BAA Draft năm 1948

The 1948 BAA draft was the second annual draft of the Basketball Association of America (BAA), which later merged with the National Basketball League (NBL) to become the National Basketball Association (NBA). The draft was held on May 10, 1948, before the 1948–49 season. In this draft, eight BAA teams along with four teams who moved from the NBL, took turns selecting amateur U.S. college basketball players. Originally, this BAA draft was meant to be a joint draft venture with the NBL similar to what had meant to occur in the BAA's inaugural league draft (as well as what the National Football League would later do in the late 1960s with the American Football League). However, on May 9, the day before the draft was meant to begin for both leagues, the Tri-Cities Blackhawks (who were a part of the NBL at the time) would sign consensus All-American prospect and NCAA scoring champion Murray Wier from the University of Iowa, which caused BAA commissioner Maurice Podoloff to object to the Blackhawks' early signing attempt and endangered what was already a strenuously held truce between the two leagues. Before the draft officially began on May 10, the Minneapolis Lakers, Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, and Indianapolis Kautskys announced they were leaving the NBL for the BAA (albeit with the Fort Wayne team officially dropping the "Zollner" part of the Pistons name and the Indianapolis team renaming the Kautskys to the Indianapolis Jets in order for both of them to be admitted in since the BAA did not allow for teams to promote local businesses as team names); the desertion of those four NBL teams led to the planned joint draft to be withdrawn on the NBL's end and subsequently led to the NBL breaking off all relations with the BAA at the time. As such, each league would conduct their own draft instead, with the BAA officially selecting 113 collegiate players and the NBL being slated to have chosen 125 total collegiate players themselves.