Negaunee is the smallest American city ever to host a regular season NBA game

In January 1952 Negaunee business leaders wanted to hold a fundraiser for the UP Football High School All-Star game. Since Lakeview Gym had just been opened, it was decided to bring in two NBA teams.

This was not an uncommon practice in the early days of the league; before television, road shows were one of the best ways to introduce people to the professional version of the game.

So, arrangements were made to have the Milwaukee Hawks take on the Baltimore Bullets a few weeks later on January 14. The two teams were to charter a plane from Milwaukee, fly up to Negaunee, and then battle before what organizers hoped would be a sell-out crowd.

A Mining Journal article from Jan. 17, 1952, page 19 is pictured. (Photo courtesy of the Marquette Regional History Center)

Leading up to the game the Mining Journal ran stories featuring the teams and their players, focusing their attention on two players in particular. One was Don Otten, a center for Milwaukee, who had just set a record that still stands today.

He’s the only player in NBA history to have eight fouls in a game. How can a player have eight fouls when six gets a player kicked out of a game? Well, an obscure NBA rule says that if a team has no more players on the beach, a player on the court cannot foul out.

That’s why Don Otten still holds the record for the most fouls-eight-in an NBA game.

The other player given attention was Baltimore forward Don Barksdale. Barksdale was a trendsetter-one of the first African American players in the NBA, he was also the first African American NCAA All-American, and the first African American Olympic basketball gold medal winner for the US. While an injury cut his professional career short, he eventually ended up in the National Basketball Hall of Fame.

Things did not totally go to plan for the game organizers. Ticket sales lagged a little; and as game day approached so did a severe winter storm.

The game was postponed until January 16, and because of the lingering bad weather the teams couldn’t fly up. They took a bus instead, made it to Negaunee, and played in the rescheduled game, which was won by Milwaukee, 77-71.

The teams then hopped back on their bus and took off for Moline, Illinois, where they were scheduled to play again the next night. However, an hour or so out of Negaunee, their bus slid off the icy road, and since it would take a while for a tow truck to arrive and pull them out, the players for both teams hopped out, physically pushed the bus out of the snow and back on the road and continued on their way.

That incident was emblematic of the year as a whole for both teams. Milwaukee finished 17 & 49, while Baltimore wasn’t much better at 20 & 46. In fact, they were the only two teams in the NBA NOT to make the playoffs that season.

The Hawks, who had just moved to Milwaukee, soon moved again to Atlanta, where they’re still playing.

The Bullets folded a few seasons after their game in Negaunee, to be reborn when the NBA expanded in the late 60s. That version of the Bullets soon moved to the nation’s capital, where they still play today as the Washington Wizards.

Because of the storm and the rescheduling necessitated by it, organizers actually lost money on the event, which meant there was not a repeat of the game the next year, as some of them had hoped.

But despite all of the problems that occurred before, during, and after the tilt, that one event over 70 years ago still gives Negaunee the honor of being the smallest town in the US to have ever hosted a regular season NBA game.