
On this day in Boston Celtics history, the National Basketball Association as we know it today was born in 1949, with the Boston Celtics being a foundational franchise in it.
It was formed from the merger of the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL – not to be confused with the Australian league of today with the same name, or any of several less-prominent leagues of the same name) which predated the BAA by a dozen years. The Celtics had been part of the BAA since its inception three years earlier, a league formed mainly by arena owners trying to find novel ways to fill their venues.