When the Basketball Association of America (BAA) merged with the National Basketball League (NBL) in 1949 it was the culmination of two great basketball leagues that would give us one final and polished product; the National Basketball Association (NBA). A league, that in 1949, looked much different that the product we see today. Today we have 30 teams nestled in mega arenas in 28 cities across the United States and Canada and income in the Billions of dollars.
The BAA brought 7 teams into the NBA while the BAA brought 10. Though, two teams, the Indianapolis Jets, formally the Kautskys, and the Providence Steamrollers disbanded before the season started or the number of teams would have been 19.
The 17 team league would be a mixture of big east coast cities, small Midwest farming communities, and one lone enclave in the Rocky Mountains. From the start problems started to arise with the disparity between the former NBL teams and the BAA teams. One of the biggest was income disparity as the BAA teams had a lot more money than did the NBL teams, the one thing that the NBL teams did have an advantage over the BAA is that the NBL tended to have the bigger stars.
