Wednesday · November 11, 2026

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Two rival leagues sign off on a merger: the NBA is born

Seventeen teams, from Madison Square Garden to small-town armories, now play under one name.

Three years after hockey-arena owners started the Basketball Association of America, professional basketball was still split between two struggling leagues. The BAA played in big-city arenas; the smaller-market National Basketball League ran on business-owned teams and shorter, 40-minute games, compared to the BAA's 48-minute contests. On August 3, 1949, at a meeting in the Empire State Building, the two leagues finalized their merger into the National Basketball Association, combining ten BAA clubs with seven NBL survivors. The new NBA counted 17 teams, in cities ranging from New York to Sheboygan…

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More from August 3

Owens takes 100-meter gold in Hitler's stadium, 10.3 seconds

The first of four gold medals, run in the stadium Hitler built to prove Aryan supremacy.

A father administers the presidential oath by lamplight in a Vermont farmhouse

Word of Harding's death reaches Plymouth Notch after midnight, and there is no federal judge for miles.

Chambers names Hiss a communist under oath before Congress

A Time magazine editor tells the House Un-American Activities Committee that a former State Department official once ran with a Soviet spy ring.

Ninety-six hours under the ice and 1,590 nautical miles later, the submarine surfaces northeast of Greenland.

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More from Cold War America

Scott lands Falcon by hand at Hadley Rille; astronauts get a car on the Moon

The computer drifted off course, so David Scott flew the last stretch himself, straight toward a mountain valley chosen for its scenery.

Bush and Gorbachev sign a treaty to cut the world's largest nuclear arsenals

Nine years of talks end with limits of 6,000 warheads and 1,600 missiles and bombers on each side.

McNamara moves to merge the Pentagon's rival spy shops into one agency

The three service branches have been running separate, often conflicting intelligence operations for years.

Carter signs the Department of Energy into law

Four scattered energy agencies become one cabinet department, built to answer the 1973 oil crisis.

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