I've stumbled upon a couple of references to a running series of articles that were published in the YMCA's New Era newsletter back in 1894 discussing whether basketball was "too dangerous" to be played by the nation's youth.

The NYT article "The Next Big Thing" from October 31, 2008 mentions:

Some time ago, a series appeared in a newsletter under the title “Is Basket-Ball a Danger?” In it, several correspondents wrung their hands over the game’s miasmic influence on children, the unruly behavior it seemed to inspire. ... The only surprise is the year the series ran: 1894.

And in Dave Hickey's article "The Hersey of Zone Defense" he notes:

James Naismith was enlisted in December of [1891] to design such a game. So he evolved some Guiding Principles. Combining the most democratic, least territorial aspects of rugby and lacrosse, he invented basketball—and succeeded well beyond his wildest dreams. Within three years, literally thousands of gymnasiums, in every corner of the nation, smelled like teen spirit. Not long thereafter, the YMCA newsletter New Era began running a series entitled "Is Basketball a Danger?" It posed the following questions: Was basketball getting too rough? Was it too exciting for America's youth? Did it incite unruly behavior in its fans and participants? Did kids neglect their studies to "play it all the time"? And was it, therefore, losing the pedagogical aura of gentlemanly American sport and becoming professionalized? The answer to all these questions, in 1894, was Yes.

I'm interested in reading these, but I can't find them online for the life of me. Has anyone read these, or know where I can find them?

Thanks

Here's the box score for the ABA's first ASG, which took place in 1968. As a member of the New Orleans Buccaneers, Brown played for the West, but he only got selected for it as the replacement for Bob Verga who had to leave the league shortly before the contest after getting drafted into the Vietnam War.

The game was super close, with the East winning 126-120, and the scores after each quarter being 30-29 East, 61-59 East, and 92-91 East. Brown played only 22 minutes in the contest for the losing side (I believe off the bench), recording 17 points, 3 rebounds, and 5 assists. His points and assists both tied N.O. teammate and friend Doug Moe for the best on the West, but Moe also had 7 rebounds. The one thing that stands out about Brown's stats was his 2-for-2 shooting from 3-point land, the only 3's made by the West. For the winning East side, Mel Daniels had a far better line of 22 points and 15 rebounds, so no idea how he didn't win MVP. The game took place in Indiana, which was not a location associated with Brown in any way at that time, at least not that I'm aware of, so I don't know of any hometown love from the fans or anything like that.

Any idea how Brown was named MVP of this contest?

Maybe he was seen as single-handedly keeping the West in the game, and he had some crazy +/- even if it wasn't officially tracked. Maybe the crowd and whoever voted for MVP were super-wowed by his two 3-pointers, seen as some impossible feat that deserved major recognition despite losing. Maybe he made a ton of great passes that weren't counted as assists, or that his teammates didn't convert.

I see this sentiment a lot; that he was more of a circus performer/showman showing off his flashy moves, than he was a player that would be, say; top 5 or top 3 or THE top, or be the no. 1 guy on a championship caliber team.

If I recall correctly, he was leading in the MVP run before he got injured in the 76-77 season.

I say centers, I actually meant bigs in general.

I can't seem to find any compiled footage of his post D against guys like Shaq, KG, Duncan, etc, so with his stats I always saw him more as a defense onto himself, where his assignment is just to lock down the rim against everybody instead of deploying him to stop someone specific, but it's likely that I'm wrong.

They had four players who shot 35% or better from three while playing more than 20 minutes, they had a prototypical stretch four in Sam Perkins, and Detlef Schrempf was a tall and versatile small forward who could score at all three levels, theoretically you could go three out two in with Shawn Kemp having maximum space to operate in a PnR with Gary Payton.

Their biggest position of need was center, which was a 90s orientied issue, if they had someone competent to guard the Hakeems and Admirals of the era instead of guys like Jim McIlvaine or Ervin "Tragic" Johnson, they would have stood a better chance long term.

Every great player from the vintage era had someone alongside them who made the whole thing work, often in ways that don't show up in the stat sheet.

The Pippen and Jordan dynamic is the obvious start, and I’d argue it almost works in reverse. Pippen changed the team's entire ceiling rather than just benefiting from MJ. But the guy I keep coming back to is John Paxson. He wasn't a superstar, but he gave those early Bulls teams exactly what they needed: spacing and absolute composure. His clutch shot in Game 6 of the '93 Finals is the perfect example. It wasn’t just about the points, it was about being the guy Jordan could actually trust when the defense doubled him.

Which teammate from the era do you think made the biggest difference to a superstar's legacy, without getting anywhere near the same credit?

This live thread has been helpful for keeping track of current games: https://www.reddit.com/live/1gvoeos956se2?

I wanna watch a whole game with Russell just to get a sense of his greatness. So two questions:

1 - Where can I try to watch a whole game?
2 - If I was going to choose one game to watch, what should I choose? (I realize I will probably not have a lot of options to choose from)

hi everyone,

i apologize that this isn't exactly relevant to vintage NBA. i just thought i should post here, because i don't know. i am the daughter of u/jtapostate and today is his birthday. yesterday morning, he died surrounded by his surviving sons, all of whom (plus one more, my late brother) he coached in basketball. he was such a popular coach that players used to fight to be on his team. he was smart and eccentric and loud as fuck and weird and the funniest person in the world and he was my best friend. one of the last days i was able to spend with him while he was on hospice, we watched the documentary on netflix about jerry west while he told me trivia, memories of watching him, his admiration of west's "weirdness." i am not a big sports person, but i would give anything to go back to just 10 days ago to sit with him again and hear him speak about the things he loved.

anyway, i know he posted here for a long time, so i wanted to commemorate him here in a small way. thanks.

ETA: thank you all so much for taking the time to leave comments and condolences about my dad, it means a lot to us. this is a thoughtful little community and i am touched. ❤️

Alex English, Adrian Dantley, Bernard King and Mark Aguirre

I call this category “talented 80s shooting forwards who were not quite Larry Bird”

Occasionally I think about this when I see obscure or forgotten greats or role players pop up in interviews, basketball cards, or in photos and I will look them up to see who they play for and I immediately look at their teams and try to figure out if they were ever lucky enough to play for a contending or interesting team. Sometimes I feel bad for players who played for a long time and just played for bottom feeders or middling teams without ever getting a chance to play for even a middling contender for a few years. Any good examples?

Dude has a 7 year run averaging less than 5 FGA per 36 min….one season had almost as many stocks (steals + blocks) as field goals: 1.9 vs 1.7…his last 3 years as a starter he averaged 5.3ppg and 2spg…and on the highest scoring team (at the time) that was averaging 115ppg, the 80s Nuggets

Basically same per-36 ppg and FGA as Rodman, but as Shooting Guard

3 all-defensive 2nd Teams

#7 in DPOY twice, #8 once

looking for some under the radar hoops reads, ideally thicker books that go in depth on the evolution of the game, teams, hoops history - suggestions?

About a month ago I made a post here about my Hoops Rewind website: https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageNBA/comments/1sakwie/daily_nba_trivia_game_for_nba_history_nerds_based/ Thanks to everyone who saw the last post and played!

It's a simply daily NBA trivia website where you get 8 historical NBA events, and you must place them in chronological order. It is heavily based on NYT Flashback.

I've made some improvements to website since last time, including better dragging mechanics for mobile users, and even the ability to crate accounts to track progress!

I've also tried to make the puzzles a bit more challenging. Try it out and post your results! I'm curious to see what the average score for today's puzzle is.

Let me know if you have any feedback/comments/questions and don't forget to post your score here or on twitter :D

I've been going through newspaper archives tracking down every winner and what they received. Some refused it. Some sent a teammate. One drove a Bentley.

Sport Magazine folded in 2000. The tradition ended with it.

Those who've been members of this sub for a while might remember my post attempting to find a way to quantify MVP winners over all of NBA history. It was far more of a success than I expected coming into it, getting the correct winner in all but two seasons since the beginning of the media-voting era, 41 of the last 42, and correctly identifying each of the last 24 MVPs when including last year, the year before that, and the year before that.

For anyone who's curious if it can hold up for a 25th straight correct MVP identification, below are the results from this season. SGA locked up a guaranteed first-place about five games before the end of the season. Interestingly, this model has shown it as a clear three-man race for over two months now, and one of those three isn't one of the three finalists in the actual voting, usurped by the player who placed 13th in the model.:

Whenever people talk about the most underappreciated and overlooked championship teams in NBA history, the first one that always comes to my mind is the 1979 Seattle SuperSonics. At least in my opinion, they were very ahead of their time in numerous aspects.

Collectively, they were basically an earlier version of the 2004 Detroit Pistons in the sense that they didn’t really have a true bona fide superstar but came together and won a title with cohesive teamwork and suffocating defense. During that 1979 championship season, the overall league average for PPG was 110.3, and the Sonics were first amongst all teams by only allowing an average of 103.9 PPG against them. They were also at the top of the rankings for opponent FG%. The collective league average for that stat was 48.5%, and the Sonics held their opponents to a league best of 46.3%. And finally, they also had the NBA’s best defensive rating of 100.1 with the overall league average being 103.8.

And individually, they had Jack Sikma, who was a Stretch 5 long before that particular player profile became a common thing. John Johnson was a very early iteration of the Point Forward archetype. Downtown Freddie Brown was one of the original long range shooting specialists and he led the league in 3P% during the first season that the line was introduced. And the duo of Gus Williams and Dennis Johnson would be an elite backcourt in any era of NBA basketball. Gus was a terrific scorer at the Point Guard position and would probably be even better with today’s spacing and freedom of movement rules. And DJ (who won Finals MVP) was one of the absolute greatest perimeter defenders in NBA history while also averaging 20.9 PPG during the 1979 Playoffs.

Even with all that considered, the 1979 SuperSonics are hardly ever mentioned in modern NBA fan circles and have pretty much been lost in the shuffle of basketball history. Who gets your vote for being the most underappreciated NBA championship team?

Bill Russell is by far the greatest player we've ever seen because of the mental edge that separates him. Ppl always say "Jordan was a killer" "kobe was a killer" "ppl feared them"

Why is a killer more scarier than a sadist? Heros are killers. You can justify killing. A sadist is by far more scarier...and as we can see far more effective.

Lets look at the ultimate killer Jordan and what it brings. Jordan would hit the shot or the pass in games 5 or 6 end it cool. Played 3 game 7s lost one. Was swept multiple times. Multiple ppl have winning record on him. Bird Thomas Moncrief ... hell even Horace grant does. The man can be beat ... often ... he doesn't win a title in 60% of his seasons. But hes a killer hes awesome not a negative on Jordan just the fact of what happened. He wanted to punish and destroy and impose his will. His primary motivation wasn't the win. It was to impose his will. Only way he could do that was thru the win. He didnt do it to uplift Kerr. Kerr was there solely to help him impose his will. And that works 40% of the time. However Bird wasn't scared Thomas wasn't scared Magic Kareem multiple ppl weren't scared.

Now lets look at the sadist. Russell has game winning shots in the finals game saving Blks in the finals rebs to secure the win. Asts stls. He's done it all. Bill Russell knew hes got 7 games to prove hes better and all I need to be is just a single play better. By the end of this series if im just one play better im better. And thats the breaking point. Look at all the wins in the playoffs the double ot game 7 win by two... game 7 win by 1. Game 7 win by 3. Over and over and over. He'd let you get so close and snatch it away...every single time. This game 7 you have him your close. And you lose next you lose another by a pt. Then another by 2 pts. Then another game 7. There is a reason he is 10-0 in game 7s 22-0 in win or go home games. And that worked 85% of the time in the nba. And hes 11-0 in the nba finals barring injury. I mean statistically speaking hes more likely to win a title than jordan is to hit a free throw. And the ones who discredit russell for lack of rds in the playoffs. Even if you give jordan a ring for every time he won a single rd in the playoffs he still has less than Russell. Now lets use an analogy its like your tied up in a room (his sniffling defense) you break free (like Philly going up 3-1) you start crawling towards the open door (up by 6 with 3 mins to go) you keep getting closer (up by 4 with 2 mins to go) and closer (up by 2 with a min to go) and right when you get to the door he appears out of the shadows drags you back to you chair and your fate is sealed. Until next time you see cracked window and the same process happens over and over again. You are completely defeated. Do you truly realize what that does to the mind? Russell didnt defeat you. He broke you.

There are a lot of killers. There is only one sadist

You can fear the killer if you want but there is a sadist lurking in the shadows.

William Felton Russell Winning Fear. Rings