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GOAT · Site Admin Joined: 24 Oct 2011 Posts: 41

This is the story of the Warriors. The same team that currently resides in Oakland, CA and plays under the title of "Golden State". But this is the story of their beginning, some 60 years prior on the other side of the country. One of the original BAA franchises, the Philadelphia Warriors were fronted by Eddie Gottlieb an experienced basketball man and early pro sports mogul who was the owner and founder of the Philadelphia SPHA’s (South Philadelphia Hebrew Association) most notably of the American Basketball League. By 1952 he’d own the Warriors as well. Gottlieb was an innovator in pro basketball; he was a driving force behind the formation of the BAA and also pushed for the merger with the NBL. An authoritative figure like many of the owners of the 1950’s, the Russian-born Gottlieb’s entire life was wrapped up in sports, mostly basketball. When he wasn’t coaching the team he was promoting it, or finding talent for it. In his early days Gottlieb had stints as a scheduler/organizer for the Harlem Globetrotters, head in charge of semipro Baseball in the Philadelphia area, and schedule maker for the Negro National Baseball League. When he retired from coaching and sold the Warriors, he went to work for the NBA as an advisor and schedule maker. Many believe had he not been so insistent of heading up the Warriors he’d have been the perfect choice for the first commissioner position, eventually filled by Maurice Podloff. As a coach and general manager he was always a proponent of the star system, first with "the original giant" Elmore Morgenthaler and other SPHA’s stars and onto Joe Fulks, Paul Arizin, Neil Johnston and Wilt Chamberlain eventually before selling the franchise in 1962.

The SPHA’s were originally an independent barnstorming team, like most of their day. They and teams like the Original Celtics and Buffalo Germans assembled talent and took their teams on the road playing in all sorts of venues against all sorts of teams. Formed in 1918, the SPHA’s became one of the most successful basketball teams on the East Coast in the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s. The SPHA’s spent much of their existence enduring anti-Semitic protest and taunting, in particular during the depression era thirties when the American Nazi party and other anti-Semitic groups blindly blamed the Nations financial problems on the greed of Jewish bankers. At their peak in 1926 they beat five of the top six teams in the newly formed American Basketball League. They then beat the Original Celtics and New York Rens in best of three series consecutively. The performance earned Gottlieb a franchise in the ABL, which he named the Philadelphia Warriors. However they folded with the league when the depression forced a stoppage in 1931. When the league restarted operations in 1933, Gottlieb was back in it, but this time with the SPHA’s. After a lackluster first half, the SPHA’s went 14-0 in the second half of the season on their way to their first of seven titles in fifteen years. They won three titles in the thirties and four more in the 1940’s while the NBL was still taking root. By the mid-late 1940’s the SPHA’s were still a major attraction. They had players like Morgenthaler, who was listed or billed as 7’ tall when in fact he was probably more like 6’9” or maybe 6’10”. Morgenthaler averaged close to 20 points per game in an era where scores in the 50’s were the norm. Still the lumbering giant struggled in his brief NBA career demonstrating the effects the emergence of the NBL and BAA had on the quality of teams in the ABL.

The SPHA’s and the American Basketball League are an interesting part of basketball history. In many ways, the ABL was first sustained pro basketball league in America. The league lasted nearly 30 years with a few interruptions here and there, but did a number of things that helped make pro basketball what it is today. The ABL began operations in 1925 and temporarily shut down in 1931. In 1933 it started up again and ran until 1953 before folding officially in 1955. At its inception the league was comprised of mostly small corporate owned teams in the Northeast (Boston, Brooklyn, Washington, Rochester, Buffalo) and Midwest. (Cleveland, Detroit, Ft. Wayne, Chicago) Among a number of its unique qualities and nuance, the ABL season was made up of two halves. The winner of each half would qualify for the playoffs and play the winner of the second half for the title. In 1930 it became the first league to use a best of seven series to determine the Champion. ABL teams also played longer schedules than the NBL did in its early days and their teams did extended farther geographical than they primarily Midwest based NBL. Still with the games being played in Dance Halls and Armories, it wasn’t until the BAA came around and attracted Arena Owners that Gottlieb believed Pro Basketball would take off. As usual, he was right.

In the 1940’s the popular shot for players taller than 6’5” was usually the hook shot, for players shorter than 6’5”, the two-hand set shot. So imagine the league and fans surprise when the games first great scorer was a 6’5” man who favored neither of the two most popular offensive maneuvers. Joe Fulks was an aggressive athletic player ahead of his time and is credited for popularizing if not creating the jump shot. A number of lofty nomenclature is often used in describing Fulks as “The father of the modern game” or the “Babe Ruth of Basketball”. He was the league’s first scoring champion and led Philadelphia to the leagues first title. Fulks averaged 23.1 points per game and shot 31% from the field, tops on his team. The league as a whole shot just 28% from the field, 64% from the line and averaged just under 70 points per game playing the four 12 minute quarters that still divide NBA games. The Cleveland Rebels were the leagues top passing team, averaging 8 assists per game as a team, rebounds were not recorded as an official stat until a year after the 1949 merger. The league played a sixty game schedule putting each team at home for thirty games and on the road for thirty games. The playoffs featured a bizarre format which pitted the two division Champs against each other in a best of seven semi-finals to decide one half of the Finals. There they would face the winner of a four-team best of three series playoff between the two second place teams and two third place teams in each division. The Warriors finished second in the East behind Washington they beat St. Louis (second in the West) in the first round and third place New York in the second round to meet Chicago Stags in the Finals.

The Stags were led by All-BAA selections Max Zaslofsky and Chick Halbert and had won the Western Division. The compiled a 39-22 record, winning a tiebreaker over John Logan and St. Louis and then outlasting the 49-win Eastern Division Champion Washington Capitols, coached by Red Auerbach, in six games. Chicago was the leagues highest scoring team at over 77 a game. They played at the fastest pace and shot the highest percentage. Zaslofsky was their catalyst, an all-around skilled played who finished in the top five in scoring, field goal percentage and assists in 1947. In the Warriors they seemed to have met their match though, especially when it came to Jumpin’ Joe. Philadelphia and the leagues most noticeable star, Fulks 23 points per game average was more than six points better than Washington’s Bob Feerick who finished second in scoring. A pair of solid guards supported him; George Senesky (former SPHA and future Warriors coach) who came on strong in the playoffs and Angelo Musi the Warriors second leading scorer. 6’4” forward Howie Dallmar led the team in assists during the regular and post season and 6’7” center Art Hillhouse, who came over from Gottliebs SPHA’s and was one of the teams best free throw shooters rounded out the starting five.

So after the meeting at the commodore and a relatively successful first season all that was left to do was crown the leagues first champion. The first BAA finals opened in Philadelphia and Fulks put on a show that still stands as one of the finest in NBA history. After a lackluster first half, Fulks scored 29 second half points and hit eight consecutive jump shots to start the fourth quarter finishing the game with 37 points in a 84-71 Warrior win. It was teammate Howie Dallmar who picked up the slack in the second game scoring 18 in an eleven-point win to put Philadelphia up 2-0. When the scene shifted to Chicago the games got tighter; the Warriors arrived late after their commercial flight was delayed when the cabin filled with smoke and the plane had to return to the airport. Once they hit the floor it was Fulks who grounded the Stags with 26 points as the Chicago’s late rally fell short and the Warriors took a commanding three game lead. Joe Fulks found foul trouble and Max Zaslofsky would have his best game of the series for Chicago scoring 20 points in game four and the Stags staved off elimination. But only temporarily as Fulks poured in 34 points two nights later back in Philadelphia and the Warriors won the leagues Championship. As great as Fulks played, it was Howie Dallmar whose only two points accounted for the win when he rattled in an 18 footer with less than a minute to play to break an 80-80 tie. The Warriors won the game 83-80. It was appropriate that Gottlieb was the leagues first championship winning coach. He was the most experienced pro coach in the league after all and the one who really understood basketball best. He had plucked Fulks from the Marines and got Dallmar an All-American at Stanford and Penn from the Air Force. Angelo Musi he lured from Wilmington on the ABL, where he also got Hillhouse from his SPHA’s. Gottlieb had an ability to promote and organize that was instrumental in the leagues success, without him the league may not have made it to 1950 and thanks in many ways to him, is what it is today.

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