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.
Boston benefited greatly from the merger of the two leagues via players they drafted from the dispersal drafts of teams that did not join the newly formed NBA, like Ed Macauley.