1960s NBA. Look at this backboard.

[L.Kizzle]

I've seen my fair share of NBA photos and videos from back in the day. But this backboard from this Bullets-Pistons game is a first. This looks like the hoop they used for the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when Will was on the high school team. The backboard just looks so tiny. Is this even an NBA arena they're at?
Number 8 is Walt Bellamy.


https://media.gettyimages.com/id/91959912/photo/baltimore-bullets-walt-bellamy.jpg?s=2048x2048&w=gi&k=20&c=wzSVxAb3ivx4L7477PAQwWGMkeZg0iXiZD3z8TTbXU8=

https://media.gettyimages.com/id/91959957/photo/baltimore-bullets-walt-bellamy.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=-nhj93B4iQFmgc_H0tmkhqsX9xQKO8YmElD7VhI4tVs=

[Kblaze8855]

It reminds me of an interview I saw with an old player talking about their shooting numbers and how nobody understands the conditions they played under. How you might get to a city only to find out the rodeo extended for another day because of strong sales now you gotta play at a local high school that isn’t quite regulation. Bent rim or something. They might have the old hand stitched balls that were a little warped.

Even the “good” arenas had no heat or air much of the time and dead spots or wet floor from uninsulated hockey ice under the floor. Nothing between it. Just wood laid on top of ice so it was cold as **** and the ball would shrink over the course of the game. Different grip panels on different balls. They didn’t mandate consistent balls or equipment for a long time. Part of the reason it was so important back then to switch ends at halftime. So both teams have to use the ****ed up rim.

The backboard might be wood at one place then metal another….glass at another. One rim higher or lower than it should be. You gotta give them a bit of a pass for what we consider poor shooting.

As finely tuned as these guys are? They would freak out facing any of those issues.

[Im Still Ballin]

These guys look to have solid muscle tone.

[Jasper]

basically from high school to pro's same equipment.

Late 60's it started changing... and early 70's the big show occurred that high lighted the pro's .
Lights would deem and the court would pop on.

Right now , I can not stand these arenas with their blaring loud speakers. :facepalm
(I believe they were designed for deaf people)

[Jasper]

These guys look to have solid muscle tone.

never forget 1st game I saw in Milwaukee 1970 , I was shocked at looking at their legs - they all looked like body builders.
(This is back when weight rooms were not an in thing... but these guys probably of rode bikes and did tons of wind sprints)

[L.Kizzle]

It reminds me of an interview I saw with an old player talking about their shooting numbers and how nobody understands the conditions they played under. How you might get to a city only to find out the rodeo extended for another day because of strong sales now you gotta play at a local high school that isn’t quite regulation. Bent rim or something. They might have the old hand stitched balls that were a little warped.

Even the “good” arenas had no heat or air much of the time and dead spots or wet floor from uninsulated hockey ice under the floor. Nothing between it. Just wood laid on top of ice so it was cold as **** and the ball would shrink over the course of the game. Different grip panels on different balls. They didn’t mandate consistent balls or equipment for a long time. Part of the reason it was so important back then to switch ends at halftime. So both teams have to use the ****ed up rim.

The backboard might be wood at one place then metal another….glass at another. One rim higher or lower than it should be. You gotta give them a bit of a pass for what we consider poor shooting.

As finely tuned as these guys are? They would freak out facing any of those issues.
Not to mention the traveling conditions. I think the majority took trains. Some like the Kings at one time had 6 different home Arenas (that was per season. Kansas City-Omaha Kings I think.)
They played double headers at places their opponents weren't even at. Imagine sharing a bill with the Harlem Globetrotters or at Madison Square Garden before the Knicks play.

[jlip]

It reminds me of an interview I saw with an old player talking about their shooting numbers and how nobody understands the conditions they played under. How you might get to a city only to find out the rodeo extended for another day because of strong sales now you gotta play at a local high school that isn’t quite regulation. Bent rim or something. They might have the old hand stitched balls that were a little warped.

Even the “good” arenas had no heat or air much of the time and dead spots or wet floor from uninsulated hockey ice under the floor. Nothing between it. Just wood laid on top of ice so it was cold as **** and the ball would shrink over the course of the game. Different grip panels on different balls. They didn’t mandate consistent balls or equipment for a long time. Part of the reason it was so important back then to switch ends at halftime. So both teams have to use the ****ed up rim.

The backboard might be wood at one place then metal another….glass at another. One rim higher or lower than it should be. You gotta give them a bit of a pass for what we consider poor shooting.

As finely tuned as these guys are? They would freak out facing any of those issues.

I think Oscar Robertson talked about this very thing at Lent in his autobiography.

[Patrick Chewing]

Another cool thing about that photo is I don't think vert has changed throughout the years. While today's NBA players are undoubtedly more athletic what with technology and training, I don't see today's average NBA player jumping any higher than some of these guys from the 50's and 60's.

[Im Still Ballin]

Another cool thing about that photo is I don't think vert has changed throughout the years. While today's NBA players are undoubtedly more athletic what with technology and training, I don't see today's average NBA player jumping any higher than some of these guys from the 50's and 60's.

Those old-school guys were way more physically active in their everyday lives; from the day that they were born, really. Modern humans - athletes included - have grown up in a more sedentary time. I wonder if this has had an effect on skeletal robustness. Maybe it might help explain the lack of durability in today's players.

[Xiao Yao You]

Those old-school guys were way more physically active in their everyday lives; from the day that they were born, really. Modern humans - athletes included - have grown up in a more sedentary time. I wonder if this has had an effect on skeletal robustness. Maybe it might help explain the lack of durability in today's players.

don't think players are any less durable. They used to play through injuries that they don't play through now

[Im Still Ballin]

don't think players are any less durable. They used to play through injuries that they don't play through now

Yeah, I don't know. It's one thing to work out for a sport and another thing to be physically active out of necessity or employment. There's something I see time and time again in sports: The Farm Factor. Those that grow up on a farm often become strong, hearty, and robust. Andre The Giant, Nikola Jokic, and Brock Lesnar all grew up on farms.


[Ancient people's] incredible athleticism was not genetic, but ontogenetic. Ontogeny is the process by which an organism grows by interaction with its environment. While genes might fix the limits of its potential development, whether or not it reaches them is governed by the environmental stresses placed upon it. Effectively, therefore, those historic and prehistoric men were superb athletes because of the working toughness they had developed over harsh and demanding lives.


Those scientific studies documenting bone thickening in modern tennis players, for example, found that the greatest expansion took place between the ages of eight and fourteen.


Examples of how much working toughness historical men had compared to Homo masculinus modernus are available even closer to home.

Laborers in the rip-roaring early days of the Industrial Revolution, for example, often performed feats unthinkable today. One New Scientist correspondent reported that bridge builders in the mid-nineteenth century toiled all day with forty-pound sledge-hammers; today’s hammers weigh fourteen pounds.


English railway navvies in the 1850s were expected to shovel, by hand, twenty tons of earth daily. In the Sheffield steel mills men chained themselves in gangs of forty to drag glowing iron plates weighing twenty-five to thirty-five tons from the furnace to the “Demon Hammers” for stamping, draping themselves in wet sacking to survive the hellish heat.

Remarkably, these super-strong working men were also much smaller—at an average 5'6, around four inches shorter—than their weakling modern counterparts, who, as we have seen, now average 5'10 in height.

Again, an early start to a tough working life seems to have made the difference. Young boys employed as runners in British glass-works apparently ran between 13 and 17 miles a day, ferrying blown bottles to drying rooms. Lads with the unenviable job of “pusher-out” in a brickworks (dragging cartloads of bricks from the moulder’s table to the kiln) were thought to shift between 12 and 25 tons a day.

[L.Kizzle]

Yeah, I don't know. It's one thing to work out for a sport and another thing to be physically active out of necessity or employment. There's something I see time and time again in sports: The Farm Factor. Those that grow up on a farm often become strong, hearty, and robust. Andre The Giant, Nikola Jokic, and Brock Lesnar all grew up on farms.
Farm (and country life for that mater) is totally different from growing up in the city. Different mentality.
All of those old school players ALL, mostly grew up like that. Willis Reed grew up poor rural Louisiana. His mentality is different than players this day and age.

[Im Still Ballin]

Farm (and country life for that mater) is totally different from growing up in the city. Different mentality.
All of those old school players ALL, mostly grew up like that. Willis Reed grew up poor rural Louisiana. His mentality is different that players this day and age.

Preach. Sonny Liston and Shannon Sharpe too.


According to historical records and biographical accounts, boxer Sonny Liston did indeed have to pull a plow on his family's farm during his childhood. This was a common task assigned to children living in poverty in rural areas during that time, and it was considered a means of survival for their families.

Liston's family was extremely poor and living in a sharecropping system where they didn't own the land they worked on, but rather rented it from a landlord who would take a percentage of the crops as rent. Liston, being the eldest of seven children, was responsible for helping his family earn a living by working on the farm.

He reportedly began working at a very young age, which included plowing the fields with a mule. This experience likely played a role in shaping Liston's later life, as it instilled in him a strong sense of determination and resilience.

[L.Kizzle]

These guys look to have solid muscle tone.
Nate Thurmond is a guy they show a lot when the speak on this. But guys like Gus Johnson, Bill Bridges, Wayne Embry were huge with muscle tone as well.

[eliteballer]

It reminds me of an interview I saw with an old player talking about their shooting numbers and how nobody understands the conditions they played under. How you might get to a city only to find out the rodeo extended for another day because of strong sales now you gotta play at a local high school that isn’t quite regulation. Bent rim or something. They might have the old hand stitched balls that were a little warped.

Even the “good” arenas had no heat or air much of the time and dead spots or wet floor from uninsulated hockey ice under the floor. Nothing between it. Just wood laid on top of ice so it was cold as **** and the ball would shrink over the course of the game. Different grip panels on different balls. They didn’t mandate consistent balls or equipment for a long time. Part of the reason it was so important back then to switch ends at halftime. So both teams have to use the ****ed up rim.

The backboard might be wood at one place then metal another….glass at another. One rim higher or lower than it should be. You gotta give them a bit of a pass for what we consider poor shooting.

As finely tuned as these guys are? They would freak out facing any of those issues.

https://www.thescore.com/nba/news/942221

https://www.nba.com/news/warriors-notice-rim-at-td-garden-is-too-high-during-game-3-warmups

[eliteballer]

Look at the floor.

https://a57.foxsports.com/statics.foxsports.com/www.foxsports.com/content/uploads/2020/04/1408/814/MJ86.png?ve=1&tl=1

[ArbitraryWater]

That backboard amost makes me think that bankshots from an ange woud be harder on them.

[AlternativeAcc.]

Those old-school guys were way more physically active in their everyday lives; from the day that they were born, really. Modern humans - athletes included - have grown up in a more sedentary time. I wonder if this has had an effect on skeletal robustness. Maybe it might help explain the lack of durability in today's players.

Have you seen Mickey Mantles forearms? Willie Mays? Josh Gibson?

These guys were doing manual labor out the ass. 60 years really isn't that long ago.

Huge skill deficits in ball though. Plumbers, mechanics, and landscapers ran the NBA. But they were certainly athletic and strong

[plowking]

don't think players are any less durable. They used to play through injuries that they don't play through now

Wear and tear is a thing. Rest for athletes is huge. Guys back in the 50s-70s were active throughout their day to day activities, because there was less money in the sport. As money started to flow in, less and less stuff was acceptable for these million and multi million dollar investments to be doing outside of their job.

Less durable now? Nah, the game is quicker, more turning and stopping than ever before. A physical game is a slower game. The 90's and early 00's had more guys playing more games because they were slower. Nowadays its run and gun, you have bigger and stronger athletes now for better power production throughout a game, and it wears on the joints and muscles = more injuries. A physical game makes you sore, and high paced up and down one is what kills your body/joints/muscles.

[Im Still Ballin]

Wear and tear is a thing. Rest for athletes is huge. Guys back in the 50s-70s were active throughout their day to day activities, because there was less money in the sport. As money started to flow in, less and less stuff was acceptable for these million and multi million dollar investments to be doing outside of their job.

Less durable now? Nah, the game is quicker, more turning and stopping than ever before. A physical game is a slower game. The 90's and early 00's had more guys playing more games because they were slower. Nowadays its run and gun, you have bigger and stronger athletes now for better power production throughout a game, and it wears on the joints and muscles = more injuries. A physical game makes you sore, and high paced up and down one is what kills your body/joints/muscles.

The guys in the '60s, '70s, and '80s played at a faster pace than today's era. Those old school guys went at it like a track meet.

[AlternativeAcc.]

The guys in the '60s, '70s, and '80s played at a faster pace than today's era. Those old school guys went at it like a track meet.

In straight lines with tons of iso ball and no switching. The court wasn't spread nearly as much

Pitchers used to throw far more innings, because they had better bodies? More durable because of manual labor? Hell no, cause they didn't throw nearly as fast and didn't exert themselves like modern ones do. Similar concept. players were not more durable, they played a less exerting game

Weights have also made athletes even more explosive so athletes today generate more force, ans put more stress on ligaments and tendons. It's undeniably true

[L.Kizzle]

Another thing I notice, Ottawa in the top right corner on one of the photos. Was this game in Canada, or at a local college or high school?

[90sgoat]

It reminds me of an interview I saw with an old player talking about their shooting numbers and how nobody understands the conditions they played under. How you might get to a city only to find out the rodeo extended for another day because of strong sales now you gotta play at a local high school that isn’t quite regulation. Bent rim or something. They might have the old hand stitched balls that were a little warped.

Even the “good” arenas had no heat or air much of the time and dead spots or wet floor from uninsulated hockey ice under the floor. Nothing between it. Just wood laid on top of ice so it was cold as **** and the ball would shrink over the course of the game. Different grip panels on different balls. They didn’t mandate consistent balls or equipment for a long time. Part of the reason it was so important back then to switch ends at halftime. So both teams have to use the ****ed up rim.

The backboard might be wood at one place then metal another….glass at another. One rim higher or lower than it should be. You gotta give them a bit of a pass for what we consider poor shooting.

As finely tuned as these guys are? They would freak out facing any of those issues.

That sounds like a movie should be made about it.

I enjoyed Semi-Pro a lot, maybe Will Ferrell can make a new one and focus on the early NBA up until Wilt (take some creative freedoms).