[URBAN NOTE] "Huskies and Hoops": Torontoist on Toronto's first basketball team

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist reposted a 2010 essay by Jamie Bradburn looking at how Toronto very briefly had its own basketball team just after the Second World War.

Given that basketball was invented by a native of the Great White North, perhaps the fates were at work when the first game of the league that would become the National Basketball Association was played in Toronto on November 1, 1946. That distinction would be one of the few highlights of the short existence of the Toronto Huskies. Poor personnel decisions, a problematic star attraction, and lousy gate receipts all proceeded to sink big-time basketball before it could establish itself in Toronto.

Toronto seemed like an odd choice to set up a pro franchise. While amateur games were found in city schoolyards, the passion and infrastructure for college hoops was nowhere near the growing popularity the sport saw in the United States. What Toronto possessed was a large arena, Maple Leaf Gardens, which belonged to the Arena Managers Association of America (AMAA). The association, which included all NHL rinks except the Montreal Forum and a healthy chunk of venues for American Hockey League teams, was approached by promoters looking for suitable arenas to launch a basketball league that would cover more large cities than existing pro leagues. While both the American Basketball League and the National Basketball League saw their business perk up after World War II, their powerhouse franchises were located in metropolises like Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It was hoped that the Basketball Association of America (BAA) would draw crowds on nights where the usual hockey tenants were off the ice.

For a star attraction, the Huskies signed “Big” Ed Sadowski to the fattest contract in the league—$10,000. Sadowski had been a collegiate star for Seton Hall nearly a decade earlier and, if the choice had been up to him, he would have preferred to play near his alma mater and home in New Jersey for the New York Knicks after a few seasons in the Midwest in the NBL. When Knicks coach Neil Cohalan decided to go with a young squad, Sadowski pinned his hopes on receiving a call from the Boston Celtics, where his college coach Honey Russell was in charge. The phone never rang, so he settled for Toronto’s offer, which also included coaching duties. According to Charley Rosen’s chronicle of the first season of the BAA, The First Tip-Off, Sadowski figured coaching would be a breeze: “All he had to do was make substitutions, tell everyone to pass him the ball, and chew their asses whenever they lost.”

Huskies business director Lew Hayman gave Sadowski free reign over personnel decisions, which led the playing coach to recruit a lineup consisting mostly of Seton Hall alumni who lived near him. He was obliged to sign some Canadian talent to keep local fans happy, so six players were given tryouts to compete for two spots. The winners were two players from Windsor, Hank Biasatti (a star at Assumption University, the forerunner to the University of Windsor) and Gino Sovran (who had played sparingly for the University of Detroit).