The Golden Age of Amateur Basketball

The Golden Age of Amateur Basketball PDF Author: Adolph H. Grundman
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803204720
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) has long symbolized the idealism of amateur athletic competition. For basketball especially, the AAU provided an opportunity for athletes to showcase their skills for the benefit of the team and the sport, not the bottom line. In The Golden Age of Amateur Basketball, Adolph H. Grundman recounts the history of the AAU National Tournament during its golden age, 1921 through 1968. ø Grundman analyzes the early tournaments, examining rule changes, key players, and dominant teams. He explores the rivalries between corporations for amateur dominance after 1935, the competition between the AAU and the National Collegiate Athletic Association for representation in Olympic basketball, the question of just how amateur ?amateur? basketball really was, and the reasons for the demise of postcollegiate amateur basketball. The Golden Age of Amateur Basketball provides the first history of AAU basketball and identifies players and teams that made major contributions to basketball history.

The Golden Age of Amateur Basketball

The Golden Age of Amateur Basketball PDF Author: Adolph H. Grundman
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803204720
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) has long symbolized the idealism of amateur athletic competition. For basketball especially, the AAU provided an opportunity for athletes to showcase their skills for the benefit of the team and the sport, not the bottom line. In The Golden Age of Amateur Basketball, Adolph H. Grundman recounts the history of the AAU National Tournament during its golden age, 1921 through 1968. ø Grundman analyzes the early tournaments, examining rule changes, key players, and dominant teams. He explores the rivalries between corporations for amateur dominance after 1935, the competition between the AAU and the National Collegiate Athletic Association for representation in Olympic basketball, the question of just how amateur ?amateur? basketball really was, and the reasons for the demise of postcollegiate amateur basketball. The Golden Age of Amateur Basketball provides the first history of AAU basketball and identifies players and teams that made major contributions to basketball history.

Netting Out Basketball 1936

Netting Out Basketball 1936 PDF Author: Rich Hughes
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1770679707
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
1936 was the most significant year in basketball’s first half century. For the first time, Olympic basketball ended with a gold medal game. Dr. James Naismith was honored at the Berlin Olympics for his wonderful invention, as basketball achieved widespread international acceptance in a short period of time. 45 years after creating an exciting indoor sport for a physical education class, Naismith watched 23 countries vie for the gold. Boycotts protested Hitler’s policies within the Olympic host country of Germany, and as a result, politics and sports were forever linked. Other meaningful firsts for the 1935-36 playing season included controversy in the US Olympic Tryout system, a problematic lack of funding for US Olympians, and the actualization of new basketball strategies. Fast breaking offenses, dunking the ball, and full court zone pressure were important new techniques that radically changed the game. This book tells the little known story of the 1936 team which transformed basketball. The book documents the McPherson Refiners significant role in developing basketball’s faster, dynamic playing style. The mishaps and fortunes of the Refiners and three other AAU teams who placed men on Berlin’s muddy clay court will be the focus of the book.

American Hoops

American Hoops PDF Author: Carson Cunningham
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803226721
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
Those who avidly followed the on-court acrobatics and off-court celebrity of the OC Dream TeamOCO in Barcelona in 1992 would hardly recognize what passed as basketball fifty-six years earlier, when the United States first played the game in the 1936 Olympics. In those early days of menOCOs Olympic basketball, many teams lacked basic skills, games were played in the pouring rain, only seven players could suit up, and the rules allowed only two substitutions and no time-outs. How this slow, low-scoring sport became the breakneck game that enraptures millions worldwide is the story of American Hoops.In this fascinating history of Olympic basketball on the world stage and behind the scenes, Carson Cunningham presents a kaleidoscopic picture of the evolution into the twenty-first century of one of AmericaOCOs most popular sports. From clashes between celebrated egos and thrilling action on the court to the intense rivalries of the Cold War and technological advances in everything from television to sports equipment off the court, American Hoops follows the fortunes of Olympic basketball, in the United States and internationally, as it developed and emerged as one of the most challenging and entertaining sports in the world.Cunningham traces how the modifications made by the International Olympic Committee and the International Basketball Federation have transformed the game of basketball over the years, from the Berlin to the Beijing Olympics. His book offers a remarkable view of the changing world through the prism of Olympic sport."

The Birth of the Modern NBA

The Birth of the Modern NBA PDF Author: Josh Elias
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476652422
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
On August 3, 1949, the National Basketball Association was born, comprising 17 organizations that ranged geographically from Boston to Denver and culturally from Manhattan to Sheboygan. The league being the result of a merger, there were two different reigning champions vying for NBA supremacy between the George Mikan-led Minneapolis Lakers and the small-town Anderson Packers, with teams from Syracuse, Rochester, New York, Chicago, and Indianapolis all hoping to upset the apple cart enough to take both teams down. This history of the BAA-NBL merger that created the NBA demonstrates that, amid icy executive relations that reflected the league's larger cultural clash between bustling East Coast metropolises and quiet Midwestern towns, the relentless march toward integration sneaking up quicker than expected on the segregated league, and the Second World War still distinctly visible in the rearview mirror and America's involvement in Korea closer than it may have appeared, it was what lay just beyond basketball that mattered. From Tony Lavelli's halftime accordion, Lee Knorek's airport escapades, and Chicago Stags owner John Sbarbaro's Capone-era mob ties to tales of antisemitism, systemic racism, and prisoners of war--with cameos from Jackie Robinson, Chuck Connors, and President Gerald Ford--the book brings back to life, in its totality, the NBA as it was nearly 75 years ago in the year of the merger.

American National Pastimes - A History

American National Pastimes - A History PDF Author: Mark Dyreson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317572696
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
When the colonies that became the USA were still dominions of the British Empire they began to imagine their sporting pastimes as finer recreations than even those enjoyed in the motherland. From the war of independence and the creation of the republic to the twenty-first century, sporting pastimes have served as essential ingredients in forging nationhood in American history. This collection gathers the work of an all-star team of historians of American sport in order to explore the origins and meanings of the idea of national pastimes—of a nation symbolized by its sports. These wide-ranging essays analyze the claims of particular sports to national pastime status, from horse racing, hunting, and prize fighting in early American history to baseball, basketball, and football more than two centuries later. These essays also investigate the legal, political, economic, and culture patterns and the gender, ethnic, racial, and class dynamics of national pastimes, connecting sport to broader historical themes. American National Pastimes chronicles how and why the USA has used sport to define and debate the contours of nation. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Making March Madness

Making March Madness PDF Author: Chad Carlson
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 1610756150
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
Throughout the NCAA Tournament’s history, underdogs, Cinderella stories, and upsets have captured the attention and imagination of fans. Making March Madness is the story of this premiere tournament, from its early days in Kansas City, to its move to Madison Square Garden, to its surviving a point-shaving scandal in New York and taking its games to different sites across the country.Chad Carlson’s analysis places college basketball in historical context and connects it to larger issues in sport and American society, providing fresh insights on a host of topics that readers will find interesting, illuminating, and thought provoking.

The Basketball Draft Fact Book

The Basketball Draft Fact Book PDF Author: Robert D. Bradley
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810890690
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 657

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Book Description
On June 2nd, 1947, the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL) held the first college basketball draft in the history of the sport. The two leagues selected a combined 100 college seniors, including future Hall of Famers Harry Gallatin, Andy Phillips, and Jim Pollard. Since then, over 9,000 draft choices have been made by the major professional basketball leagues. The Basketball Draft Fact Book is the first detailed and comprehensive listing of all professional basketball drafts in the history of the sport, from the first draft in 1947 to the present. In The Basketball Draft Fact Book, each season’s draft is summarized, noting significant events and circumstances pertinent to that year and providing insight into the unique conditions and notable players involved. Following the summary is a complete list of all players drafted that season. This book includes not only the NBA, but the American Basketball League, American Basketball Association, and the Women’s National Basketball Association, as well. Additional sections cover expansion and dispersal drafts, international players selected in the draft, the processes used to determine the order of the drafts, the impact of trades, and more. The Basketball Draft Fact Book provides an authoritative history of basketball drafts in the U.S., with more complete and accurate information than any other source. Containing corrections to hundreds of errors in the draft information currently available, this volume is a valuable resource for basketball fans, historians, writers, and researchers.

Abe Saperstein and the American Basketball League, 1960-1963

Abe Saperstein and the American Basketball League, 1960-1963 PDF Author: Murry R. Nelson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786472448
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
This book examines the American Basketball League and its short history, beginning with its conception in 1959-60 and its two seasons of play, 1961-1963. The league was the first to use a trapezoidal, wider lane and a 30-second shot clock, as well as the 3-point shot. With a team in Hawaii, the league created an adjusted schedule to accommodate the outsize distance. Many players such as Connie Hawkins and Bill Bridges and coaches such as Jack McMahon and Bill Sharman later found their way to the NBA after the collapse of the league, but it took more than 15 years for wide acceptance of the 3-point shot. John McLendon and Ermer Robinson were the first two African American coaches in a major professional league as they both debuted in the ABL.

The Rise of the National Basketball Association

The Rise of the National Basketball Association PDF Author: David George Surdam
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252094247
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Today's National Basketball Association commands millions of spectators worldwide, and its many franchises are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But the league wasn't always so successful or glamorous: in the 1940s and 1950s, the NBA and its predecessor, the Basketball Association of America, were scrambling to attract fans. Teams frequently played in dingy gymnasiums, players traveled as best they could, and their paychecks could bounce higher than a basketball. How did the NBA evolve from an obscure organization facing financial losses to a successful fledgling sports enterprise by 1960? Drawing on information from numerous archives, newspaper and periodical articles, and Congressional hearings, The Rise of the National Basketball Association chronicles the league's growing pains from 1946 to 1961. David George Surdam describes how a handful of ambitious ice hockey arena owners created the league as a way to increase the use of their facilities, growing the organization by fits and starts. Rigorously analyzing financial data and league records, Surdam points to the innovations that helped the NBA thrive: regular experiments with rules changes to make the game more attractive to fans, and the emergence of televised sports coverage as a way of capturing a larger audience. Notably, the NBA integrated in 1950, opening the game to players who would dominate the game by the end of the 1950sdecade: Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, and Oscar Robertson. Long a game that players loved to play, basketball became a professional sport well supported by community leaders, business vendors, and an ever-growing number of fans.

The National Basketball League

The National Basketball League PDF Author: Murry R. Nelson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786453613
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
The NBA has gained worldwide popularity with its high-flying stars and slam-dunking giants, but the early professional hoops game was played below the rim. This book provides the first history of the National Basketball League, which held court from the mid-1930s until its merger with the Basketball Association of America in 1949. Originally formed in Akron and Indianapolis, the league operated mainly in the Midwest but extended as far east as Rochester and Syracuse and west to Denver, building major franchises with hometown loyalties. Most of its stars were college graduates, a major change from previous professional leagues, and it was the first modern major professional league to integrate. Features include photographs, maps of league franchises, and tables of team standings, MVPs, and scoring leaders.