Olympia Stadium on Grand River Avenue in Detroit, (Photo by Barbara Alper/Getty Images)
The NBA likes to create reasons to showcase its top teams and talented players. That is OK … most of the time. However, when it claims it will celebrate its ’75th anniversary’, then it must include Detroit.
For a quick pro basketball history lesson, two things you need to know about the NBA’s 75th anniversary.
- It really isn’t. In 1946, the Basketball Association of America (BAA) began play, which the NBA officially recognizes as its beginning.
- The National Basketball Association was formed in 1949 when, at the kitchen table of Pistons owner Fred Zollner , the BAA and the National Basketball League merged, and the new league was called the NBA.