As it celebrates its 50th anniversary, the NBA is tipping off the 1996-97 season with the New York Knicks against the Toronto Raptors at Toronto's SkyDome. Toronto was also the site of the league's very first game on Nov. 1, 1946, with the Huskies hosting the New York Knickerbockers at Maple Leaf Gardens. The contest drew 7,090, a good crowd considering that virtually every youngster in Canada grew up playing hockey and basketball was hardly a well-known sport at the time.
Forget for now that the game the Knicks won that night, 68-66, bore little resemblance to the leaping, balletic version of today's NBA. That game was from a different era of low-scoring basketball, a time when hoops as a pro spectacle was just coming out of the dance halls. Players did not routinely double-pump or slam-dunk. The fact of the matter was that the players did not and could not jump very well. Nor was there a 24-second clock; teams had unlimited time to shoot. The jump shot was a radical notion, and those who took it defied the belief of many coaches that nothing but trouble occurred when a player left his feet for a shot.