NBA – Dominating the world basketball league without apology

Whenever the mind is to think about basketball, one sure thing that will come to mind is the famous NBA. Also referred to as the National Basketball Association, NBA is presently the most popular basketball tournament in the world, featuring the best and most popular basketball athletes. In the U.S and Canada, the NBA forms the most famous basketball league. If you will also like to consider players’ competition, notoriety and salary, NBA is a world leader in the niche. However, the modern NBA evolved from a lot of done over several years in order to bring about the present level of development. Let’s examine some of the details. The NBA was initially referred to as the Basketball Association of America (BAA) which came alive in 1946. This was an association established to coalesce the efforts the continent’s top teams in order to make the sport more popular. In its year of establishment, the first ever live basketball game staged by the association was between the Toronto Huskies and the New York Knickerbockers. However, there was a change in nomenclature when the BAA merged, in 1949, with the National Basketball League, which led to currently known National Basketball Association. This was followed, during the succeeding years, by addition of teams and expansion of the popularity of NBA which paraded to players that can feature indomitably in the world basketball championship. However, these long years of effort was threatened when the American Basketball Association (ABA) surfaced in 1967, which set up stern competition with NBA after acquiring four of the NBA’s well-known referees and the top scorer for the NBA championship as at that time, Rick Berry. Meanwhile, in order to check the threat posed by ABA, the NBA started a massive and rapid expansion. This led to the size of NBA being doubled in a move to win the heart of more cities and top players; growing from a total of nine teams to eighteen between 1966 and 1974. As the duel between the two bodies became unbearable for the nation, the two (ABA and NBA) were merged in 1976 with the NBA accepting four teams (The Indiana Pacers, The Denver Nuggets, The San Antonio Spurs and the New York Nets) from the ABA in the succeeding season. Following the merger, NBA started witnessing greater popularity by parading several popular stars in the championnat monde basket (world basketball championship). This evolved into the modern NBA with many legendary players joining its basketball league from other continents. As at present, the NBA league is made up of 29 teams originating from the USA and a Canadian Team. These teams are separated into the Eastern and Western Conferences, with each conference splitted into three divisions. Without doubt, the journey to its present state was a long and tedious one for NBA and it was a hard earned popularity through the intense work of the members to establish it as a foremost ligue basket (basketball league) that the world has ever seen.