The National Basketball Association (NBA) first began in 1946 and the first league started on the 6th June the same year. The original name given was the Basketball Association of America, but it became the NBA after a merger with the National Basketball League.
There are 30 teams in the league with 29 from the United States and 1 from Canada. The Toronto Raptors are the only current Canadian team.
The first official game was played in Toronto, Canada, between the New York Knickerbockers and the Toronto Huskies. This was November 1 1946. The league had begun in earnest, but like many sports at the start there were different organizations that had there own leagues and it wasn’t until 1949 that there was a merger into the NBA.
In the 1950s the league was downsized from 17 teams that played in it to 11 and then to 8, all of whom still play today. These are the Celtics, Hawks, Kings/Royals, Nationals/76ers, Pistons, Lakers and Warriors.
During this time, all of the teams except for the Knicks and Celtics relocated to bigger cities. The fifties were a time of racial barriers and basketball helped to break these by allowing African Americans such as Nat Clinton, Chuck Cooper and Earl Lloyd to play in the NBA.
There was a period of great rivalries during the sixties and there were also teams included and from 1966 to 1968 there were 4 more teams added.
There was a threat to the NBA from the American Basketball Association when players started leaving the NBA to play in the ABA. Players such as Julius Erving of the Virginia Squires changed over, but the NBA continued to grow and added more teams and by 1974 they had grown to 18 teams.
In 1976 there was an agreement between the NBA and ABA and the four ABA teams of San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers and New York Nets were added bringing the team totals to 22.
The league has kept growing and the sport’s popularity went through the roof in the 1980s and 1990s with players such as Magic Johnson entertaining huge crowds. The NBA is one of the 4 major American leagues and arguably one of the biggest.
