The Dayton Rens, formerly the New York Renaissance, or Rens, moved to Dayton, Ohio in the middle of the NBL season to replace the Detroit Vagabond Kings, who went out of existence on December 17, 1948. While not all that successful in their one year in the NBL, the Rens had been a widely successful and popular barnstorming team during the 1920s and 1930s. The Rens had traveled across the Northeast and Midwest of the United States, attracting crowds as large as 15,000 to watch their games. As such, the NBL invited the Rens in hopes of bolstering a league that was slowly fading away faced with direct competition from the newly formed Basketball Association of America (BAA).
The Rens disbanded in 1949 after completing the 1948/49 season of the racially integrated National Basketball League as the Dayton Rens based in Dayton, Ohio. That was also the final season for the NBL, which merged with the all-white Basketball Association of America to form the also (initially) all-white National Basketball Association.