On June 6, 1946, basketball history did not begin under bright arena lights. It began in a hotel room in New York.
At the Commodore Hotel, the league that would become the National Basketball Association was founded as the Basketball Association of America. Maurice Podoloff was named the league’s first president, a title later changed to commissioner. Eleven teams made up that original league, which later merged with the National Basketball League in 1949 to form the modern NBA.
It was a modest beginning for what would become one of the most powerful sports leagues in the world. The early BAA was not yet the global machine of Finals spectacles, billion-dollar franchises, international superstars and cultural dominance. It was an ambitious experiment built around major arenas, city markets and the belief that professional basketball could become more than a winter filler between boxing cards and hockey nights.
Podoloff was an unusual but important choice to lead it. Already a respected hockey executive, he became the first person to simultaneously lead two professional major leagues when he took charge of the BAA while also serving as president of the American Hockey League.
The league’s first years were fragile. Teams folded, schedules changed, finances were uncertain and the BAA had to fight for legitimacy against rival basketball structures. But the foundation held. The merger with the NBL in 1949 created the NBA, and from that hotel meeting came everything that followed: the Celtics dynasty, Wilt and Russell, Magic and Bird, Jordan, Kobe, LeBron, Curry, Jokić, Wembanyama and generations of players who turned basketball into a global language.
The NBA did not start as a billion-dollar empire. It started as an idea in New York.
And eighty years later, that idea is still growing.
