80 years ago: The Knicks beat the Toronto Huskies 68-66 in the NBA’s first game, won at the free-throw line

Eighty years ago on Sunday, on Friday, November 1, 1946, the New York Knickerbockers beat the Toronto Huskies 68-66 at Maple Leaf Gardens in the first game ever played by the Basketball Association of America, the league that became the NBA three years later.

A crowd of 7,090 came to the hockey arena on Carlton Street for the opener. Tickets ran from 75 cents to $2.50, and the Huskies tried a promotion of their own: anyone taller than their 6-foot-8 center George Nostrand got in free. Ossie Schectman, a guard who had come to New York from the Philadelphia Sphas, scored the first basket in league history and finished with 11 points.

Decided at the free-throw line

The box score explains how close it was. Toronto actually made more field goals, 25 to New York’s 24, but the Knicks went 20-for-26 from the line while the Huskies made only 16 of 29. Those 13 missed free throws were the margin, and then some.

Leo Gottlieb led New York with 14 points on six baskets. Schectman added 11, and Stan Stutz scored nine while going 5-for-5 at the line. Eleven Knicks played and ten of them scored.

For Toronto, player-coach Ed Sadowski had the game-high 18 points on eight field goals, but he made just 2 of 6 free throws and fouled out with six personals. Nostrand, the man fans had to out-measure for a free seat, scored 16 and went 2-for-7 at the line. Both teams spent the night in foul trouble: New York was called for 23 fouls, Toronto for 25, and five players finished with at least five.

Why it mattered

The BAA began with 11 teams, most of them in big-city arenas, and Toronto gave it a Canadian home from the first night. In 1949 it merged with the National Basketball League and took the NBA name, and the league counts that night in Toronto as its first game. Of the original 11 clubs, only the Knicks and the Boston Celtics still play in the cities where they started.

What came next

The two teams went in opposite directions. The Knicks finished 32-27, third in the Eastern Division, and have never left. The Philadelphia Warriors won the first title.

The Huskies finished 22-38, last in the East, and went through four coaches: Sadowski went 3-9 to start, and Red Rolfe, at 17-27, finished the season. The 7,090 from opening night turned out to be the high point; paid attendance averaged about 2,100 a game, and the owners lost an estimated $100,000 or more. The franchise folded on July 27, 1947, and Toronto waited until 1995-96, when the Toronto Raptors arrived, to get an NBA team back.

Schectman played one season with New York, 54 games, before moving on to the Paterson Crescents. He died in 2013 at 94, still credited with the league’s first basket. Eighty years on, the New York Knicks can still say they won the first game in NBA history, by two points, at the free-throw line.