National Alliance of Basketball Leagues
| Sport | Basketball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1961 |
| Ceased | 1973 |
| Country |
 United States |
The National Alliance of Basketball Leagues (NABL) (founded 1961) is the descendant of the industrial-based basketball clubs that formed into the National Basketball League (NBL) in the early 1930s.
The league was the brainchild of Indianapolis grocer Irv Kautsky, who sponsored the Indianapolis Kautskys club team, and Goodyear Tire Company, who originally sponsored the Akron Wingfoots. After a false start in the early 1930s, the league was restarted in 1938, with the Wingfoots winning the initial NBL title. By World War II, both the Wingfoots and the Firestone Tire Company's Non Skids had suspended play, but other seminal pro teams such as the Ft. Wayne Zollner Pistons (now the Detroit Pistons), Syracuse Nationals (now the Philadelphia 76ers), Rochester Royals (now the Sacramento Kings), Minneapolis Lakers (now the Los Angeles Lakers), and Tri-Cities BlackHawks (now the Atlanta Hawks), all of whom are currently playing in the NBA, had joined.
After World War II, the fledgling Basketball Association of America was established by arena owners in large cities to try to capture the popularity of the NBL teams from the smaller communities. This attempt failed miserably as 13 of the 16 BAA teams folded. Undaunted, the remaining BAA teams, the Philadelphia Warriors, Boston Celtics, and New York Knicks convinced the top NBL teams to join with them and they formed the NBA. Thus, the early NBA was composed mostly of teams brought over from the NBL and three BAA teams.
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