first competive leagues (1890s 1920s)

The First Competitive Leagues.
The First competitive basketball leagues where all local leagues, usually within the larger east coast cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. On some occasions’ teams from other regions would travel to play another team. Once such occasion took place on November 7, 1896. this was the first known professional basketball game was played in Trenton New Jersey between the Trenton YMCA and the Brooklyn YMCA. The game was played at the Trenton Masonic temple, and an admission fee was charged for admittance into the game. Each player got $15 dollars except Fred Cooper who got $16 dollars, and became the first highest paid player. Trenton defeated Brooklyn 15-1 to win the first ever professional basketball game.
Two years after the first professional basketball game was played six teams for Philadelphia and New Jersey formed the National basketball league(NBL). Shortly after the NBL formed, other leagues began to form all over the Eastern United States including the Philadelphia Basketball League, Eastern League, New York State League, and the Interstate league. Most early basketball leagues never lasted more then a few weeks, the NBL itself only lasted five seasons. In 1902 the New England Basketball League got a huge boost in national exposure when it allowed an African American named Bucky Lew play in a game
1901 marked a landmark year for the game of basketball as colleges began sponsoring games. At first only a few Colleges participated including Yale, Minnesota, Dartmouth, Columbia, Chicago, Utah, and Navy. In the early days of collegiate sports most teams played less then 10 games with the lucky ones playing maybe 15 or 16. In 1901 Yale would go 10 and 4 to win the first college national championship.  The next year the University of Minnesota would go 11 and 0 to become the first undefeated team in basketball. These early games always had problems with injuries, as fouling rules where in place but a shortage of trained referees made it impossible to have good refs at every game. In the time from 1905-1910 many American activist groups were calling for the government to step in and place restrictions on the sport. In 1910 President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt urged the colleges of America to create a governing body for itself before it was too late, in the summer of 1910 they did and formed the Intercollegiate Athletic Association.
While the Colleges where just setting up the pro leagues came and went, but not all teams were in leagues. Some teams remained independent and would travel the country playing local teams for money, they were known as Barnstormers; some of these teams were the Original Celtics, the SPHA’s, the Buffalo Germans, the Trojans of New York, and two all African American teams, the New York Renaissance Five(or Rens) and the most famous of all the Barnstorming teams, and the only one still in existence today-the Harlem Globetrotters