Vintage Basketball Collectors - What's new (ummm ahh, I mean old)?

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For the brave few that delve into early basketball, have you found anything new (old) to add to your collection? I'm still learning about the early years of basketball and would enjoy hearing what some of you advanced collectors have to share.

Recently, I picked up an interesting group of three professional basketball scorebooks covering 1935 - 1940. Through them, and some limited research, I've discovered a lot about the early professional teams/players/leagues.

These scorebooks were the Indianapolis Kautsky's team scorebooks. John Wooden was their big star in the early years. They cover the period of the Midwest Basketball Conference and the beginning of the NBL (National Basketball League, which became the NBA).

Most of the teams of this era were backed by business owners and companies. Frank Kautsky was a store owner and one of the two founders of the NBL/NBA. They played league teams from around the midwest as well as the big barnstorming teams from the east; Harlem Renaissance/Harlem Rens/New York Rens (an all black team - they were one of the greatest teams of all time and were elected as a team into the Hall of Fame), Philadelphia SPHA's (South Philadelphia Hebrew Association - MANY of the early basketball stars were Jewish) and the Original Celtics.

There are over 100 games scored in these scorebooks and they include games against all of these teams as well as league games (one of the league teams, Buffalo, had a black player, Hank Williams, which made Buffalo one of the earliest integrated professional teams) and other non-league games (including the all-black Chicago Crusaders and also the Philadelphia Commanders).

A few other tidbits that I learned while going through the scorebooks - Wooden had an older brother that played with him for awhile. He shows up in the scorebook as "M Wooden" and also as "C Wooden" (his nickname was "Cat"). The scorebooks also cover part of the period that Wooden set the professional consecutive free throw record of 134 in a row. Two of the Harlem Ren's players were also Negro League baseball stars - Bill Yancey and Clarence "Fats" Jenkins. Another team that played the Kautsky's was the Hammond Ciesar team with baseball Hall of Famer Lou Boudreau (he was a basketball All-American).


Below are a few pics from one of the three scorebooks.

Rob M.

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