Wataru "Wat" Misaka was a star basketball player for the Utah Utes who won championships in 1944 and in 1947 after serving during WWII. After stellar performances at Madison Square Garden, the New York Knicks drafted him. Read this NPR story about Misaka taking the court on November 13, 1947, to become the first non-white player to partake in a professional basketball game, and learn about his life after the NBA.
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The NBA, explained
4:19From humble beginnings in 1891, basketball transformed into the global juggernaut we know today. The NBA, established in 1949 and later revitalized by Commissioner David Stern in the 1980s, became a model for sports branding, player marketing, and international expansion. Stern introduced policies that would shape the sports industry, like the salary cap, the Draft Lottery, and even the launch of the WNBA. The league’s global outreach, highlighted by the iconic 1992 “Dream Team,” cemented its place as an international sensation. Today, with every NBA franchise valued at over $1 billion, basketball’s rise remains one of the most impressive success stories in sports history.
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Los Angeles Times
The Punch: Tomjanovich and Washington both still feel the pain from that terrible moment
In the NBA of the 1970s, cocaine use was prevalent and fights were a regular occurrence. On one early December in 1977, a fight broke out between the Lakers and the Rockets. Read this gripping LA Times story from 1985 that recounts a near-fatal punch thrown by Laker forward Kermit Washington and the devastating consequences paid by Houston Rocket forward Rudy Tomjanovich.

After the Malice at the Palace, then-Commissioner David Stern wanted to revive the bad-boy image of the NBA. So he instituted a business casual dress code for all players on the sidelines and at team sanctioned events. Watch this ESPN video to see how players went from hating the new requirements, to embracing fashion and challenging each other to up their game.
Rebound Rewind
The evolution of the NBA basketball ball

When the first basketball landed in a peach basket in 1891, it didn’t look like the leather Wilson ball you see on today’s NBA courts. Watch this Rebound Rewind video to see how the basketball evolved from the nondribbling day where a hand sewn ball with stitchings like a football was used, to the eight-panel update in the 1970s, to the disastrous 2006 update.

The NFL is the most valuable pro league in the world, but its players aren’t making nearly as much as NBA players. This CNBC video dives into how league structure, salary cap, and guaranteed contracts define how much an athlete will make, and shows how NBA players are able to use those to get almost double the average annual salary of other pro leagues.
Urban Industry
A brief history of the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star

Look at any vintage basketball photo from the early years of the NBA, you are bound to find each player with a pair of Chuck Taylor All Stars on their feet. This was long before Michael Jordan and the Air Jordan’s became the iconic shoe of the league. Read this Urban Industry feature into the early years of the Chuck Taylors and see what the first pair for the US Olympic team looked like in 1936.
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