1951 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: Ed Macauley

The inaugural NBA All-Star Game; the MVP award was formally established in 1953 but retroactively credited to this game's standout, Ed Macauley.

Box score

Bench (10+ points): Paul Arizin (15)

Bench (10+ points): Frankie Brian (14), Vern Mikkelsen (11)

Game context

The first NBA All-Star Game was, in large part, an act of institutional survival. Boston Celtics owner Walter Brown pushed the concept through a skeptical Board of Governors in the aftermath of the 1950-51 college point-shaving scandal, which had implicated players from several major programs and threatened to poison public trust in basketball generally, professional and collegiate alike. Many owners doubted an exhibition of All-Stars would draw flies, but Brown staged the game at Boston Garden on March 2, 1951, and 10,094 fans showed up — more than triple that season's league-wide average attendance of roughly 3,500 — a turnout that effectively saved the event and set it on course to become an annual fixture. On the floor, the East controlled the game from the opening tip. Boston's Ed Macauley, the East's own leading man, scored a game-high 20 points and was equally valuable defensively, drawing the assignment on Minneapolis Lakers center George Mikan, the sport's dominant force, and holding him to just 4 field goals and 12 points, a sharp departure from Mikan's usual dominance. The East built a 9-point lead after the first quarter, extended it to 11 by halftime, and led by 19 entering the fourth on the way to a comfortable 111-94 win. Syracuse's Dolph Schayes contributed 15 points and a game-high 14 rebounds, Dick McGuire dished a game-high 10 assists, and Joe Fulks and rookie Paul Arizin each scored in double figures for a balanced East attack that shot 46.2 percent from the field against a Western squad that managed just 32.7 percent. Indianapolis Olympians forward Alex Groza led the West with 17 points, but no other Western player came close to matching the East's efficiency. Selection that year was handled entirely by sportswriters, who picked ten players per division without regard to position and were barred from voting for players on their hometown teams; four Eastern selections (Macauley, Vince Boryla, McGuire, and Schayes) and seven Western ones were unanimous. The rosters also carried three members of the celebrated 1950 draft class — Arizin, Bob Cousy, and Larry Foust — signaling the infusion of young talent reshaping the league. The MVP award itself was not formally created until 1953, but the league retroactively recognized Macauley as its first winner once the honor existed, cementing his performance as the answer to a question the league desperately needed answered that night: whether fans, still processing a gambling scandal that had nothing to do with the pros, would actually turn out to watch NBA players showcase the game at its best. They did, emphatically, and the All-Star Game has been played essentially every year since.

Sources

• Basketball-Reference — NBA All-Star Game History
• Basketball-Reference — NBA & ABA All-Star Game MVP (Kobe Bryant Trophy)
• Wikipedia — 1951 NBA All-Star Game