From Hangtime to Primetime
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 22 July 2024
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the 50s and 60s, the NBA was barely a professional league. Today it is a powerhouse worth billions. Here is the story of how that happened w/ author Pete Croatto.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:16.3 | And we return to our American stories. |
| 0:20.2 | Founded in 1946, we consider the National Basketball |
| 0:23.9 | Association or the MBA to be a cultural icon, but it certainly didn't start off that way. |
| 0:30.4 | And it took the hiring of a man named Larry O'Brien to get it on the path to being a serious |
| 0:36.1 | organization. |
| 0:42.7 | Here with the story of the rise of the NBA as a business is Pete Crowado, |
| 0:45.8 | author of From Hangtime to Primetime. |
| 0:47.1 | Take it away, Pete. |
| 0:58.2 | The NBA in its early days in the 1940s, 1950s, was really a regional league. |
| 1:01.9 | It was a league whose teams were based in the Midwest and the East Coast. |
| 1:04.7 | The furthest team West was St. Louis. |
| 1:07.1 | So it really was a regional league. And it was a league that really struggled for mainstream acceptance. |
| 1:11.6 | For years it had trouble getting a favorable national television contract. |
| 1:15.6 | For years it played in arenas that really were antiquated or run down, |
| 1:21.6 | nowhere close to the entertainment mecas that we see today. |
| 1:24.6 | It really was a second-tier professional league. |
| 1:31.3 | Baseball had always been America's game. Its roots were established for years and years and years. |
| 1:36.3 | And the NFL had gained a foothold with television thanks to the 1958 NFL championship game, |
| 1:43.3 | which was the league's first overtime game. |
| 1:47.0 | The NBA didn't really have anything like that. |
| 1:49.0 | It was really an afterthought to college basketball, |
... |
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