PRO BASKETBALL HAS PLAYED
AN IMPORTANT PART

By John O’Brien

JOHN O'BRIEN, President of the American Basketball
League since 1928 was educated at St. John’s Col-
lege in Brooklyn. Since 1908 he has been associated
with Basketball as player, manager, coach and ref-
eree. He is Vice-President and Director of several

oil companies.

HE first draft of the thirteen rules devised by

the fertile brain of Professor James Naismith
governing the playing of basketball had scarcely
been hung on the bulletin board of Springfield
College, Springfield, Mass., in February, 1892, be-
fore the professional player accepted the game as
his own and exercised a dominating influence in
its early development, which has continued with
slight diminution to the present day. He kept the
sport ‘alive in the gaslighted mauve decade when
college interest was rather passive, and his contri-
butions then and now have been of immeasurable
value.

Few of the universities of the country had gym-
nasiums large enough for the staging of basketball
in its formative period, but in almost all of the
industrial cities of the East were located armories,
Y.M.C.A.’s and clubs with auditoriums of sufficient
size to arrange for the proper presentation of the
game. In various towns and cities along the North-
ern Atlantic Coast the development of numbers of
capable players quickly ensued, and with a keen
civic pride various municipalities attracted to their
confines such players as had made noteworthy rep-
utations. Before many years had elapsed a strong
feeling was created in the Eastern section of the
country that there was “Gold in them thar hills,”
and the mining of this ore has continued with a
preponderance of good pay dirt while few faulty
structures have appeared.

The first professional league came into being in
1896 under the name of the National League, com-
prising the leading teams in the State of New
Jersey and in Philadelphia, Pa.

From the start of the game in 1891, a number
of important professional traveling teams unques-
tionably added their great contributions to the ad-
vancement of the sport. In the earlier days, and
after the turn of the century, the 23rd Street
Y.M.C.A. of New York City, the 17th Separates
of Flushing, L. I., Clark House—University Settle-
ment of New York City, the Crescents of Paterson,

30

N. J., and while not of professional origin, the
Buffalo Germans of Buffalo, N. Y., winners of the
Olympic Championship at the St. Louis Fair in
1904, spread the doctrine of physical fitness and
the need for clean living in order to compete suc-
cessfully in this newly developed sport.

Following these groups came one of the prom-
inent teams of all time—the Company G of Glovers-
ville, N. Y., later known as the Troy, N. Y., World
Champions. This team not only competed in the
New York State League, where it won several
championships, but it took the most extensive trip
planned up to that time by playing games nightly as
far west as Wyoming. Few, if any clubs ever
amassed a greater number of victories without de-
feats than the famous Troy combination, over so
vast a territory. The club to overthrow the Troy
reign in New York State was Utica, N. Y., com-
posed for the most part of Clark House-University
Settlement boys from the lower East Side in New
York City.

In later years the New York Nationals took up
the trail established by the Troy Club and accom-
plished remarkable achievements during a twelve-
year period by playing clubs in all sections of
the country, with few setbacks.

Probably the greatest traveling team in the an-
nals of the game was a group organized on a New
York City playground in 1914—and called the
Original Celtics. The managers of this enterprising
light-weight team soon enlisted the cream of the
professional players of the country and paid sal-
aries comparable to those received by major league
baseball luminaries, so that after World War I, the
Celtics with a star-studded lineup made the world
conscious of the supremacy of the Eastern type of
professional basketball. These ambassadors of
sport, recognized now as one of the greatest teams
ever developed if not the peer of them all, played
outstanding quintets of the East, Mid-West, Far-
West and South. Rules of all types and descrip-
tions, halls of large and small dimensions with