1950–51 Denver Frontier Refiners / Evansville Agogans season

Originally, Denver started out the season as one of the strongest teams in the entire league, with them having an 8–0 record to start out their season with a perfect November in the NPBL (which would be in stark contrast to their only seasons in the NBL and NBA back when they played as the Denver Nuggets). However, one of their early wins on November 14, 1950, against the Grand Rapids Hornets in Casper, Wyoming saw the Hornets' player-coach of the time, 18-year veteran guard Bobby McDermott from Flushing High School, get ejected from the game alongside three other players due to a controversial call that McDermott objected to, which later led to McDermott ripping out the locker doors in the Grand Rapids team's locker room and swearing up a storm there (claiming the team was "robbed" of the victory that day), which subsequently led to McDermott getting banned from the league (and subsequently retiring from both playing and coaching professional basketball for good altogether) for the rest of the season three days later after the Hornets' game against the St. Paul Lights.^[4][5][2] This bad behavior by McDermott would later foreshadow further issues within the NPBL beyond just trying to woo new places to approve of getting teams to join their fletching league. By December 1950, two of the NPBL's teams in the St. Paul Lights (who had a winning record at the time) and Grand Rapids Hornets would fold operations entirely for six teams remaining in the league, with the Frontier Refiners still leading the Western Division at the time through a 14–7 record. However, a 1–6 start for January 1951 combined with the continued struggles of dealing with greater traveling problems of going through greater lengths than most other teams at a time where airplane travel was less common than train travel was and Bud Robineau's Frontier Refining Company withdrawing their sponsorship for the team after the game where Milt Schoon scored a record-high 64 points in a game eventually led to the Denver Frontier Refiners joining the Kansas City Hi-Spots as the other teams to fold operations (despite Denver having a winning roster at 18–16, similar to the St. Paul Lights having a winning record at 12–8, even after letting the Sheboygan Red Skins score a season-high 157 points against them in Denver's penultimate game), leaving the NPBL with only four teams left at the time before Bill Butterfield bought the team and moved their operations to Evansville, Indiana to become the Evansville Agogans for what would be the rest of their season going forward.

Unlike the Denver squad, however, Evansville's team would end up being a rather poorly constructed squad (despite them acquiring Carlisle Towery onto their roster), which led to the Agogans getting a winless 0–6 record (losing a home and road game against each one of the Anderson Packers, Sheboygan Red Skins, and Waterloo Hawks) for their NPBL season (though weirdly getting an exhibition victory against the world famous Harlem Globetrotters), which led to the combined squad getting an official 18–22 record before they technically folded operations alongside the Louisville Alumnites by the end the season, which technically left the NPBL with three (or two?) competitive teams left in their entire league, which ultimately led to the Sheboygan Red Skins and Waterloo Hawks cancelling the NPBL Playoffs (which would have just been a championship round) and just declaring both of themselves co-champions of the NPBL (with Ed Dahler of the Denver Frontier Refiners being named a member of the All-NPBL Second Team as well^[2]) for this season instead due to their records by the end of the season topping everyone else, regardless of survival status (Interestingly, the Waterloo Courier had the official final record for the Evansville Agogans as 9–21 (with the Denver Frontier Refiners having a 14–15 record during their time playing in the NPBL there), while The Sheboygan Press listed the final record for the Evansville Agogans as 6–16 while ignoring the Denver Frontier Refiners entirely for their final record that season.^[6]). While the Sheboygan Red Skins would continue to play one final season as an independent team following failed discussions of creating a new rivaling professional basketball league with the Waterloo Hawks to compete against the NBA called the Western Professional League,^[7] none of the other remaining teams that survived this season would continue to exist for another season going forward (though it is suggested that the Agogans did try to survive as an independent team for at least one more season before folding themselves^[8]). (Interestingly, it was also suggested that the original Denver Nuggets would be revived within the Amateur Athletic Union for the 1951–52 season, though similar to the Sheboygan Red Skins (and presumably the Evansville Agogans as well), that Nuggets team would fold operations by the end of that season as well.^[1])

Both Denver and Evansville would have vastly different histories for professional basketball teams following this season's conclusion. For Evansville, they would never get themselves another major league professional basketball team ever again after this season ended, though they would get themselves a minor league professional basketball team in the Evansville Thunder for the Continental Basketball Association by 1984 (though that team wouldn't last for long). As for Denver, they would only wait until 1967 before they got themselves a new professional basketball with the Denver Rockets for the American Basketball Association (a new rivaling professional basketball league to compete against the NBA), who named themselves the Rockets after previous ownership for the team (who intended to name themselves the Denver Larks (or Denver Lark Buntings) at the time) were struggling to keep up with business, with new team owners that helped save the team by the start of their existence owning the Ringsby Rocket Truck Lines business, hence using it as a way to promote the business similar to the Frontier Refiners self-promoting the Frontier Refining Company at the time as well (though the Rockets had done it much more successfully for the Ringsby Rocket Truck Lines by comparison to the Frontier Refining Company). However, the Rockets would later rebrand themselves into the new (and current) Denver Nuggets franchise by 1974 due to them wanting to prepare to have the ABA merge with the NBA at the time and not wanting any issues with their team name against the Houston Rockets (who named themselves the Rockets the same season despite originally playing in San Diego instead of in Houston). The new Denver Nuggets team would still use that team name in the present day, with them being named the 2023 NBA Finals champions against the Miami Heat that year.

^[9][10][11]

Not to be confused with exhibition or other non-NPBL scheduled games that did not count towards Denver's official NPBL record for this season.^[2][12]

^[14][15][16]

Not to be confused with exhibition or other non-NPBL scheduled games that did not count towards Denver turned Evansville's official NPBL record for this season. As such, these games showcased only the NPBL scheduled games played by the Evansville Agogans instead of the Denver Frontier Refiners, though it'll include the record of both Evansville and the combined records of Denver and Evansville together.^[2][17]

• All-NPBL Second Team – Ed Dahler^[2]