October 31, 1950: The NBA's 1st Black Player

Earl Lloyd

October 31, 1950, 75 years ago: The Rochester Royals defeat the Washington Capitols, 78-70, at the Edgerton Park Arena in Rochester. (It was demolished in the late 1950s.) Arnie Risen scores 20 for the home team, as they begin a season that will bring their 1st NBA Championship.

They had previously won the title in the National Basketball League in 1945. They will become the Cincinnati Royals in 1957, the Kansas City Kings in 1972, and the Sacramento Kings in 1985. Their long-term future in Sacramento is now settled, as they've opened a new arena.

Earl Lloyd, a forward wearing Number 11, scores 2 baskets and 2 free throws for the Capitols, for a total of 6 points. It doesn't sound like much, but his mere presence in the game makes him the NBA's 1st black player.

Chuck Cooper had been the 1st black player drafted, by the Boston Celtics. But, the way the schedule worked out, Earl beat him to the court by 1 day. Chuck should not be confused with another early black star, Charles "Tarzan" Cooper, who played for the New York Renaissance (a.k.a. the Rens) in the 1930s. 

Chuck Cooper

Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton, formerly of the Rens and the Harlem Globetrotters, had been the 1st black player actually signed to a contract, by the New York Knicks, but Earl beat him to the court by 4 days. So, in a way, the NBA had 3 "Jackie Robinsons."

Nat Clifton

Earl Lloyd was born on April 3, 1928 in Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. His hometown team, having fired coach Red Auerbach in 1949, was 10-25 on January 9, 1951, and folded, leaving the nation's capital without an NBA team for the next 22 years. Lloyd was then drafted, and served in the Korean War.

Discharged in 1952, "the Big Cat" (also the nickname of Baseball Hall-of-Famer Johnny Mize, then wrapping up his career with the Yankees) played for the Syracuse Nationals until 1958, and the Detroit Pistons from then until his retirement in 1960. He averaged 8.4 points per game in his 9 NBA seasons. The Pistons then hired him as a scout.

In 1968, they named him the 1st black assistant coach in the NBA. In 1972, they named him the 2nd black head coach, after Bill Russell of the Celtics, and the 1st non-playing black head coach. But the Pistons were awful then, and his career coaching record was just 22-55.

He worked for the Detroit school system, helping students find jobs, then did the same thing for a company run by Pistons Hall-of-Famer Dave Bing. He retired to Tennessee. In 2003, the Basketball Hall of Fame elected him as a "contributor," for his historical prominence.

In 2007, T.C. Williams High School, the integrated Alexandria school into which his former all-black school, Parker-Gray, had been consolidated (a tale told, with considerable dramatic license taken, in the football-themed film Remember the Titans), named their new gym's court after him. He was also elected to the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame, and died on February 26, 2015, a few weeks short of his 87th birthday.

April 10, 1955: A Title for Syracuse

April 10, 1955, 70 years ago: The NBA Championship goes to Syracuse, New York.

Go ahead, clean your glasses. I got it right: Syracuse.

The Salt City has long been a home to Italian immigrants and their descendants. One son of those immigrants was Carmen Basilio, Middleweight Champion of the World in the 1950s. Danny Biasone was an immigrant from Chieti, in central Italy. In 1946, he paid $5,000 for a National Basketball League franchise, and the Syracuse Nationals set up shop at the State Fair Coliseum, a 7,500-seat auditorium built in 1927. It still stands, in the suburb of Geddes, New York, and is known as the Toyota Coliseum.

In their 1st season, 1946-47, the Nats made the Playoffs, but lost to their closest opponents, the Rochester Royals, who had won the NBL title in 1945. Biasone signed former Royals star Al Cervi to coach, and drafted Dolph Schayes as his star player. In 1949, the Nats were among the NBL teams absorbed into the Basketball Association of America, which renamed itself the National Basketball Association.

The Nats had the best record in the NBA in 1949-50, going 51-13. (That's equivalent to 65-17 over a full 82-game season.) They reached the NBA Finals, but lost to George Mikan and the Minneapolis Lakers. The New York Knicks were the Eastern Division Champions the next 3 years.

In 1951, the Onondaga County War Memorial opened, seating 11,000, and the Nats moved in. When the Indianapolis Olympians folded in 1953, the Nats picked up Alex Groza and Ralph Beard (who, unlike some of their 1948 Kentucky and Olympic teammates, had not been barred from the NBA due to the 1951 point-shaving scandal), and reached the 1954 NBA Finals, again losing to the Lakers.

The War Memorial

It was Biasone who recommended the 24-second shot clock to the NBA, and it was instituted for the 1954-55 season. With guards Paul Seymour and George King, forwards Dolph Schayes and Earl Lloyd (who had been the NBA's 1st black player, with the Washington Capitols in 1950), center Ephraim "Red" Rocha, and talented backups like centers Johnny "Red" Kerr (a rookie who went on to become a star) and Connie Simmons, the Nats went 43-29, earning them a 1st-round bye in the Playoffs. They beat the Boston Celtics in the East Finals.

In the NBA Finals, they faced another former NBL team, the Fort Wayne Pistons, featuring Bob Houbregs, Max Zaslofsky, George Yardley and Andy Philip. They were 43-29, and were no pushovers.

As it turned out, home-court advantage meant everything in this series, as no game was a blowout, but the home team won each of the 1st 6. The Nats won Games 1 and 2 at home, 87-82 and 87-84, respectively. Games 3, 4 and 5 were played at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the Pistons won them all: 96-89, 109-102, and 74-71. Game 6 was back in Syracuse, and the Nats won, 109-104.

Game 7 was also in Syracuse. The Nats had to keep the pattern going. But the Pistons led 31-21 at the end of the 1st quarter. They started a comeback, and it was 53-47 Fort Wayne at the half. At the end of the 3rd quarter, it was tied, 74-74. With 12 seconds left in regulation, with the game tied, George King was fouled by Frankie Brian. He sank 1 of his free throws, making it 92-91 Syracuse. King then stole an inbounds pass from Andy Philip to seal the title.

Unlike the John Havlicek steal in Boston 10 years later, this one is not preserved on film, which is why, unless you're from the Syracuse area, or King's hometown of Charleston, West Virginia, or really know your NBA history, you've never heard of this steal. Come to think of it, Philip was later traded to the Celtics, and wore Number 17 with them before Havlicek did.

The Pistons returned to the NBA Finals in 1956, losing to the Philadelphia Warriors. In 1957, they moved to Detroit, and, while they have changed home venues 4 times, they have remained in the Detroit metropolitan area.

For those of you who are wondering about the name, knowing that "Pistons" makes sense for a team in "The Motor City," but that they were called that before moving there: They were founded in 1937 by Fred Zollner, whose Zollner Corporation ran a Fort Wayne foundry that manufactured pistons, for the engines of cars, trucks and locomotives. They won the NBL title in 1944 and 1945.

From 1949-50 to 1956-57, the Syracuse Nationals had 8 straight Playoff berths, 3 regular-season NBA Eastern Division titles, 9 Playoff series won, 7 Eastern Division Finals reached, 3 NBA Finals, and the 1955 NBA Championship -- still the last World Championship won by a team in New York State but not in New York City.

(The Rochester Royals had won the NBA title in 1951. The Buffalo Bills went as far as they could go in 1964 and 1965, winning the AFL Championship, but no Buffalo-based team has won a World Championship.)

But it wasn't enough. Syracuse, named for a city in Sicily, has a population of just 150,000. With a metropolitan area of under 700,000, Central New York simply isn't a big enough market to support a major league sports team. In 1963, the Nationals moved to Philadelphia, taking the place of the Warriors, who had moved to San Francisco a year earlier. They became the Philadelphia 76ers, winning the NBA Championship in 1967 and 1983, and losing in the Finals in 1977, 1980, 1982 and 2001.

Syracuse is still home to a Class AAA baseball team, the Chiefs; a hockey team at the same level, the Syracuse Crunch; and Syracuse University, a top-level college sports program. As far as major league sports goes, the Buffalo teams are about 150 miles west;  the Toronto teams are 250 miles west, then northeast; the New York teams are 250 miles southeast; and the Boston teams are a little over 300 miles east.

The War Memorial still stands, under the name of the Upstate Medical University Arena, and is home to the Crunch, concerts, and the occasional college and high school basketball game.

George King coached at West Virginia University, and then led Purdue to the NCAA Final in 1969. He died in 2006. Al Cervi, Dolph Schayes and Earl Lloyd were elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and Schayes was named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players and its 75th Anniversary 75 Greatest Players. Cervi died in 2009. Schayes, whose son Danny Schayes had a fine NBA career, died in 2015, as did Lloyd. Jim Tucker was the last survivor of the '55 Nats, living until 2020.

October 30, 1954: The NBA Begins Using the 24-Second Shot Clock

Danny Biasone, 1992

October 30, 1954, 70 years ago: The National Basketball Association starts the 1954-55 season, the 1st with the 24-second shot clock. Professional basketball would never be the same.

From their arrival from the rival National Basketball League in 1948 until the retirement of their star center George Mikan in 1954, the NBA was dominated by the Minneapolis Lakers. Although they had others who that would go on to the Basketball Hall of Fame -- forwards Jim Pollard and Vern Mikkelsen, and guard Slater Martin -- their game was mainly to get the ball in to Mikan, at 6-foot-10 the pro game's 1st great "big man," and let him lay it in.

But Mikan was not fast. The New York sportscaster Bill Mazer once said, "He was more like a stampeding elephant." And, unlike some later big men, he was unwilling to foul his way into shooting position, which, for him, wasn't a big area. So the Lakers would keep passing the ball around until Mikan, or somebody else, could get into the lane. This could take several minutes.

The only way to defend against this was to commit fouls, hope that a free throw was missed, and hope that someone could rebound the miss before Mikan could. Or, for the other team to do the same: Hold the ball, pass it around, for as long as possible until someone got inside before Mikan could.

This resulted in scores that even the 1990s New York Knicks version of Pat Riley would think were too low, bottoming out on November 22, 1950: The Fort Wayne Pistons attempted only 13 shots through the entire 48 minutes, and beat the Lakers, 19-18. The 4th quarter saw just 3 points from the Pistons, 1 from the Lakers. A few weeks after that, on January 6, 1951, the Indianapolis Olympians beat the Rochester Royals, 75-73. The final score wasn't the problem. The problem was that game went to 6 overtimes, an NBA record; and, in each overtime, the team that won the jump ball held the ball for nearly the entire 5 minutes before attempting a last-second shot.

The NBA was getting boring. Attendance was dropping. Teams were dropping out. When the NBA was founded as the Basketball Association of America in 1946, it had teams in Washington, Toronto, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. By the start of the 1951-52 season, all of those teams were gone. Eventually, all of those cities but Pittsburgh would get new teams (although St. Louis eventually lost their replacement, and Chicago lost theirs before a 2nd replacement, the Bulls, succeeded). But big cities were losing teams, because fans didn't want to come out to see the games. Something had to be done.

In 1954, the owner of the Syracuse Nationals, Danny Biasone, had an idea: "I looked at the box scores from the games I enjoyed, games where they didn't screw around and stall. I noticed each team took about 60 shots. That meant 120 shots per game. So I took 2,880 seconds (48 minutes) and divided that by 120 shots. The result was 24 seconds per shot."

Biasone showed his findings to his general manager, Leo Ferris, and his head coach Al Cervi. Cervi ran intrasquad games with a stopwatch, and blew his whistle after 24 seconds without a shot. They agreed that 24 seconds worked well. Ferris talked to the other NBA GMs, and they adopted it for the 1954-55 season, although Biasone has gone down in history as the idea man: He is in the Basketball Hall of Fame, while Ferris is not. (Cervi is in, but was elected for what he did as a player.)

At first, the clock made players nervous. Dolph Schayes, the Nats' best player, said, "We thought we had to take quick shots – a pass and a shot was it – maybe 8–10 seconds... But as the game went on, we saw the inherent genius in Danny's 24 seconds. You could work the ball around for a good shot."

The shot clock, together with some rule changes concerning fouls, revolutionized NBA play. In the last pre-clock season, 1953-54, teams averaged 79 points per game; in the first year with the clock, 1954-55, the average was 93 points, which went up to 107 points by its fourth year in use, 1957-58. The increase in scoring led to an increase in attendance of 40 percent within a few years, to an average of 4,800 per game.

And, wouldn't you know it: The Nationals, the 1st team to work with the shot clock, and thus the team with the most exposure to it, won the 1955 NBA Championship. They got back to the Finals in 1956, but lost to the Philadelphia Warriors. Then Red Auerbach drafted Bill Russell for the Boston Celtics, and they used the shot clock better, and dominated the NBA for the next 13 years.

The 1955 NBA Champion Syracuse Nationals.

Biasone is at far left, Farris at far right, Cervi in the middle.

Number 4 is Hall-of-Famer Dolph Schayes.

The Nationals remained a good team, but Syracuse eventually proved to be too small a market for a major league sports team. In 1963, the Nats moved, becoming the Philadelphia 76ers, taking the place of the Warriors, who had moved to San Francisco a year earlier.

The American Basketball league of 1961-63 used a 30-second shot clock. The American Basketball Association started in 1967, and also used a 30-second clock. To get its teams ready for absorption by the NBA (4 of them were: The New York Nets, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Denver Nuggets), they switched to a 24-second clock for 1975-76, which turned out to be the ABA's last season.

The NCAA resisted putting a shot clock in the college game, but allowed conferences to experiment with it, and some did, with enough success that the NCAA put in a 45-second shot clock in 1985. The college game was already growing in popularity, and the institution of the shot clock increased it. The clock was reduced to 35 seconds in 1995, and 30 seconds in 2015.

Biasone died in 1992, not long after the photo at the top was taken at the Nats' arena, the Onondaga County War Memorial, built in 1951, and now named the Upstate Medical University Arena. It is home to the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey League. Ferris died in 1993, Cervi in 2009.

In 1996, ESPN held a panel discussion on what was the greatest team in NBA history. Bob Ryan of The Boston Globe said that the 1954 institution of the shot clock should be a demarcation line. He cited both Mikan and the NBA's 1st scoring champion, the leader of the Warriors who won the 1st NBA title in 1946-47, as players who would not have excelled under the new system: "I'm not gonna kid you, I don't think Jumpin' Joe Fulks makes it in today's NBA, except maybe as a 12th man. George Mikan? A good backup center. He was great in his time, deserved every accolade he ever got. But, today? He's Greg Kite with a hook shot."

(Ryan decided that the best team in league history was the 1986 Celtics. The other panelists chose teams like the 1967 and 1983 Philadelphia 76ers, and the 1987 Los Angeles Lakers. They also discussed the 1965 Celtics, the 1970 New York Knicks, the 1972 Lakers, the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers, and the Chicago Bulls team that had just gone 72-10 and won the title.)

*

October 30, 1954 was a Saturday. There were 3 games played in the NBA on that Opening Day. It would have made sense for the Syracuse Nationals to be among the teams scheduled, but they weren't. The other appropriate teams would have been the Lakers and the Pistons, the teams that played the 19-18 game. And they did:

* The New York Knicks beat the Minneapolis Lakers, 94-83 at the old Madison Square Garden. Without Mikan, no Laker scored more than the 18 of Clyde Lovellette. Carl Braun -- the man whose saying, "Swish!" whenever he hit a shot that hit nothing but net inspired Knick broadcaster Marty Glickman to use it on the air, and later Warner Wolf to do so in WCBS-Channel 2 recaps -- led all scorers in the game with 26. The Lakers moved to Los Angeles in 1960.

* The Fort Wayne Pistons beat the Milwaukee Hawks, 91-72 at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena. This was the 1st professional game for Bob Pettit, who scored 17 points, and went on to become the greatest player in Hawks history. The Hawks moved to St. Louis the next season, and to Atlanta in 1968. The Pistons moved to Detroit in 1957.

* And the Rochester Royals beat the Boston Celtics, 98-95 at the Rochester War Memorial. Like Syracuse's war memorial arena, former arch-rival Rochester's still stands and hosts minor-league hockey, the Rochester Americans, under the name of the Blue Cross Arena. But it does not host pro basketball: The Royals moved to Cincinnati in 1957, to Kansas City as the Kings in 1972, and to Sacramento in 1985. 

October 19, 1963: The Philadelphia 76ers Debut

1963-77 Logo

October 19, 1963, 60 years ago: After 14 seasons as the Syracuse Nationals, the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers make their home debut, taking the place of the Philadelphia Warriors, who moved to San Francisco the year before. It doesn't go so well: Despite 31 points from Lee Shaffer and 24 from Chet "the Jet" Walker, they lose to the Detroit Pistons, 124-121 at the Convention Hall of the Philadelphia Civic Center.

After bringing Wilt Chamberlain back from the Warriors in 1965, the 76ers built one of the greatest teams every in 1967, winning the NBA Championship. By 1973, they had collapsed, and finished with the worst record in NBA history, 9-73.

They rebuilt, and reached the NBA Finals in 1977, 1980 and 1982, before winning another title in 1983. But 2 disastrous trades in 1986 doomed them, and they've only reached the NBA Finals once since, in 2001. The last few years, they have asked their fans to "trust the process." Well, they're waiting.

They played at the Convention Hall of the Philadelphia Civic Center through the 1967 title, then moved to The Spectrum in South Philadelphia. In 1996, they moved next-door to the arena currently named the Wells Fargo Center.

The Philadelphia Civic Center's Convention Hall

From their beginnings, the have retired the Number 4 of forward Dolph Schayes, who had starred for them in Syracuse. From their 1967 title team, coached by Alex Hannum with Dr. Jack Ramsay as their general manager, they have retired the 13 of center Wilt Chamberlain, the 15 of guard Hal Greer, and the 32 of forward Billy Cunningham.

From the 1983 title team, coached by Cunningham, with Pat Williams as general manager, they have retired the 2 of center Moses Malone, the 6 of Julius "Dr. J" Erving, the 10 of guard Maurice Cheeks, and the 24 of forward Bobby Jones. From the late 1980s and early 1990s, they have retired the 34 of forward Charles Barkley. From the 2001 Finalists, they have retired the 3 of guard Allen Iverson.

And, in place of a retired number, they have hung a banner with a picture of a microphone, in memory of Dave Zinkoff, the public address announcer for the Warriors from their founding 1946 until their move in 1962, and for the 76ers from their 1963 arrival until his death in 1985.

Top 5 Reasons You Can’t Blame the Syracuse Nationals for Moving to Philadelphia

March 26, 1963: The Cincinnati Royals beat the Syracuse Nationals, 131-127 at the Onondaga County War Memorial Arena in Syracuse, New York. Despite the Nats' Lee Shaffer leading all scorers with 45 points, 32 from Oscar Robertson leads the Royals to victory in this deciding Game 5 of the NBA Eastern Conference Semifinals.

The Royals went on to lose the Eastern Conference Finals to the Boston Celtics. The Nationals never played again. At least, not as the Nats. The following season, they moved to become the Philadelphia 76ers, taking the place of the Warriors, who had moved to San Francisco in 1962.

The Nats were founded in 1946, as members of the Midwest-based National Basketball League. In 1949, they were one of 7 NBL teams admitted to the Northeast-based Basketball Association of America, a merger (for all intents and purposes) in a single league whose name became the National Basketball Association -- which still dates its founding to that of the BAA in 1946.

Their founding owner was Danny Biasone. He was also the father of the 24-second shot clock, which was instituted for the 1954-55 season. Biasone knew that a game was 48 minutes long. He thought a game would be best if each team took about 60 shots per game. So he divided 2,880 (the number of seconds in 48 minutes) by 120 (2 teams each taking 60 shots), and came up with 1 shot every 24 seconds. He died in 1992, having lived long enough to see the shot clock adopted everywhere (including college and high school), but not long enough to be elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame (he was finally elected in 2000).

The Nats lost the 1950 and 1954 NBA Finals to the Minneapolis Lakers, and then won the 1955 NBA Championship by beating the Fort Wayne Pistons in the Finals. (Given that they'd made the Finals the year before, it's unlikely that the institution of the shot clock made the difference for them, but it did end the Lakers' dynasty.) Indeed, not until 1971-72 would the Nats/Sixers franchise play a season and fail to make the Playoffs. Even in their last season in Syracuse, they went 48-32, playing .600 ball.

By 1963, the team was in transition. Hall-of-Famer Dolph Schayes, the big hero of the 1955 title, was winding down, and was now player-coach. The players who would become the stars of the 76ers' 1967 title were beginning to come in, including Hall-of-Famer Hal Greer.

But it was getting harder and harder to run a team in such a small market. And so, Biasone sold the team to Irv Kosloff and Ike Richman, who moved the team to Philadelphia. By 1967, the 76ers were World Champions. By 1970, the New York Knicks -- 248 miles away, but at least in the same State -- had won a World Championship (and, in 1973, another), and became the Syracuse area's favorite team, as if the Nationals had never even existed.

Top 5 Reasons You Can’t Blame the Syracuse Nationals for Moving to Philadelphia

5. The Arena Situation. From their founding in 1946 until 1951, the Nats played at the State Fair Coliseum. Built in 1927, it seated 7,500 people. It has since been renovated, with its seating capacity cut in half, and is now named the Toyota Coliseum.

From 1951 onward, the Nats played at the Onondaga County War Memorial. It seated 8,000, and was a decent arena for an NBA team of the period. It has also hosted a series of minor-league hockey teams: The Syracuse Warriors of the American Hockey League (1951-54), the Syracuse Blazers of the Eastern Hockey League (1967-77), the Syracuse Firebirds of the AHL (1979-80), and the Syracuse Crunch of the AHL (since 1994). It's also hosted arena football, minor league soccer, and lacrosse, which is popular in New York State.

It was renovated in 1994, and renamed The OnCenter War Memorial Arena. It was renovated again in 2018, and renamed the Upstate Medical University Arena at Onondaga County War Memorial. Most people still just call it "The War Memorial."

There's nothing wrong with it, as far as minor-league hockey goes. But for a modern major league sports team, it was already starting to lose its fitness by 1963. Syracuse University knew this: A year earlier, it opened Manley Field House on campus, and in 1980 built the Carrier Dome to host both baseball and football.

In contrast, in 1963, Philadelphia had the Convention Hall at its Civic Center, built in 1931 but bigger at 12,000 seats, with more amenities. The Warriors had played there from 1952 to 1962, and the 76ers would until The Spectrum opened in 1967. The Spectrum was already in the planning stages at the time of the move.

4. Television. Seeing Major League Baseball games on TV helped to kill the Negro Leagues and devastate the minor leagues. That didn't affect the NBA much, since there was almost no overlap in season.

But the rise of TV did give people a reason to stay home during basketball season. What's more, unlike MLB, boxing, horse racing and (eventually) the NFL, in the 1950s, the NBA didn't handle TV well. You'd think it would, since the court was small enough for cameras to easily follow. (Horse racing was then popular on TV because, despite having the largest "field," the horses were all bunched together, making for easy camera work.) Games were locally broadcast, but not nationally, and the teams just didn't get enough revenue from it.

3. The NBA. Like the NFL, it had started in smaller cities in the Northeast and the Midwest, and all those cities would turn out to be to small to keep the league going, and would lose their teams, except for Green Bay, Wisconsin.

There were 4 teams that didn't even survive the 1st BAA (NBA) season of 1946-47: The Pittsburgh Ironmen, the Cleveland Rebels, the Detroit Falcons and the Toronto Huskies -- and those were all big cities at the time. By the dawn of the 1950-51 season, Providence, St. Louis, Washington and even Chicago had lost their teams. The next season, Indianapolis followed. And the original version of the Baltimore Bullets, NBA Champions in 1948, folded early in the 1954-55 season.

The Royals/Kings aren't the only team that has made several moves. One of the charter BAA teams was the Buffalo Bisons. They didn't even make it to the New Year in that 1st season, moving to Moline, Illinois, next-door to Rock Island, and across the Mississippi River from Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa. They became the Tri-Cities Blackhawks. (The region is now known as the Quad Cities.) They only stayed until 1951, became the Milwaukee Hawks, and then moved again in 1955, becoming the St. Louis Hawks, the team the Royals played in their last game in Rochester. In 1968, they moved again, becoming the Atlanta Hawks.

The Royals weren't even the only team moving in 1957: The Fort Wayne Pistons moved to Detroit. (As with the Royals, the name made even more sense in their new city than in their old one.) In 1960, the Minneapolis Lakers, winners of 5 titles, moved to Los Angeles.

In 1961, an expansion team called the Chicago Packers began. After 1 year, they became the Chicago Zephyrs, probably because Chicagoans didn't want to root for a team called the Packers. In 1963, they became the new Baltimore Bullets. In 1973, they moved to Washington. In 1997, the Washington Bullets became the Washington Wizards.

So the moving of teams wasn't something the early NBA establishment frowned upon. They would have been more surprised if the Harrison brothers had tried to stay in Rochester. Especially when there were other options.

2. Philadelphia. It was then, and is now, a great basketball city. By 1962, when the Warriors left for San Francisco, it had already seen that team win the NBA title in 1947 and 1956, and introduced Joe Fulks, Neil Johnston, Paul Arizin, and the greatest player the game has ever known, Wilt Chamberlain, to the NBA.

Philadelphia, as seen from the Museum of Art,

before the skyscraper building boom that began in the 1980s

Furthermore, by this point, the city's "Big 5" had been established: The University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, La Salle University, St. Joseph's University, and Villanova University. High school hoops were also huge, with both the Philadelphia Public League and the Philadelphia Catholic League producing local legends, in basketball and other sports.

New York likes to think of itself as the basketball city. But there are a few other contenders, and Philly is one of them. A 1986 documentary made by NFL Films, The 10 Greatest Moments in Philadelphia Sports History, said of basketball, "It is the pulse of the city, the beat on the street."

So if it was accepted that the Nationals had to move, Philadelphia was a good place to move to.

1. Western New York State. While Philadelphia's population has shrunk significantly, Syracuse didn't have a whole lot of people to lose. Even in 1963, it was home to only about 200,000 people. Today, despite being home to a major university and the New York State Fair, Syracuse has only about 150,000 people, with a metro area of only about 650,000, less than any city in North America with a major league sports team -- except for Green Bay, Wisconsin.

A recent photo of downtown Syracuse,

including the white-roofed Carrier Dome.

This is matched by the other cities in Western New York. Rochester lost the NBA's Royals in 1957. Like Syracuse, Rochester has a longtime team in minor-league hockey, the  Rochester Americans. Both cities also have long had teams in baseball's Class AAA International League, the Rochester Red Wings and the Syracuse Chiefs. But not in the major leagues in either sport.

NBT Bank Stadium, home of the Syracuse Chiefs since 1997

As stated earlier, Buffalo had already lost the BAA's Bisons in 1946. Buffalo also had a team called the Buffalo Bills in the All-America Football Conference from 1946 to 1949, but when the NFL took 3 teams from the AAFC, they took the Cleveland Browns, the Baltimore Colts and the San Francisco 49ers. It became known as "The Screwing of Buffalo."

Buffalo would gain the AFL's version of the Bills in 1960, and the NBA's Braves and the NHL's Sabres in 1970, the same year the Bills became part of the AFL-NFL merger. The Braves would move in 1978, and are now the Los Angeles Clippers. And the Bills and Sabres have both faced the possibility of having to move. Today, both are still struggling, despite both being owned by billionaires Terry and Kim Pegula.

Remember the movie It's a Wonderful Life? George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart), operator of a building and loan association, is shown what his New York State hometown of Bedford Falls would have been like if he had never been born.

He sees that the company his father had founded had gone out of business, because George wasn't there to save it; the low-income housing George had built wasn't built; Henry Potter, the miserable old man who controlled everything in town but the building and loan, had changed the town's name to Pottersville; and, like an organized crime boss, he let other businessmen do what he pleased, so long as he got his cut.

And what businesses were doing well? Bars and casinos. The very things that, today, are pretty much the only businesses doing well in New York State, thanks to the local Native tribes getting casino licenses. In 2009, at the depth of a recession, a New York Times writer pointed this out, and contrasted it with the housing market that George Bailey once ran. The writer concluded that, for the sake of the future of the State of New York, the kindhearted Bailey was wrong, and the old bastard Potter was right. (And you thought the Times was a liberal newspaper.)

Put simply, New York State, from the capital of Albany on west through Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, simply can't support major league sports in the modern era.

VERDICT: Not Guilty. Whatever its benefits, Syracuse is not big enough to major league sports. The Nationals had to be moved.

And not once during this post did I mention the weather: Syracuse can get really cold during basketball season. (How cold is it?) It's sometimes known as Siber-cuse.

Western New York's 10 Greatest Teams

This Sunday, the New York Jets visit Orchard Park, New York to play the Buffalo Bills.

Western New York's 10 Greatest Teams

10. 1973-75 Buffalo Bills. 3 seasons, 26-16, but only 1 Playoff berth, in 1974 -- the only postseason game of O.J. Simpson's career. The 1970s Bills had the misfortune to play in the AFC East at a time when the Miami Dolphins dominated it every bit as much as the New England Patriots have in this past generation.

9. 1980-81 Buffalo Bills. Back-to-back Playoff berths, the team's 1st Division title in 14 years (1980), and its 1st postseason win in 16 years (1981 -- of course, against the Jets). But they stumbled into mediocrity in 1982, and went 8-40 from 1984 to 1986. Of course, that allowed them to pile up the draft picks that built their early 1990s AFC dynasty.

8. 1995-99 Buffalo Bills. A sub-.500 season in 1994 allows this period to be considered separate from the one of 1988-93. 5 seasons, 4 Playoff berths, and the 1995 AFC East title, but only 1 Playoff win. Marv Levy's gang still had something left in them, but they were getting old. "The Music City Miracle" of January 4, 2000 would be the Bills' last Playoff game for 18 years.

Before clinching a Playoff berth on the last day of last season, the Bills were the only team in the "big four" sports not to have clinched a Playoff berth in the 21st Century. But they made it. They almost certainly won't make it this season, but there could be more for this team.

7. 1973-76 Buffalo Braves. They made 3 straight NBA Playoffs, something the franchise now known as the Los Angeles Clippers would not do again until 2015. But they only won 1 Playoff series, against the Philadelphia 76ers in 1976, and wouldn't make the Playoffs again until 1992.

6. 1996-2001 Buffalo Sabres. 5 straight Playoff berths, an NHL Northeast Division title, 2 trips to the Eastern Conference Finals, and a Conference Championship in 1999. They got slightly closer than the 1975 edition, taking Game 6 to overtime. It's worth remembering, though: Even if that goal had been waved off, the Sabres would still have had to win that game and then beat the Stars in Dallas in Game 7.

5. 1974-81 Buffalo Sabres. 7 straight Playoff berths, 3 NHL Adams Division titles, 2 trips to the Stanley Cup Finals, and the Bills' 1st berth in the Stanley Cup Finals. They gave the Philadelphia Flyers a better fight than the Boston Bruins had the year before. But they couldn't get back until 1999.

4. 1988-93 Buffalo Bills. This is the most talented team in the history of Western New York sports, but not the most accomplished. 6 straight Playoff berths, 5 AFC Eastern Division titles, 10 postseason victories, 5 trips to the AFC Championship Game, and 4 AFC Championships. But they lost the Super Bowl by margins of 1, 13, 17 and 35 points (not in that order). It was a great achievement to keep getting back, but they could never finish the job.

3. 1949-57 Syracuse Nationals. Okay, Syracuse is in Central New York, not Western New York, but I'm counting it. 8 straight Playoff berths, 3 regular-season NBA Eastern Division titles, 9 Playoff series won, 7 Eastern Division Finals reached, 3 NBA Finals, and the 1955 NBA Championship -- still the last World Championship won by a team in New York State but not in New York City.

2. 1945-55 Rochester Royals. Rochester definitely counts as "Western New York," Although it says something that the NBA put Syracuse in the Eastern Division and Rochester in the Western Division. Syracuse, State College and Harrisburg are where America's Northeast begins to turn into its Midwest.

8 straight Playoff berths, 3 regular-season NBA Western Division titles, 4 trips to the Division Finals, 3 National Basketball League Finals berths, the 1945 NBL Championship, and, after moving to the NBA in 1948, the 1951 NBA Championship.

But the NBA could not be sustained in small cities. So, in 1957-58, the Rochester Royals moved to Cincinnati (then the Kansas City Kings in 1972 and the Sacramento Kings in 1985), and the Fort Wayne Pistons moved to Detroit. In 1963, the Syracuse Nationals moved to become the Philadelphia 76ers. The days when the teams from mid-sized Midwest cities like Anderson, Indiana; Moline, Illinois; and Waterloo, Iowa could be absorbed into the NBA were over.

1. 1963-66 Buffalo Bills. 4 straight Playoff berths, 3 AFL Championship Games, and the 1964 and 1965 AFL Championships. These are still the only 2 times that a major league sports team from Buffalo has gone as far as the rules of the time allowed them to go.

Dolph Schayes, 1928-2015

When someone says, "This guy was a New York basketball legend," they usually mean that he played for the Knicks. They don't mean he played for the Nets: The Long Island and New Jersey editions don't get counted (not even Julius Erving), and the Brooklyn edition hasn't produced any legends yet. They could mean he played for St. John's. They could also mean he was a local high school star or a "playground legend."

But the days when New York colleges other than St. John's produced basketball legends are long gone, a victim of the early 1950s point-shaving scandals that relegated New York University (NYU), City College of New York (CCNY) and downtown Brooklyn-based Long Island University (LIU) to 2nd-class status, thus helping to pave the way for the success of the nascent NBA.

And one of the last of the players who made those schools matter has left us.

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Adolph Schayes (no middle name) was born on May 19, 1928 in The Bronx. A son of Romanian Jewish immigrants, he grew up in the University Heights section of The Bronx, on Davidson Avenue off 183rd Street, and attended the prestigious DeWitt Clinton High School.

Too young to have served in World War II, he attended NYU and played basketball there, when playing there really meant something. He was a classic gym rat: NYU's coach, Howard Cann, said, "He was in the gym practicing, every spare minute. We had to chase him out."

The hard work paid off: In 1945, NYU reached the NCAA Final, losing to Oklahoma A&M, coached by Hank Iba and led by Bob "Foothills" Kurland, the 1st 7-footer to be more than just a roadblock. (The school won the title again the next year, and became Oklahoma State in 1958.)

In 1948, the 2 leagues that would merge a year later to form the NBA battled over his services. His hometown New York Knicks of the Basketball Association of America drafted him, and so did the Tri-Cities Blackhawks of the National Basketball League. (They played their games in Moline, Illinois, representing the region that usually gets called the Quad Cities today, also including Rock Island, Illinois and Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa.) The Blackhawks traded his rights to the Syracuse Nationals, who offered him $7,500, twice what the Knicks did, and so Dolph left home.

In his rookie season, he broke his right arm. He played anyway, with a cast, and learned to shoot with his left hand, making him an even deadlier shooter, right up there with Bill Sharman of the Boston Celtics as the best shooter of the 1950s. He led the league in rebounding in 1951, making the 1st of what turned out to be 12 NBA All-Star Teams.

In 1954, the Nationals (like today's Washington Nationals baseball team, known as the Nats for short) reached the NBA Finals, losing to the Minneapolis Lakers of George Mikan. Then the 24-second shot clock was established -- an innovation thought up by the Nats' owner, Danny Biasone. The Lakers could not adapt. The Nats did, and defeated the Fort Wayne Pistons to win the 1955 NBA Championship.

Hail the Champions, as you will almost certainly -- with the possible exception of the Green Bay Packers -- never again see a North American major sports league champion from a metropolitan area so small: Number 3, guard George King; Number 4, forward Dolph Schayes; Number 5, guard Paul Seymour; Number 6, center Connie Simmons; Number 7, guard Billy Gabor; Number 8, forward Wally Osterkorn; Number 10, center Johnny "Red" Kerr; Number 11, forward Earl Loyd; Number 12, guard Dick Farley; Number 14, forward Jim Tucker; Number 15, guard Bill Kenville; Number 16, center Ephraim "Red" Rocha; and head coach Al Cervi.

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In 1957, Schayes hit 18 consecutive free throws in a game, then a record. In that year that began the space race, his high arcing shots earned him the nickname "Sputnik."

From February 17, 1952 to December 26, 1961, he played in 706 consecutive games, also then a record. (That one would be broken by his Nats teammate, Red Kerr.) He was, for a time, the NBA's all-time leading scorer, becoming the 1st player to finish with at least 15,000 career points.

As the NBA grew, its smaller cities, as happened to the NFL by the time the 1920s ended, fell by the wayside. Tri-Cities Blackhawks moved to Milwaukee in 1951, becoming the Hawks; then to St. Louis in 1955, then to Atlanta in 1968. The Fort Wayne Pistons moved to Detroit in 1957. The same year, the Rochester Royals moved to Cincinnati, later to Kansas City where they became the Kings, and then to Sacramento. And in 1963, the other Western New York team, the Syracuse Nationals, moved to take the place of the Philadelphia Warriors, who had moved to San Francisco. The Nats became the Philadelphia 76ers.

Their 1st coach in Philly was Dolph Schayes, who retired as a player at the end of that 1st season, 1963-64. He was named NBA Coach of the Year in 1966, but stepped aside when he was offered the job of the NBA's supervisor of referees. Can you imagine that happening today, in any sport: A former player being named supervisor of game officials? There's a laugh.

In 1970, Schayes returned to Western New York, as the 1st coach of the expansion Buffalo Braves. But he left at the start of the next season. The team is now known as the Los Angeles Clippers.

His home still in Syracuse, he became a real estate developer there. He was also heavily involved in the Maccabiah Games, effectively the Jewish Olympics, held in Israel. In 1977, he coached the U.S. team to the gold medal there.

That team included his son Danny Schayes, who played at Syracuse University, and for 18 years in the NBA, his best years for the Denver Nuggets of the 1980s. Danny's wife is Wendy Lucero, a former Olympic diver. He now runs an investment firm in Phoenix.

He and his wife Naomi had another son, David; daughters Carrie Goettsch and Debra Ferri; and 9 grandchildren.

Carrie's daughters, Abi, Carla and Rachel Goettsch, won silver medals with the U.S. volleyball team at the 2001 Maccabiah Games. And Debra's son, Mickey Ferri, was part of the gold medal-winning 4 by 100 meter relay team at the 2005 Maccabiah Games.

In 1971, Dolph was named to the NBA's 25th Anniversary team. In 1972, he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. In 1979, he was elected to the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. In 1996, he was named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players, and attended the unveiling of the 50 at the 1997 All-Star Game in Cleveland. He was the only Nationals player selected, although others from the franchise's Philadelphia days were chosen. The 76ers retired his Number 4, even though he barely played for them after the move.

Dolph Schayes died of cancer in Syracuse yesterday. He was 87 years old, and one of the grand old men of American sports.

With Schayes' death, Billy Gabor, 93 years old; Jim Tucker, who turns 83 today; and Bill Kenville, who just turned 85, are still alive from the 1955 NBA Champion Syracuse Nationals, 60 years later.

Oddly, especially considering how the NBA tends to treat its venues as disposable, the Nats' arena still stands. Opened in 1951 as the Onondaga County War Memorial Arena, it is now known as the Oncenter, and is home to a minor-league hockey team, the Syracuse Crunch.