Edward Gottlieb - The BAA and The NBA

The BAA and The NBA

In the spring of 1946, the United States was celebrating the end of World War II, which had formally ended in September 1945. Peace brought the population leisure time and money for entertainment, and basketball was ripe for a move to the big time. College basketball had grown immensely in popularity during the previous 10 years, and there was no professional basketball circuit (as hockey had with the National Hockey League).

The National Basketball League was operating primarily in the Midwest, and did not attract the attention of other cities where basketball was popular, such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston—which, for nearly half a century, had been the hotbeds of barnstorming teams and fly-by-night leagues. The owners or operators of major arenas in some of the country’s biggest cities were looking for events to help fill their schedules. They met in New York City in 1946 and created the 11-team Basketball Association of America. The league was fashioned after the National Hockey League, with a 60-game schedule followed by championship playoffs.

Of the original 11 teams, only three still survive in the present-day NBA: the Boston Celtics, the New York Knickerbockers, and the Golden State (then Philadelphia) Warriors. Gottlieb was the coach and general manager of the Philadelphia Warriors. Besides coaching, he made sure the team stayed afloat during the rocky days of the BAA and the NBA. "He promoted the team on street corners and he sold tickets and then he counted the cold house," Mike Lupica wrote after Gottlieb’s death.

Gottlieb coached the Warriors for a total of nine seasons, compiling a 263-318 regular-season career record and going 15-17 in the playoffs. The Warriors finished at .500 or better in four of their first six campaigns, but in Gottlieb’s last three seasons they compiled losing records and failed to make the playoffs. During his coaching years, from 1946/47 to 1954/55, his teams included such early NBA standouts as Paul Arizin and Neil Johnston.

Gottlieb won his lone championship with the Warriors in the first term of the BAA, 1946–47. Behind "Jumping Joe" Fulks, who led the league with 23.2 points per game, the Warriors logged a 35-25 regular-season record, second to the Washington Capitols in the Eastern Division. In the playoffs the Warriors defeated New York, the St. Louis Bombers, and the Chicago Stags for the title. In the league’s second season the BAA lost four teams and picked up another one. The Warriors edged the Knicks by a single game in the regular season and then lost in six in the BAA Finals to the league’s newest entrant, the Baltimore Bullets. For the 1949/50 season, the BAA merged with the NBL to form the NBA, a marriage in which Gottlieb was influential. "When anyone inside the league or outside had a question, they went to Gotty", said Leonard Koppett, who covered the NBA for the New York Post and The New York Times. For the next three seasons the Warriors lost in the first round of the playoffs without winning a game.

Gottlieb, who was instrumental in helping original Warriors owner Pete Tyrell launch the franchise, bought the club in 1952 for $25,000. He also had a major role in shaping the league’s rules, serving as chairman of the rules committee for 25 years. He was there when Syracuse Nationals owner Danny Biasone came up with the idea of a 24-second shot clock in 1954, and he helped to implement a rule that gave a bonus free throw after six team fouls in a quarter. The new rules supplied the framework for a more fast-paced and exciting game and were pivotal in the continued existence and eventual success of the NBA.

"I probably was responsible for more rule changes in pro basketball than any other man," Gottlieb told the Associated Press late in his life. "They call me in now because I’m the only one left who can connect things to the past, who knows why this rule was put in or why that one was thrown out."

Gottlieb was behind the NBA’s "territorial draft" rule, which gave teams the right to claim a local college or high school player in exchange for giving up their first-round draft pick. The rule was particularly advantageous for Philadelphia, which landed Overbrook High School’s Wilt Chamberlain in 1959 after his stints with the University of Kansas and the Harlem Globetrotters.

Chamberlain furthered the franchise’s success. An immediate drawing card, he led the NBA in scoring and rebounding as a rookie and helped the Warriors to a 49-26 record and a trip to the division semifinals. With the Warriors for five full seasons (he was traded during his sixth season), Chamberlain took the team to the playoffs four times. In 1961/62 Philadelphia fell to Boston in seven games in the Eastern Division Finals.

Before the 1962/63 season the Warriors moved west. Gottlieb, who had purchased the franchise 10 years earlier, sold it for a $600,000 profit to a credit card company, which kept 33.3 percent of the ownership while Franklin Mieuli put together a group of almost 40 Bay Area investors to purchase the remainder of the team. The move to San Francisco followed the Minneapolis Lakers' migration to Los Angeles two seasons earlier, and helped open the west to professional basketball.

Gottlieb remained involved with the team in San Francisco before "retiring" in 1964. However, he retained his leadership position with the NBA. His role was crucial: the job of planning the league schedule had become solely his. "They joked that Eddie Gottlieb carried the NBA around in his briefcase," Lupica wrote.

In any July or August, a visit to Gottlieb’s office would find him in front of stacks of paper, a yellow legal pad, and graph paper. "Gottlieb’s skin would be the color of the yellow paper, and his eyes would look like black holes," Lupica wrote. "But he was making a season, as always."

Gottlieb was the force behind the NBA schedule until shortly before his death. While other sports leagues used computers, the NBA relied on Gottlieb. For 1978/79, the season prior to his death, he reluctantly gave up his duties as schedule maker to a software program.

A lifelong bachelor, Gottlieb remained employed by the NBA until his death in December 1979, traveling from Philadelphia to New York a few times a week as a coordinator and consultant. "Eddie Gottlieb was one of the real pioneers of professional round ball," Red Smith wrote in The New York Times. Wrote Lupica, "Eddie Gottlieb loved basketball. Maybe no one ever loved basketball quite the way he did."

His story is featured in The First Basket, the first and most comprehensive documentary on the history of Jews and Basketball.