1946–47 BAA season

• Before the inaugural BAA season began, the newly-created league had intended for 13 teams to join in the league with the original eleven that had been created alongside planned teams being added in Buffalo and Indianapolis. However, both of those teams had ultimately dropped out of entry before entering the BAA's inaugural season properly, as while Buffalo's entry was supposedly never truly considered a serious one by the representatives of that team at the time (likely due in part to them recognizing that they would also have to compete against a newly-created National Basketball League team in the Buffalo Bisons at the time), Indianapolis' withdrawal was brought up to the BAA due to serious concerns about them competing against three different professional basketball teams with the rivaling National Basketball League that all were in the state of Indiana with the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, the Indianapolis Kautskys, and the newly-added Anderson Duffey Packers combined with venue issues at hand.^[3][4] (Supposedly, the Indianapolis squad would end up moving their operations to Detroit to become the Detroit Falcons, though that isn't 100% confirmed information.^[5])
• On November 1, 1946, in the inaugural game of the new league, the New York Knicks beat the Toronto Huskies 68–66 in front of 7,090 spectators at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. Ossie Schectman scored the opening basket for the New York Knicks against Toronto. In 1949, the BAA helped create the National Basketball Association by merger, and Schectman's shot may be considered the first basket in NBA history.^[6][7][8] The NBA recognizes the three BAA seasons as part of its own history, sometimes without comment.^[2]
• On November 2, the Detroit Falcons would lose their regular season debut at home through a 50–33 defeat to the Washington Capitols. The 33 points scored that night would not only be the lowest amount of points scored in a BAA/NBA regular season debut game (with the only other team to score under 40 points at all this season ironically being the Washington Capitols on January 16, 1947 against the Boston Celtics), but it also was the league's record for the lowest amount of points scored in a single game until November 22, 1950 with a 19–18 final score for an NBA match.^[9][10]
• On November 5, the first recorded instance of a broken backboard would occur before the inaugural home game between the Chicago Stags and the Boston Celtics at the Boston Arena began due to Chuck Connors damaging their backboard that hosted the basketball hoop from a faraway practice shot that he attempted to do (and not a slam dunk since most players from this era were not athletic enough to even attempt such a feat, never mind it not even being considered a legal move for basketball at the time), with the tenants taking an extra hour to get a spare basketball hoop and backboard from the nearby Boston Garden due to it hosting a rodeo show at the time.^[11][12] That match would end with the Stags winning with a 57–55 final score.
• On November 11, the New York Knicks would host their first home game of the season against the Chicago Stags. While the game would go into overtime, the Knicks would lose to the Stags in a messy 78–68 defeat by the overtime period. Interestingly, unbeknownst to everyone in the Madison Square Garden that night, one of the attendees would later become an infamous figure in early basketball history, as future NBA All-Star, point-shaver, and eventual gangster Jack Molinas would attend that game with some of his friends as a part of the paying audience that night.^[13]
• On December 11, the BAA decided to experiment with having a 60-minute game played with 15-minute quarters played in a match between the Cleveland Rebels and the Chicago Stags, with the foul limit being expanded from five to six fouls for this match.^[14][15] The match ended with Chicago winning 88–79. However, the experiment of longer games would only last for two more games following that match (with the Detroit Falcons being the only other team that felt interested in the experiment alongside the Chicago Stags) before scrapping the 60 minute game experiment for good.^[16]
• On January 1, 1947, the BAA would see their first ever game where a team would score over 100 points in a match, with the St. Louis Bombers recording 103 points in a victory over the Chicago Stags. That feat would only happen nine total times throughout the season, with the Chicago Stags doing it the most times in four different match-ups and the Philadelphia Warriors being the only surviving BAA/NBA team to the present day to record any at all with two match-ups of their own.^[17]
• On January 11, after the BAA allowed for zone defenses to be used in their league, the BAA would outlaw the usage of zone defenses entirely, much to the chagrin of the Pittsburgh Ironmen and head coach Paul Birch.

There were no byes. Western and Eastern champions Chicago and Washington immediately played a long semifinal series with Washington having home-court advantage. Chicago won the sixth game in Washington one day before Philadelphia concluded its two short series with other runners-up.^[18]

Note: Prior to the 1969–70 season, league leaders in points and assists were determined by totals rather than averages.

• All-BAA First Team
  • G Max Zaslofsky, Chicago Stags
  • F Bones McKinney, Washington Capitols
  • F Joe Fulks, Philadelphia Warriors
  • C Stan Miasek, Detroit Falcons
  • F Bob Feerick, Washington Capitols
• All-BAA Second Team
  • G John Logan, St. Louis Bombers
  • G Ernie Calverley, Providence Steamrollers
  • C Chick Halbert, Chicago Stags
  • G Frankie Baumholtz, Cleveland Rebels
  • G Fred Scolari, Washington Capitols

• List of NBA regular season records
• 1946–47 NBL season, the rivaling season of what would eventually be their merging partner to form the National Basketball Association in the older National Basketball League within the U.S.A. from 1937 until 1949