Indiana’s deep and rich history with basketball isn’t just limited to the high school and college ranks.
In fact, Fort Wayne has a case to make as the birthplace of the modern NBA, in a modest home on the near southeast side at 2920 Alexander St.
In the Midwest, pro basketball teams were located in smaller towns and cities and connected to local industries, which recruited athletic talent to play for them. The Indianapolis Kautskys (named after a local grocer) and the Anderson (Duffy) Packers were two, along with the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, who came to life in 1941.
Even before then, Fred Zollner’s company fielded one of the best softball teams in the nation, and he was just as enthusiastic with his basketball team. The Pistons often flew by air on the company plane (The Flying Z), which was highly unusual at the time. They played their home games at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, but would occasionally play them in Miami, Florida, as Zollner had a home there.
The Pistons made the National Basketball League finals their first two seasons and then won consecutive titles over Sheboygan (Wisc.) in 1944-45.
By late 1940, there were two pro leagues: the older NBL, which Fort Wayne was a part of, and the upstart Basketball Association of America. Just like when the NBA and ABA and NFL and AFL co-existed in the 1960s and ’70s, the leagues battled for the best players.
According to research done by the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, the NBL had the better players, but BAA the bigger East Coast markets. In 1948, BAA President Maurice Podoloff and a member of the NBL board of directors came to Ft. Wayne to meet with Pistons’ business manager a Carl Bennett in his home on Alexander.
The next day, Podoloff and Bennett met Zollner at his Zollner Pistons plant office and came up with a plan to take the eight strongest BAA teams and join them with the four strongest NBL teams.
An official announcement was made in Chicago in May. The NBA came to life in August of 1949.
The Pistons (‘Zollner’ was dropped in 1948) won the first of three straight division titles and made two consecutive NBA Finals appearances in 1955 and 1956. The Pistons’ three home games in the finals of the ’55 series had to be played in Indianapolis at the State Fairgrounds because Allen Memorial had previously been booked for a bowling tournament.
The Pistons hosted the 1953 NBA All-Star Game at Memorial Coliseum and drew over 10,000 fans, then a record for the league.
But the NBA was growing in popularity, and the Pistons needed to as well.
Back in the 1950s, the Boston Celtics would travel by New York Central train to Fort Wayne – except the tracks went well north of town. The team would get off in the middle of a cornfield, according to one published tale told by Hall of Famer Tommy Heinsohn, walk into Waterloo and “stand in front of the Green Parrot Inn and thumb a ride from some high school kid and give him $10 to take you to Fort Wayne.”
So where to move?
Many of the pistons that Zollner’s company made went to Detroit, just 150 miles from Fort Wayne. The nickname fit, too. That said, four pro teams had tried and failed in Detroit before Zollner’s Pistons arrived for the 1957-58 season.
But this time, they stuck, making the playoffs every year from 1957-63.
The first groups led by stars Gene Shue, Walter Dukes, Dick McGuire and George Yardley made the conference finals in ’58, falling to the St. Louis Hawks (who once upon a time had played in Sheboygan). Indiana grad Archie Dees played for Detroit in 1959-61.
But before the departure, the Pistons left a lasting legacy, having a hand in the creation of the NBA’s 24-second shot clock. It came after the criticism in the style play at the time that came to a head when the Pistons played George Mikan and the Minneapolis Lakers to the lowest scoring game in league history, a 19-18 win in 1950.
Zollner kept ownership of the Pistons until selling them in 1974.
NOTE: This story is part of a special “America 250” project on the history of Indiana high school basketball by journalists within USA Today Co. at the South Bend Tribune, Journal & Courier (Lafayette), The Star Press (Muncie), The Herald-Times (Bloomington) and The Courier & Press (Evansville). All stories will run on those respective sites between July 6-17, with select stories in printed copies of the paper as well.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Legacy of Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons still felt in today’s NBA
Reporting by Jim Gordillo, The Herald-Times / The Herald-Times
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jim Gordillo, The Herald-Times | USA TODAY Network
