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The First Pro Basketball League is Established

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The First Pro Basketball League is Established

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The National Basketball League was established to organize players and establish official rules.

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Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game stands out as one of those sports records that will likely never be broken. Wilt “The Stilt” reached triple-digits for the Philadelphia Warriors in a 169-147 win against the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962. The league and the Warriors franchise commemorate the anniversary of this legendary performance to serve…

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On April 25, 1950, Cooper became the first African-American player drafted in the NBA.

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Together, the NBA and its players went to work on social justice, accomplishing most of what the players lobbied for: Arenas became polling sites, "Black Lives Matter" was stickered on court sidelines in the bubble, social justice phrases such as "education reform" or "say her name" were added to the backs of jerseys.

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State Farm Arena, home of the Atlanta Hawks, is an early-voting site for Georgia's Senate runoffs. And there have been new efforts: The NBA created an internal, cross-departmental Social Justice Task Force and also committed to increasing Black representation across the league and leveraging the power of its partnerships to drive change, in addition to other goals.

The NBA Board of Governors, which includes all 30 team owners, committed an initial $300 million toward establishing the first NBA Foundation in an announcement in early August. The governors also committed to annually and collectively donate $30 million to sustain it.

In addition to the task force, there are "two new entities we've created in partnership with the Players Association that are leading our collective efforts around social justice and racial equality," Silver said on a conference call with reporters in late December. The NBA Foundation and the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition "can make a real impact," Silver said.

The foundation has not decided what projects it will take on, but it recently announced $2 million in inaugural grants to seven organizations to increase economic prosperity in the Black community through employment and career advancement. The organizations are Exalt, Management Leadership for Tomorrow, the Marcus Graham Project, Operation DREAM, TEAM Inc., The Knowledge House and the Youth Empowerment Project.

"The need is everywhere," said Michele Roberts, a board member for the foundation and the coalition. She said the foundation's scope is wide because it has the bandwidth to embark on impactful work.

"We're hoping to empower folks that are already out in the field doing the work. There won't be much limit in terms of what areas we focus on," said Roberts, who is also the executive director of the NBPA.

The NBA and the NBPA announced the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition in November. It aims to educate and advocate for substantial reform specifically regarding voting access and the criminal justice system at the national, state and local levels. It met for the first time right before the season started.

"The hope is that we won't be dispersing a lot of energy into too many different places but to have one or two things we want to target for immediate action," Roberts said. She said deciding one or two priority projects will be the subject of the coalition's next meeting right after the new year.

"The sad news is that there's so much that needs to be done," she said. "What's not immediately agreed to as a starting point for the coalition is likely where we'll go ahead as a players association. As we prioritize what we want to have the coalition focus on, we're dusting off a wish list the players came up with earlier this year during the time games were suspended."

Roberts said the NBPA's agenda is largely written by players, so their priorities will likely be divided across the NBPA and the coalition. A few players are passionate about how the coronavirus has brought to light educational disparities and inequitable access to education, she said.

"Our first step was voting, getting people out to register, getting people out to the polls," Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beal said, according to The Athletic. "We accomplished that. Now it's on to the next issue in society, addressing the systemic racism we still have, addressing the police brutality, addressing all these things we still deal with on a daily basis. The financial curve, that needs to be, that gap needs to be shrunk. There's a lot of things we need to dive into as a society, and I think us as a PA, as a league, we're going to continue to push those narratives."

Beal said "we don't really care" if television ratings drop because players organized.

Blake's shooting hit close to home for many Bucks players, as Kenosha is about 30 minutes from where they play, and it was the impetus for their protest.

The team spoke to Blake's father shortly after the shooting, star Giannis Antetokounmpo said in a news conference at the time. "It was powerful. He touched me as a person."

Antetokounmpo also said "it was unacceptable."

"Things like that going on in the state, in the city we represent is unacceptable," he said. "We go out there and try to represent the city the right way. Things like this cannot happen back home."

Players scheduled for playoff games in late August followed the Bucks' lead by boycotting the games. The WNBA, Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball also joined in protesting. The standstill caught NBA officials by surprise, according to multiple reports at the time. Silver responded by writing a letter to employees.

Roberts said: "I've had players say to me, 'look, we can't have it be the case that we've reached our peak.' We have to up the ante and push the league. No one wants the rest of this sport to think we've done all we needed to do in this space, not at all. We've got to keep climbing."

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The NBA embraced racial justice in 2020. Will that continue in 2021?

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State Farm Arena, home of the Atlanta Hawks, is an early-voting site for Georgia's Senate runoffs. And there have been new efforts: The NBA created an internal, cross-departmental Social Justice Task Force and also committed to increasing Black representation across the league and leveraging the power of its partnerships to drive change, in addition to other goals.

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The Golden State Warriors are an American professional basketball team based in San Francisco. The Warriors compete in the National Basketball Association, as a member of the league's Western Conference Pacific Division.

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Muhammad Ali was an American professional boxer, activist, entertainer, poet and philanthropist. Nicknamed The Greatest, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant and celebrated sports figures of the 20th century, and is frequently ranked as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time.

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American collegiate and professional basketball player widely considered to be one of the greatest all-around players in the history of the game.