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Basketball from a fans perspective

The dreaded SI jinx

You might remember several weeks ago I wrote a story on college basketball home winning streaks. Some of us might have believed Duke, Kansas, UCLA or some other team might have the longest stretch of home wins. Turns out all the guesses were wrong; the winner was Gonzaga. The Spokane Washington school had a 76-game home winning streak longest in the nation until Thursday evening. The streak ended and most of us probably had little opportunity to see the game except those in the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones.

It was far too late for most of us in the Eastern and Midwest Time zones to watch the game. Those on the east coast and Midwest rose early Friday morning to discover Loyola Marymount had beaten Gonzaga 68-67. As for the SI jinx a number might be aware of this story. It seems every time the publication reported a story usually that team or player would suffer a loss, that would be the case for me in this account. This is the second time in recent memory I’ve written a positive story along the same lines and within days the entire scenario changed. I must ask the question of myself, have I become the dreaded SI jinx?

Wow

Mizzou managed to win a hard-fought contest 79-75 over number 25 Arkansas. After two road losses in succession (Texas A&M and Florida) Mizzou was desperate for a win. Could they, would they be able to get back on track? The usual suspects were present not shooting good from the 3pt line and rebounding the rock. That old adage applies “Live by the jump shot, die by the jump shot.” As for the other Arkansas held a 42-23 advantage, Mizzou’s got to do better in this area. Okay now that I have the negatives out of the way how did Mizzou manage to win this match?

With the exception of the 3pt line they were only a couple of percentage points behind Arkansas, they had 21 turnovers to the 12 of Mizzou. Kobe Brown on 60% shooting led the way with 17 points and 8 rebounds. Brown was aided by DeAndre Gholston with 16 points and Sean East with his 12 points, both Gholston and East came off the bench for the Tigers Mizzou has little time to savor the victory, on Saturday the top team in the SEC Alabama will be in the house. This becomes the second game close in my view if played last season Mizzou would have lost. Mizzou was down 10 points with about 5 minutes remaining in the game. I realize that’s a difficult comparison, we must explore two different Mizzou teams.      

Is there interest  

We’ve mentioned NBA expansion in the recent past, one of the locations maybe overlooked is Pittsburg Pennsylvania. The city’s had professional basketball teams in at least two professional leagues. Few are familiar with this fact; the city was a charter member of the Basketball Association of America. In 1946-47 the Ironmen began play but it would be the only season they existed; they never made it to the merger to become an NBA team. The Ironmen finished that first season with a 15-win 45 loss record, why they went out of business in only one season is unclear these 70 plus years later. The city would remain without professional basketball until 1961 when the Rens would began play in the American Basketball League not to be confused with the American Basketball Association later.

That team featured Hall of Fame player Connie Hawkins banned from playing in the NBA at the time. The ABL under financed soon went out of business only operating until December 31, 1963. It would appear the city loves being a charter member of something, in 1967 the Pipers were born in the American Basketball Association. The team moved to Minnesota the following season and then back to Pittsburgh. In 1972 they were re-named the Condors, in succeeding years poor attendance would see the franchise fold in June 1972 about four years prior to the merger. Since that date there’s been no professional basketball in the city maybe except for an exhibition game or two. Could the city support an NBA team today, that is an unknown. The NFL Steelers, NHL Penguins and baseball Pirates appear to do well at the gate. The key might be the lure of the NBA whether a substantial number of residents desire a team.

Television and basketball 

According to information provided by the NCAA the first televised game occurred way back in 1940, Pitt beat Fordham 57 to 37 at Madison Square Garden. There is no indication of the attendance however an estimated 400-1000 individuals were able to view the game. Since that marriage television has been instrumental in the growth of the game over the decades. Television and the NBA would occur at a much later date, in 1953-54 season 8, the NBA signed a contract with the defunct DuMont Network. The following season NBC took over responsibilities for the broadcast. The reason as I read the DuMont Network was found lacking in nationwide stations. The NBA was so minor league in that day they wanted DuMont to televise the worst teams rather than the best teams. The fear attendance would be affected if the best teams were telecast, go figure.

Nothing similar to today one game a week Saturday afternoon was it. This model for a game of the week schedule remained in affect through the NBA’s move from NBC to CBS to ABC and back to CBS. I’m unsure who followed whose model, but college basketball also adopted a Saturday afternoon format. Can you imagine the NBA Championship not being telecast; it did occur at a point in time. It would be years later before the NBA and college championships were available to a national television audience. The game changer for the NBA and college would be the advent of cable television. No longer handicap by network programming the goal of sports cable channels was to provide sports programming period. A virtual explosion of cable networks would occur in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. The birth of ESPN took the lead but even they would eventually see competition in sports broadcasting. Besides ESPN basketball (NBA & college) moved to the USA Network, TBS, TNT, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, YES and 10 or 15 more not listed in this account. In closing don’t consider this complete the intent was to detail some of the history of basketball and television.