Excellent Video on the Early History of Basketball in Colorado

[LanceyHoward]

I may the only person on this forum to care (I started reading Denver sports pages in 1968) but an excellent You Tube documentary just went up titled "The Worst Team in NBA History" about the Denver Nuggets of 1948-1950. Much of the history is about the Denver AAU team that won three AAU championships in the late 30's and 40's but the documentary also does an excellent job explaining about AAU ball, which was the dominant form of basketball prior to the emergence of professional basketball in the late 40's. FWIW, the father of Frank Harroway, who was a sportswriter for the Denver Post for decades and I think the official scorer for the Rockies for a while, arranged the
sponsorships and assembled the teams.

The NBA was formed in 1949 as a result of the merger of the National Basketball League (which was primarily a group of small Midwestern cities and the Basketball
Association of America, which had the larger east coast and midwestern markets. Maurice Podoloff, the first commissioner of the NBA and Ned Irish then forced out the small market BAA teams and also Denver, which was expensive to travel to.

 

[Bubbler]

Duane Klueh, who just recently died as the oldest-living Piston, was on the original Denver Nuggets. Talked to him about that team once and he said those early pro days were an adventure.