibility in the other sections of the country.
• Founded by a group of arena owners looking to fill winter dates between hockey and boxing events, the league offered a rough, foul-plagued, boring brand of basketball.

Several games illustrate the league's plight. The first is the infamous playoff game between the New York Knicks and the Baltimore Bullets on Saturday night, March 26, 1949.

• Joe Lapchick's Knicks hosted the Bullets, headed by player-coach Buddy Jeannette, in the third and final game of their Eastern Division Series B playoff. The winner would qualify to meet the Washington Capitols in another best-of-three.
• Each team had won on the other's court. The New Yorkers lost an 82-81 "thrill-packed encounter" in the first game before registering a "convincing" 84-74 triumph to tie the series.
• Louis Effrat summarized the rubber game in the New York Times like this:

  In the wildest basketball game ever played at Madison Square Garden the New York Knickerbockers last night defeated the Baltimore Bullets, 103-99, in overtime. ... Exactly 100 personal fouls were called, eleven men were banished, punches were thrown by players and spectators and none among the crowd of 9,625 ever will know why the affair did not terminate in a riotous free-for-all. ... The referees, Hagan Andersen and Ed Boyle, were unable completely to control the participants.

• According to Effrat, "all the feverish whistle-blowing" was caused by "the blocking, tackling, hooking and hacking tactics of both sides ..." He also described the play as "ragged, though rugged."

Reiser attempts to take ball away from Lumpp as Lewis (5) and
Tanenbaum (background) of Baltimore close in. (NY Times photo)

• With one second to play in regulation, Connie Simmons of the Bullets stepped to the FT line and, "undaunted by the unsportsmanlike jeering of the crowd," canned two to tie the game for the 21st time, 89-89.
• Ray Lumpp and Butch Van Breda Kolff - later coach of the Lakers as well as the New Orleans Pride of the Women's Basketball League - led the Knick victory in the OT.
• Six Bullets fouled out, leaving them with only four on the court in the last minutes of OT. The Knicks lost five of their eleven squadmen to the six foul limit during the three-hour marathon.
• Altogether, the two squads shot an incredible 118 foul shots, a playoff record until Boston and Syracuse shot 128 in 4 OT four years later in another example of the pros' rugged style of play that resembled football as much as basketball.
• Remember that, at that time, every foul produced FTs, one or two depending on whether the player was in the act of shooting. It's no wonder the Knicks-Bullets game lasted an agonizing three hours including the interruptions produced by three full-blown fistfights.
• Each team scored 26 FG, but the Knicks made 51 FT compared to 47 for Baltimore to account for the final difference.

If this contest had an overabundance of "action" of the wrong kind, the next games we will cite as symptomatic of the league's problems illustrate the opposite problem - too little action.

Continued below ...

 Reference: Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the NBA, in the words of the Men Who Played, Coached, and Built Pro Basketball, Terry Pluto (1992)
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The early NBA suffered from the lack of a shot clock, as illustrated by these two games, among others.

November 22, 1950: Fort Wayne @ Minneapolis

• The Pistons handed the Lakers their first loss at home in nearly a year, 19-18. The two teams combined for only 31 shots in 48 minutes of play. Only eight FGs were successful.
• Minneapolis's 6'10" 245 lb C George Mikan had all four fielders and 15 of the team's 18 points. No other Laker attempted more than two shots. The Q4 score was Fort Wayne 3, Minneapolis 1.
• It was Mikan's dominance that led the Lakers to back-to-back championships in 1948-9 and 1949-50 and caused Pistons coach Murray Mendenhall to adopt his stall strategy. "I've been trying for three years to do something about him, but nothing works," Murray said.
• The visitors controlled the tip and Mikan and his teammates moved into their defensive positions. But when they turned around, they saw Pistons C Larry Foust standing at midcourt with the ball on his hip. Mendenhall had ordered him to do nothing until the Lakers came out to play man-to-man. The officials ordered Mendenhall to play ball, but he charged that the Lakers played an illegal zone that kept Mikan under the goal.
• The crowd of 7,021 began to boo and stomp their feet, but Fort Wayne held the ball for as long as three minutes at a time. When one player got tired of holding the ball, he'd flip it to a teammate.
• Every so often, Laker G Slater Martin would press and try to force a turnover. When he was successful, the Lakers would hurry downcourt and, after no more than three passes - the last one usually to Mikan - put up a shot.
• Fort Wayne led 8-7 at the end of Q1 but the Lakers "rallied" to carry a 13-11 edge into the locker room. Mikan had scored 12 of the 13.
• The Pistons continued their tactics even though they trailed. Lakers F Vern Mikkelsen thought, "As long as we were ahead and they were holding the ball, there was no point in our trying to create anything." Fort Wayne outscored the home team 5-4 in the quarter to trail by only one entering the final period.
• The teams exchanged FTs, and the score stayed 18-17 Lakers into the final minute. Now it was the home team's turn to stall as the Pistons tried to get the ball back. With nine seconds left, FW forced a turnover as an errant Laker pass sailed out of bounds.
• The Pistons passed in to Curly Armstrong who fed the breaking Foust who tossed a running hook shot over Mikan to make it 19-18. The Lakers hurried downcourt, but Martin's shot hit the rim as the horn sounded to end the lowest-scoring game in NBA history.

The second game that revealed the NBA's serious rule problems came a few weeks later.

January 6, 1951: Indianapolis Olympians @ Rochester Royals

• The Royals and Olympians tied 67-67 at the end of regulation. That doesn't seem like a game with a slow down problem, although Q4 produced only 20 points, the Royals outscoring the Olympians 12-8.
• No, it was the six OTs that spoiled the evening for the 3,790 fans. Two of the extra five-minute periods were scoreless as both teams concentrated on freezing the ball for one shot. In one of the OTs, neither club launched a shot.
• Two of the OTs produced 2-2 standoffs and one was 4-4. Finally, Indy's Ralph Beard sank a breakaway layup in the last second for the only points in the sixth extra session and a 75-73 victory in what is still the longest game in NBA history.

Something had to be done. But it took several more years before someone suggested a shot clock.

Continued below ...

 Reference: Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the NBA, in the words of the Men Who Played, Coached, and Built Pro Basketball, Terry Pluto (1992)

Leonard Koppett (24 Seconds to Shoot: The Birth and Improbable Rise of the NBA) attributed the "bruising, body-contact type of game" that characterized the early years of the NBA to three factors.

1. The first, and foremost, was the test of manhood: as soon as possible, pros "put the question" (as [Knicks coach Joe] Lapchick liked to say) to all newcomers. How much guts did the newcomer have? How much pain and risk was he willing to undertake to complete the path to the basket when it opened up? Could he be made to lose his temper, and therefore lose control of his own game? ...
   Establishing respect, therefore, was necessity number one for every new player - respect from the opposition, and from his own teammates for the way he responded to the opposition's pressure. And the only way to establish respect was to hit back, promptly and effectively - to give as good as one got. ...
2. The second basic invitation to rough stuff was strategic. Obviously the referees couldn't see everything, and couldn't call everything they did see. If they did, the whole game would quickly become a parade to the foul line, nullifying the very thing the owners were trying to sell - high speed, college-style basketball. Referees who had worked with pros before knew how to be "intelligently selective"; those recruited from the college ranks learned quickly, or went back to college games. ...
3. The third factor was embedded in the rules, and was as much of a problem in college and amateur basketball as in the pros: as a close game came nearer and nearer to the final buzzer, there were substantial tactical advantages to fouling. The fact that a basket was worth two points and a free throw only one made it worthwhile to try to trade a foul - which could cost one point - for a chance to score two points. ...

The fledgling NBA tried new rules every year to address the problem of stalling by the team in the lead late in the game and the consequent fouling by the opponent. The 1949-50 season, for example, averaged 54 fouls per game, or more than one a minute.

• 1950-51: A jump ball would be held after each foul shot in the three minutes of the game. The change was intended to discourage the defense from fouling since they would not automatically get the ball after a made FT. The jump pitted the player who was fouled against the player who fouled him. Coaches soon figured out that the best strategy was to have a big guy foul a small guy.
• 1951-52: The lane was widened from 6' to 12' to blunt the impact of big men, primarily George Mikan of the Minneapolis Lakers, and open more driving room to the basket. The jump ball rule was modified to go into effect in the last two minutes.
• 1952-53: The jump ball rule was amended again so that the player fouled would jump against the opponent who usually guarded him. This put the onus on the already overburdened officials to keep track of who was guarding whom.
• 1953-54: Players were allowed only two fouls per quarter (with the limit of six per game as enacted at the beginning of the league in 1946-7). If a player committed a third foul in a period, he must sit out the remainder of the quarter. The rule did little to lessen late game fouling.

The inefficacy of the rules changes was demonstrated March 20, 1954 to a nationwide TV audience on the DuMont Television Network.

• The first paragraph of the AP article on the game played before 10,751 in the Boston Garden makes it sound like an exciting contest that would showcase pro basketball to the nation.

The Boston Celtics edged the New York Knickerbockers, 79-78, to eliminate the New Yorkers from the Eastern Division playoffs ... A basket by Bill Sharman with only 17 seconds left gave the Celtics their second victory of the eastern playoffs and sent New York down to its third straight playoff defeat.

• But if you read further, you learn that referees Charley Eckman and Gig Nicol called a total of 95 fouls, 49 against Boston. The Celtics won despite making only 35 of 56 FTs while the Knicks canned 50 of 63. That's right - 119 FTs were shot. And who knows how many times the officials ignored less blatant contact just to keep the game moving.
• The final quarter took 45 minutes to play. In fact, the Knicks' desperate attempts to sink a basket in the last seconds were not seen by television fans because the wire connection was disconnected when the fray reached the three-hour broadcast limit.
• Koppett: The game encompassed all the repulsive features of the grab-and-hold philosophy. ... The arguments with the referees were interminable and degrading. What had been happening, as a matter of course, in dozens of games for the last couple of years, was shown to a nationwide audience in unadulterated impurity.
• That same day, the Fort Wayne Pistons and Minneapolis Lakers demonstrated NBA basketball at its best in a Western Division playoff game in which only 31 fouls were whistled, the Lakers winning 78-73. But only the 2,600 in the arena experienced the excitement.

The 1953-4 season had started promisingly.

• Exciting new players had entered the league via the draft, such as 6'11" Ray Felix from Long Island U. (who had not been implicated in the betting scandal that destroyed that school's basketball program); F/C Bob Houbregs from Washington; F Jack Molinas, Columbia; and G/F Frank Ramsey, Kentucky.
• Molinas lasted only until December when he was found to have bet on his own team and immediately barred from the league. Commissioner Maurice Podoloff's decisive action gave the NBA credibility in an era that had just experienced major college gambling scandals.
• The third annual All Star Game at Madison Square Garden January 21 brought the 20 greatest players in the world together for an exciting OT contest that had basketball fans buzzing for weeks.
• Both the Eastern and Western Division races went to the wire. The Knicks edged the Celtics and Syracuse Nationals by two games in the East while the Lakers copped the West by a similar margin.

Then the playoffs left a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

• After the Celtics-Knicks debacle, two small market teams (to use a term not in vogue at the time), Minneapolis and Syracuse, battled their way to the finals.
• The Lakers claimed their fifth championship in six years in a seven-game finale that failed to push the baseball spring training reports off page one of the nation's sports sections.
• Also, the final tally showed that the nine teams had averaged 79.5 points per game, the lowest since the league's second season (1947-48).
• Three of the nine franchises were on life support: Baltimore, Fort Wayne, and Milwaukee.

When the owners met less than two weeks after the playoffs, the future looked bleak.

Continued below ...

References: 24 Seconds to Shoot: The Birth and Improbable Rise of the NBA, Leonard Koppett (1968)
Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the NBA, in the Words of the Men Who Played, Coached, and Built Pro Basketball, Terry Pluto (1992)