National Professional Basketball League II (NPBL2)
History: 1933-1933 (1 season)
National Professional Basketball League II (NPBL2)
History 1933-1933 (1 season)
Leagues
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Basketball
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NPBL2
As professional basketball prepared to begin the 1931-32 season, it seemed as if the preceding decade had not existed. All traces of the progress of the past ten years, including the ambitious American Basketball League, had been swept away. The sport’s leading players were distributed once again in small regional leagues such as the Eastern and Metropolitan Leagues. Depression realities forced performers back to the draining practice of playing with multiple teams in more than one league at a time.
The National Professional Basketball League was created during 1933 in an another attempt to bring the professional game to the Midwest. The company-sponsored Akron Firestones dominated the circuit, losing only once in regular season play before polishing off second-place Toledo in three straight games in the playoffs. The league’s leading scorer was former Purdue All-American, John Wooden. The future coaching legend took time off from his high school teaching and coaching duties to perform on weekends. Depression realities doomed the new league to just one year of existence.
what a year. the competitiveness of the ABL really brought the NBA out of its duldrums.