Two Historical Basketball Games

    Today we are looking at two historical Basketball games, thus the tilte of this blog. We start on March 2, 1951 and the NBA's first all-star game. The game was played at Boston Garden. The East won by score of 111-94. The Eastern Conference team was coached by Joe Lapchick of the Knicks and the Western Conference was coached by John Kundla of the Lakers. The East was led by Ed Macualey of the Celtics who had a game high 20 points and Joe Fulks of the Warriors who had 19 points. Macualey won the Game MVP award.

   Scoring 20 points in an all-star game is a great accomplishment, but how about scoring 100 points in a regular season game. March 2, 1961 is a date special to many NBA fans still today. The famous game was played in Hershey, Pennsylvania between the Philadelphia Warriors and the New York Knicks. The Knicks score of 147 was no match for the Warriors led by the great Hall of Famer Wilt Chamberlain. The Warriors outscored the Knicks 90-79. Chamberlain scored 59 of the 90 points, he scored 28 of his 100 points in the fourth quarter. He also scored 28 points at the free throw line. The evening was a truly great night for one of the best players ever to play the game. Wilts teammates combined to score a mere 69 points in the 169-147 victory.

    The answer to todays trivias question is two. On June 11, 1938 Johnny Vander Meer of the Cincinnati Reds pitched a no-hitter over the Boston Braves. The following day Tom Finger of the Corpus Christi Spudders pitched an 11 inning no-hitter over the Harlingen Hubs in the Class "D" Texas Valley League. The next day, Clare Bertram of the Moline Plowboys pitched a 7 inning no-hitter over the Waterloo Red Hawks. Two days later Vander Meer pitched his historic second consecutive no-hitter this time in the first night game at Ebbets Field against the Dodgers. There would not be another no-hitter in professional baseball for a full month.  

  Todays trivia question is who was the first commissioner of the North American Soccer League when the league was founded by merger of the National Professional Soccer League and the United Soccer Association? The answer in tomorrows daily blog about a record setting Hockey game.