#7 Billy Gabor, The First Jersey Retirement in NBA History (March 6, 1955)

 A casual internet search shows Bob Cousy and Easy Ed Macauley as the first two players to have their jerseys retired. However, if you dig deeper, you will discover a jersey retirement from 1955 belonging to Bullet Bill Gabor. 

Billy was forced into retirement due to symptoms of Hepatitis C. He played only a handful of games that season for the 1955 World Champion Syracuse Nats. This leads to some historical what-ifs if Billy played the full season: Do the Nats still win the title or lose to Fort Wayne? His jersey was retired due to his circumstances, so does Billy's jersey still get retired?



Here's a link to my original Reddit post in r/vintageNBA. It has since been referenced on the internet in a few articles since.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Digging Through the Archives: Unearthing Basketball History One Newspaper at a Time

If you want to know who dropped 50 in last night’s game, you’ve got ESPN, Twitter, and a dozen highlight reels at your fingertips. But what if you want to know who dropped 50 in 1957? Or who led the National Basketball League in points in 1943? Or an average of how many fans showed up for a game in 1938? Or who Leo Ferris or Bobby Cook was? Or the Waterloo Hawks, Dayton Rens or Providence Steamrollers? This blog goes beyond the NBA, to the beginnings of basketball. Where they played in a cage on stages, dance hall floors, banquet halls and cafeterias. The floors were often pieced together, using mismatched planks of wood with unforgiving dead spots. This is basketball time travel. The mission? To dig through the yellowed pages of old newspapers and media— microfilm reels, brittle clippings, dusty archives — and pull out the raw, unfiltered, sometimes misspelled, often typo-riddled, but always  real  data that built the game today. This is about squinting at 12-point type, deci...
Read more

Johnny Kerr's 844-Game Consecutive Streak

 Johnny "Red" Kerr had an incredible consecutive game streak of 844 games that  began on  October 31, 1954 , in the  Syracuse Nationals’ season opener  against the  Minneapolis Lakers  at the   Onondaga County War Memorial   in Syracuse, New York. One of Kerr's teammates this season was Paul Seymour, who plays a part later in the story. Kerr, then 22 years old and in his first NBA season, started at forward and played 17 minutes. He scored 10 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, but the Nationals lost 97-94. Notable close calls that jeopardized the streak: March 10, 1957- Kerr played the final 5 seconds of the game, grabbing a rebound to help secure a 94-92 win over the Boston Celtics. Paul Seymour was acting as player-coach that season, taking over for Al Cervi who left early in the schedule. Bob Cousy playing in his first game since Feb. 22 (9 games). Seymour kept Johnny out of the game as " Kerr does not usually do well against Russell, and Se...
Read more

Jackie Moore's Missing Game (October 31, 1954)

Image
    If you count them up on the internet, the Syracuse Nationals had 103 players suit up from 1946-1963. This figure does not include Jackie Moore, who played one game for the Nationals on October 31, 1954. If that date/game sounds familiar, it is the same game that Johnny Kerr started his 844-consecutive game streak. The Nationals lost to the Lakers, 97-94, and Jackie's line was 1-2 field goals, 0-2 free throws, 1 rebound, 2 personal fouls and a 2-point total. Jackie was sold to the Milwaukee Hawks the next day on November 1. It took a while to catch, but the internet soon updated itself to count the Nats game. Basketball Reference  has their pages updated to include Jackie Moore with the Nationals. Interesting facts about Jackie Moore: Member of the  LaSalle Explorers Hall of Athletes Won 3 Public League championships with Overbrook High School in Philadelphia (1948-50). Won 1952 NIT title as a member of LaSalle University. Won an NBA title with the Ph...
Read more