World Professional Basketball Tournament

The World Professional Basketball Tournament was an annual invitational tournament held in Chicago from 1939 to 1948 and sponsored by the Chicago Herald American.^[1] Many teams came from the National Basketball League, but it also included the best teams from other leagues and the best independent barnstorming teams such as the New York Renaissance and Harlem Globetrotters. Games were played at various sites including Chicago Coliseum, International Amphitheater and Chicago Stadium.

The NBL champion usually won this tournament, with three exceptions: the New York Renaissance won the first WPBT in 1939,^[2] while the Harlem Globetrotters—a strongly competitive squad in those days—won the following year.^[3] In 1943, the Washington Bears (with many New York Renaissance players on their roster) won the tournament. The NBL's Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons won the most titles (three, from 1944 to 1946), while the NBL's Oshkosh All-Stars made the most finals appearances with five, winning only once (in 1942).

The last tournament was held in 1948, with the Minneapolis Lakers defeating the New York Renaissance 75–71 in the tournament final.^[1][4] The following year, The Indianapolis News attempted to hold a similar tournament,^[5] inviting the Wilkes-Barre Barons from the American Basketball League, three teams each from the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League, and one team that would remain unidentified until shortly before the seeded draw (though it was suggested the eighth team was to be the Montgomery Rebels, the regular season champions of the Southern Professional Basketball League).^[6][7] Although the National Basketball League agreed to attend, the tournament did not come to fruition after the BAA declined the invitation.^[8]

In addition to the World Professional Basketball Tournament in the spring, the Chicago Herald American also hosted what would originally be considered a companion event to the WPBT in the College All-Star Classic in the fall, though it later separated itself from the WPBT to become its own thing, with the College All-Star Classic operating from 1940 until 1954.^[9] For the first eight years of the College All-Star Classic, the winners of the WPBT (or in the case of fall 1941, the runners-up of the WPBT due to the actual champions of the event that year not having a proper home venue to play in that season) would be pitted up against the players that were considered the elite seniors of college basketball from each year (the titular College All-Stars in question) that were selected from a poll of sports writers and coaches, with the College All-Stars team being housed and fed by Northwestern University and ordinarily being coached by a Big Ten Conference head coach like Dutch Lonborg from Northwestern University, Doug Mills from the University of Illinois, or Ray Meyer from DePaul University, with the players keeping special uniforms and sweat suits made for the event alongside medallioned wrist watches as mementos for the event in question.^[10] From that period of time, it was considered a curtain raiser to begin a new professional basketball season during those periods of time.^[11] However, once the WPBT went defunct, the College All-Star Classic would instead occur with the team that won the NBA Finals as the new equivalent of the WPBT champion for those later years, as noted by the College All-Stars going up against the Minneapolis Lakers in 1949 and 1950 (though only known records are shown to go as far back as 1950).^[12]