Sunday · November 15, 2026
Get the app
Edited daily
American history, reported as it happened
Made for the 250th
The events of August 3 · Read the full edition → · More from August 3 →
19491776 Club

Two rival leagues sign off on a merger: the NBA is born

Seventeen teams, from Madison Square Garden to small-town armories, now play under one name.

Three years after hockey-arena owners started the Basketball Association of America, professional basketball was still split between two struggling leagues. The BAA played in big-city arenas; the smaller-market National Basketball League ran on business-owned teams and shorter, 40-minute games, compared to the BAA's 48-minute contests. On August 3, 1949, at a meeting in the Empire State Building, the two leagues finalized their merger into the National Basketball Association, combining ten BAA clubs with seven NBL survivors. The new NBA counted 17 teams, in cities ranging from New York to Sheboygan…

1776 Club

This story is held for members.

Members read every story of the day — and tomorrow's, and the next.

Join the 1776 Club
$17.76 your first year · then $39.99/yr · cancel anytime
More from August 3
1936

Owens takes 100-meter gold in Hitler's stadium, 10.3 seconds

The first of four gold medals, run in the stadium Hitler built to prove Aryan supremacy.
1923

A father administers the presidential oath by lamplight in a Vermont farmhouse

Word of Harding's death reaches Plymouth Notch after midnight, and there is no federal judge for miles.
1948

Chambers names Hiss a communist under oath before Congress

A Time magazine editor tells the House Un-American Activities Committee that a former State Department official once ran with a Soviet spy ring.
19581776 Club
Ninety-six hours under the ice and 1,590 nautical miles later, the submarine surfaces northeast of Greenland.
Read this as a member →
Read the full August 3 edition →Everything that happened on August 3 →
More from Cold War America
1989

A 6.9 quake hits the Bay Area as the World Series is about to start on live national TV

Light rush-hour traffic, cleared early for the game, kept the Nimitz Freeway collapse from killing far more.
1948

Truman stands on Union Square to honor three presidents North Carolina gave the nation

A sitting president stood before bronze and granite to mark where Jackson, Johnson and Polk were born.
1950

Pyongyang falls to UN troops; by nightfall, China's army is already crossing the border

Church bells rang over the North Korean capital hours before Beijing's soldiers began wading the Yalu.
1973

Two Justice Department chiefs quit in one night rather than fire the Watergate prosecutor

Nixon finally finds a third official willing to do it: Solicitor General Robert Bork.
The Daily Record · free by email

Tomorrow's edition in your inbox — one featured story, one quote, and today's flag status. Free, every morning.

The full experience

Read every story, narrated, in the app.

Take this story with you.

The complete daily edition, the deep-cut narration, and a library that's yours — the 1776 Club lives in the app.

Your membership comes with you — every event, narrated, with flag alerts, CarPlay, and your saved library.

Download on the App Store