| Sport | Basketball |
|---|---|
| Date | June 2, 1947[1] |
| Location | The Leland Hotel (Detroit, Michigan)[1] |
| League | BAA |
| Overall | 80 |
| Rounds | 10 |
| First | Clifton McNeely, Pittsburgh Ironmen |
| Next | 1948 |
The 1947 BAA draft was the first ever draft of the Basketball Association of America (BAA), which later merged with the National Basketball League (NBL) to become the National Basketball Association (NBA). The fledgling BAA held this draft as a joint draft with the established NBL. The BAA first discussed the idea of creating a draft system similar to the NFL draft (which was first implemented back in 1936) back on January 1947 during league meetings held in New York, with each team being given territorial pick rights to one player each year from schools in a 50 mile radius. However, both leagues wanted to control salaries by stamping out competitive bidding between the two leagues from college players that may or may not have been returning home from World War II by assigning exclusive rights to the team selecting a player.[1] Before the BAA's draft began, the NBL had already signed eleven players that had already graduated from college, all of whom the NBL did not feel like they should be exposed to the BAA's draft system on display. The players in question included college stars Jack Smiley and Ralph Hamilton going to the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons works team, Harry Boykoff going to the Toledo Jeeps, and John Hargis, Frank Brian, and Charlie Black going to the Anderson Duffey Packers works team. As a trade-off, the BAA teams were allowed to select players early on before the NBL did. Including the NBL's draft side of things (which saw at least ten teams of their own participate in the event themselves), the overall draft program would have included 100 players (mainly college seniors) drafted between the two leagues.[2]
The draft was held on June 2, 1947, months before the 1947–48 season began. During this draft, the nine remaining BAA teams (both the Cleveland Rebels and Detroit Falcons decided to decline their entries into the draft while still remaining as existing franchises at the time) along with the Baltimore Bullets, who joined the BAA from the American Basketball League after a dispute they had during the ABL playoffs with that league, took turns selecting amateur U.S. college basketball players. In the first round of the draft, the teams selected in reverse order of their win–loss record in the previous season, while the Bullets were assigned the tenth pick, the last pick of the first round, due in part to their overwhelming 31–3 record they had in the ABL beating out even the 49–11 record held by the Washington Capitols. Both the Pittsburgh Ironmen and Toronto Huskies participated in this draft, but they folded before the season opened alongside the Cleveland Rebels and Detroit Falcons.
Draft selections and draftee career notes
Interestingly, this draft would allow for BAA teams to not just draft players that previously played in other professional basketball leagues (such as the rivaling National Basketball League, the (original) American Basketball League, and the short-lived Pacific Coast Professional Basketball League), but also select players that previously played in the inaugural BAA season beforehand as well. This led to some interesting draft results that would be out of place in more modern-day drafts otherwise, such as the selections of Hank Biasetti and Irv Rothenberg by the Boston Celtics and Washington Capitols at picks #13 and #56 despite them both previously playing in the BAA earlier on through the Toronto Huskies and Cleveland Rebels respectively (with the former team being notable for still being a part of the BAA properly at the time), as well as notable age gaps between certain prospects selected in this draft (notably among players like Chick Reiser, who had last attended college back in 1935 before being drafted by the original Baltimore Bullets near the end of the draft).
The first selection of the draft, Clifton McNeely from Texas Wesleyan University, did not play in the BAA. Instead, McNeely opted for a high school coaching career in Texas.[3] The fourth pick, Walt Dropo, also did not play in the BAA and opted for a professional baseball career instead, eventually playing 13 seasons in the Major League Baseball (MLB).[4][5] The 7th and 10th picks, Jack Underman and Larry Killick, also never played in the BAA. Three players from this draft, Harry Gallatin, Andy Phillip and Jim Pollard, have been inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.[6]
Wataru Misaka, selected by the New York Knicks,[7] made the team's final roster and became the first person of color to play in modern professional basketball, just months after the Major League Baseball color line had been broken by the Brooklyn Dodgers' Jackie Robinson.[8] Misaka was cut after playing only three games with the team.[9]
Key
| Pos. | G | F | C |
| Position | Guard | Forward | Center |
Draft
Other picks
The following list includes other draft picks who have appeared in at least one BAA/NBA game.[10][11]
Notable undrafted players
These players were not selected in the 1947 draft, but played at least one game in the BAA/NBA.
Notes
- ^ Nationality indicates the player's national team or representative nationality. If a player has not competed at the international level, then the nationality indicates the national team which the player is eligible to represent according to FIBA rules.
See also
References
- General
- "1947 BAA Draft". basketball-reference.com. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
- "1947–1948 BAA Drafts, 1949–1951 NBA Drafts". The Association for Professional Basketball Research. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
- Specific
- ^ Bradley, Robert D. (2013). The Basketball Draft Fact Book: A History of Professional Basketball's College Drafts. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810890695., pg. 1
- ^ Bradley, Robert D. (2013). The Basketball Draft Fact Book: A History of Professional Basketball's College Drafts. Scarecrow Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 9780810890695.
- ^ Cook, Bob (September 13, 2007). "Oden's injury a cruel blow for cursed Blazers". NBCSports.com. NBC Universal. Archived from the original on February 21, 2009. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
- ^ Montville, Leigh (July 19, 1993). "What Ever Happened To...: Walt Dropo". Sports Illustrated. Time Inc. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012. Retrieved September 10, 2009.
- ^ "Walt Dropo Bio". baseball-reference.com. Archived 20 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
- ^ "Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Inductees". basketball-reference.com. Retrieved October 28, 2009.
- ^ Wertheim, Jon (February 11, 2012). "Decades before Lin's rise, Misaka made history for Asian-Americans". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved December 16, 2019.
- ^ Goldstein, Richard (November 26, 2019). "Wat Misaka, 95, First Nonwhite in Modern Pro Basketball, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved November 26, 2019.
- ^ Vecsey, George (August 10, 2009). "Pioneering Knick Returns to Garden". The New York Times. Retrieved November 26, 2019.
- ^ "1947 BAA Draft"
- ^ "NBA Past Drafts - RealGM"