the last book I ever read (David George Surdam's The Rise of the National Basketball Association, excerpt three)

from The Rise of the National Basketball Association by David George Surdam:

The original owners of teams in the Basketball Association of America were primarily operators of large arenas in big cities looking for events. Most were associated with hockey, whether in the National Hockey League or a hockey minor league. Few, if any, had experience with basketball, with the exception of New York Knickerbockers representative Ned Irish, who had built his fame and fortune by promoting college basketball doubleheaders at Madison Square Garden.

The BAA owners faced a major obstacle: the rival National Basketball League (NBL), which predated World War II. The BAA and NBL would compete directly only in Chicago and, briefly, Detroit. The league was initially comprised of teams located primarily in smaller Midwestern cities, although Chicago and Minneapolis eventually joined. Many of the teams were locally owned. In a sense, these teams’ owners were similar to owners of Minor League Baseball teams: civic-minded, small-town businessmen who wanted to provide a leisure-time activity and possibly make some money. Some of the owners were former players or managers of barnstorming professional basketball teams.

If they had so chosen, BAA owners could have studied the histories of Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Football League (NFL). The BAA and NBL mimicked baseball’s National League and the NFL respectively. These established leagues had different antecedents. William Hulbert proposed baseball’s National League after a disastrous 1875 season for the National Association. Teams paid a nominal fee to be in the older league. Haphazard scheduling and large disparities in talent and population bases created chaos. Hulbert wanted a baseball league comprised of teams in large cities only (of over 75,000 in population). He also wanted owners to control players. His vision proved durable. The American League would eventually mimic the National League by placing teams in large cities only.

The National Football League’s immediate antecedent, the American Professional Football Association (APFA) was similar to the NBL, as it was concentrated in smaller cities, albeit in Ohio (Akron, Canton, Columbus, and Dayton), and large cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit, while basketball’s hotbeds were mostly in Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, and Minnesota. While the teams in Chicago would anchor the NFL through its tumultuous formative years, it wasn’t until 1926, when New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Boston acquired franchises, that the league began its transformation into “major league” status. The league eliminated most of the smaller towns, although Green Bay remains a relic of the league’s early days. The APFA also had haphazard scheduling. Since the schedules were haphazard for several seasons, owners voted at the end of the season to determine league champions.

the last book I ever read (David George Surdam's The Rise of the National Basketball Association, excerpt two)

from The Rise of the National Basketball Association by David George Surdam:

Los Angeles and San Francisco were shimmering locations that tempted baseball and basketball owners. Their NFL peers had quickly established teams on the West Coast after the war. Football, though, had a schedule of one game per week, while the other two sports featured multiple games each week, making traveling and scheduling more difficult. After the NBA shrank from seventeen to eight teams, most of the surviving teams moved to larger cities as the 1950s waned, but the teams frequently remained in the northeast quadrant of the United States.

the last book I ever read (David George Surdam's The Rise of the National Basketball Association, excerpt one)

from The Rise of the National Basketball Association by David George Surdam:

The BAA/NBA exhibited such “bush league” characteristics during its early seasons as relying on exhibition games featuring the Harlem Globetrotters; playing doubleheaders; using territorial draft picks of stars from local colleges; playing regular-season games out of town; and having teams fold mid-season. Some teams continued to play league games in high school gymnasiums well into the 1950s. Even the fable Madison Square Garden had its primitive aspects. Sportswriter James Murray depicted a situation not much improved since the Roman Coliseum’s heyday: “Dressing Room 34 at Madison Square Garden was a dingy, bare place with peeling plaster walls, a row of coat hooks above a line of splintery benches and a bath and shower room that afforded no privacy. A bare-bulb overhead light shone down.”

Johnny “Big Red” Kerr remembered winning the NBA championship his rookie season. His Syracuse team beat the Fort Wayne Pistons. Because of a bowling tournament in Fort Wayne, the Pistons’ home games were played in Indianapolis. After Kerr’s team won, they received some money and a plaque from the Optimists Club that read, “Congratulations, World Champions.” Players in today’s NBA may well view the money from winning the playoffs as so much pocket change, but they do at least get a gaudy ring.

The league’s greatest star, George Mikan, dominated the league in a way few players, aside from Bill Russell and Michael Jordan, have. His Minneapolis Lakers won five titles in the team’s first six years in the BAA/NBA, as well as National Basketball League titles earlier. Mikan led the league in scoring three years in a row and finished second the next two years. Some observers believe the rule changing the width of the free-throw lane from six to twelve feet was in reaction to his dominance. While the lane-widening rule contributed to his drop-off in scoring, Mikan continued to dominate. In today’s media-driven market, he might have fared poorly with his glasses and bow ties. However, despite his mild appearance, Mikan was frequently hailed as the league’s best drawing card.

the last book I ever read (Rise to Greatness by David Von Drehle, excerpt eighteen)

from Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year by David Von Drehle:

The twelve tumultuous months of 1862 were the hinge of American history, the decisive moment at which the unsustainable compromises of the founding generations were ripped up in favor of a blueprint for a much stronger nation. In the process, millions of lives were transformed: the lives of slaves who were to be greed, and of the slave owners who would be impoverished; the lives of the soldiers and their families who bore the suffering of the first all-out war of the Industrial Age; the lives of those who would profit from new inventions, longer railroads, and modern finance; the lives of student who would be educated in great public universities. The road taken in 1862 ultimately led to greater prosperity than anyone had ever imagined. For the first time—but certainly not the last—the United States flexed its muscle to turn back an existential threat. Despite the cataclysmic destruction caused by the Civil War, the reunited state, North and South, would be far richer in 1870 than in 1860. During the same period, the nation’s population would rise by more than 20 percent, and its gross domestic product would nearly double.

the last book I ever read (Rise to Greatness by David Von Drehle, excerpt seventeen)

from Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year by David Von Drehle:

The last days of 1862 slipped away. Lincoln salved the hurt feelings of the outfoxed Senate Republicans by agreeing to bend the Constitution to create a new state: West Virginia. Conservatives pleaded with him to block the statehood bill. They dreaded the precedent of dividing a state against its will. After long deliberation, Lincoln signed the legislation, thus rewarding the mountain loyalists while punishing the Rebels in Richmond.

On December 26, a cheer went up in Minnesota when thirty-eight Sioux dropped from a giant scaffold. (One more warrior had been spared at the last minute.) The largest mass execution in American history, it proved to be sufficient vengeance. As Lincoln had calculated, the citizens of the state did not rampage for more blood.

On December 30, the brave little Monitor sank in high seas, the victim of bad weather, not Confederate guns. The next day, Lincoln gave his support to an ill-fated project to colonize Ile à Vache, an island off the coast of Haiti. As a consequence, some five hundred black Americans would suffer, and many of them die, at the failed colony, in a tragic fiasco that would finally close the book on Abraham Lincoln’s worst idea.

the last book I ever read (Rise to Greatness by David Von Drehle, excerpt sixteen)

from Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year by David Von Drehle:

When attacked by the German-American political leader Carl Schurz, for instance, Lincoln produced a response that could serve as an official statement, much as he had done in answering Horace Greeley’s pungent criticisms in August. Schurz, a fellow Republican, framed his party’s indictment bluntly in a pair of letters to the president. “Let us indulge in no delusions as to the true causes of our defeat in the elections,” he wrote. “The principal management of the war [has] been in the hands of your opponents . . . It is best that you should see the fact in its true light and appreciate its significance: the result of the elections was a most serious and severe reproof administered to the Administration. Do not refuse to listen to the voice of the people.”

the last book I ever read (Rise to Greatness by David Von Drehle, excerpt fifteen)

from Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year by David Von Drehle:

Lincoln returned from Sharpsburg to find the White House corridor even more jammed than usual. This was the price he paid for leaving town: after being away for most of a week, he “was perfectly overwhelmed with the crowd on his return.” He and his secretaries toiled to catch up on “deferred and delayed business,” as Nicolay reported. Lincoln may have been too busy to notice that his monthly paycheck, issued that day, was light by $61. Thanks to the new revenue bill he had signed, an income tax was withheld from the salaries of the nation’s highest earners for the first time in American history.