Some of these guys were just incredible talents who are now, sadly, somewhat overlooked.
Today, the NBA is global and we see these guys from all over the world, well, all over the world. We watch. The Chinese watch. Europe watches.
Everyone watches the NBA.
It wasn’t always like that of course. For many years, the NBA was an acquired taste. It wasn’t as flashy as it is now and baseball and football dominated the public’s attention. In the north, hockey was considerably more popular too.
Basketball was on TV, but not very much. In the 1960’s, there was minimal TV for the NBA. You’d have to look this up, but it was probably only one game on Sunday’s if that.
Cable didn't get involved until 1979 and the world we see now, where you get wall-to-wall coverage, is pretty recent.
But just because TV wasn’t there every step of the way doesn’t mean that great basketball wasn’t played back in the day. It certainly was.
This video talks about some great but lesser known stars of the 1960’s like Walt Bellamy, Nate Thurmond and Hal Greer.
There’s a back-handed reference to JJ Redick’s infamous plumber comment and the guy has a point. Just because it was a long time ago and there’s not a ton of video evidence of these great players doesn’t mean they weren’t great. They were, and they laid the groundwork for what the NBA would become.
