Login

u/WinesburgOhio

Image 1 — My book profiling 500 players should FINALLY be available for purchase within a week!
Image 2 — My book profiling 500 players should FINALLY be available for purchase within a week!
▲ 63 r/VintageNBA

My book profiling 500 players should FINALLY be available for purchase within a week!

I've been talking about this for 5 years, maybe. It started as something else, but it shaped into a book profiling the 500 most noteworthy players of the 20th century. It got dragged out way longer than expected for multiple reasons, but it's finally going to be available within a week. I'll post the link to it on Amazon once it's live.

I obviously got a ton of help from this community in numerous ways. Additionally, about a month before jtapostate passed away, I asked if I could include him in the Acknowledgements for all the insight he's provided over the years, which he was honored to allow. Also, this project never could have happened without all the assistance I got from u/TringlePringle.

It's around 600 pages long, which unfortunately means it has to be a softback, and the price will be about $35. Here are the 500 players profiled in the book. If you have any questions, ask them in the comments.

u/WinesburgOhio — 4 hours ago
▲ 58 r/VintageNBA

25,000 members! PLEASE READ

VintageNBA just passed 25,000 members. We got to 20k last June, and like I wrote then, there's not much to say about it, but it's a cool milestone. To be clear, our goal is to have high-quality conversations, not to get larger, but it's still cool.

PLEASE READ: I'm taking this opportunity to refocus and restress what VintageNBA is, which is a place for high-effort posts, and for all contributions to focus on context, analysis, research, and nuance. I'm asking that if you want to post a question, please strongly consider doing so on the NBA or NBATalk subs instead if numerous people could chime in on it, especially opinions. Questions here should require a more academic or specific set of knowledge or experiences to answer. I don't want to require that posts get approval before posting, or that we cap how many posts the sub gets in a day or a week (a couple per day is ideal), so let's tighten up a bit so that VintageNBA remains an elite community for learning about hoops history in a way that doesn't exist elsewhere. Thank you!

reddit.com
u/WinesburgOhio — 9 hours ago
▲ 61 r/VintageNBA

Pictures from the NBA's first two official Record Books (1950 & 1951), in which they make it perfectly clear that the league's first season was 1949-50

This sub has long shared the historical truth about the NBA starting in 1949 as a merger of the NBL and the BAA, despite the NBA's official stance that it was founded in 1946 as the BAA, only "rebranding" as the NBA in 1949 while absorbing some NBL clubs. All I'm adding to the discussion, which has already been clear for decades to anyone who looks at literally any newspaper archives from the time period, are the league's first two official record books. The one states that the 1950-51 season will be the league's second year of existence, and the other states that the 1951-52 season will be its third year of existence.

I also own the third record book from 1952, but it does not include a "League History" page.

u/WinesburgOhio — 3 days ago
▲ 21 r/VintageNBA

What was the deal with Coulby Gunther (1940s)?

This might seem super random, but I was looking at a list of the top scorers in the short-lived PBLA in 1947, and his name was the only one I didn't immediately recognize among the top-5. It went George Mikan 24.1 ppg, Coulby Gunther 19.9 ppg, Bobby McDermott 17.5 ppg, Bruce Hale 16.1 ppg, and George Ratkovicz 14.7 ppg.

Quick history of PBLA (Professional Basketball League of America): Graduating college mega-star George Mikan signed with the NBL's Chicago American Gears in 1946, teaming up with 1940s mega-star Bobby McDermott. Gears' owner Maurice White was notoriously unpredictable--that's the nicest way I can describe him--so after the team went on to win the 1947 championship series, the league essentially said "Nah, the Rochester Royals who had the best regular season record are actually the champions despite getting beaten 3-1 by the Gears in the Finals" and denied White's bid to become the commissioner that summer. White pulled the Gears out of the NBL and started the PBLA to rival it and the new BAA; he owned and operated all the teams in the league, but clearly was most interested in the Gears. The league only lasted a few weeks in late-1947, with no team playing more than 9 games. It folded due to losing so much money, the NBL had a distribution draft for the players (the BAA wouldn't touch them), and Mikan ended up on the newly-formed Lakers.

So yeah, the PBLA barely existed, but it obviously had some good talent, including 19-year-old Paul Seymour before he became a 3x NBA All-Star. Back to Coulby Gunther. He averaged 23 ppg for St. John's freshmen team in '43, served during WWII (I'm guessing he scored well on military teams during those three years), and then was a star in the BAA's inaugural season ('47) with the Pittsburgh Ironmen. The team sucked, but he averaged 14 ppg (7th in the BAA), a .336 FG% (4th), and a .644 FT% (19th) while getting to the free throw line a ton of times. The Ironmen folded in July of 1947 after one year, and Gunther was signed by the PBLA's Atlanta Crackers (I'm assuming they were named after the long-time minor league baseball team of the same name).

They went 7-1 during the PBLA's short existence, he was the 2nd-best scorer in a league with several talented players (again he shot a ton of free throws so he was obviously a handful to guard), and then .... he played just a little bit with the BAA's Bombers in '49, and then bounced around numerous teams in smaller leagues for the next few years, continuing to score a bunch of points most places he went (career stats across all teams).

How did a guy who put up points everywhere he played not stick with major league basketball after his success in the BAA and the PBLA?

u/WinesburgOhio — 11 days ago
▲ 24 r/VintageNBA

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.

reddit.com
u/WinesburgOhio — 18 days ago