1952 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: Paul Arizin

Box score

Bench (10+ points): Red Rocha (12), Max Zaslofsky (11), Fred Scolari (10)

Bench (10+ points): Frankie Brian (13), Leo Barnhorst (14)

Game context

The second edition of the All-Star Game returned to Boston Garden on February 11, 1952, and produced a result much like the first: another comfortable East win, 108-91, before 10,221 fans. The game was close through two quarters — the West trailed by only 4 and 5 points at the ends of the first and second periods respectively — before the East pulled away with a 6-point edge in each of the third and fourth quarters to turn a tight contest into a 17-point rout. Philadelphia Warriors forward Paul Arizin, in just his second NBA season, was the game's best player, scoring a game-high 26 points on a sharp 9-of-13 shooting. He matched, statistically, the individual line of George Mikan, who also scored 26 for the West while adding a game-high 15 rebounds, though the Lakers' center got little help around him — the West shot just 35.9 percent as a team. Boston's Bob Cousy, playing in front of his home fans, ran the East offense to a 13-assist afternoon, and six different Eastern players finished in double figures, evidence of the deep, balanced roster sportswriters had assembled; the East shot 49.4 percent from the field, a wide gap over the West's output. Dolph Schayes and Larry Foust were both forced out of the game by injury and replaced on their respective rosters, a reminder that All-Star selections in this era still came with real physical risk for players used to a far more physical, grinding regular-season style. Arizin's MVP award carries its own historical footnote: the league had not yet created a formal Most Valuable Player trophy for the All-Star Game at the time it was played, and the honor was only formally established and presented to him the following year, in 1953, when the league retroactively recognized his 1952 performance alongside that year's game as the award's true beginning point (together with the 1951 game, credited to Ed Macauley). Coaching duties again went to Al Cervi for the East and John Kundla for the West, both making return appearances after the inaugural game, and the East's win extended what was quickly becoming an early pattern of Eastern dominance in the series' first several years, buoyed by a deep Boston-Philadelphia-Syracuse-New York talent base even as Minneapolis, behind Mikan, remained the league's most successful franchise on the court in actual championship play. The rosters were again selected entirely by a panel of sportswriters who excluded players from voting for their own home-city stars, the same format used in the game's debut, underscoring how much of the early All-Star Game's identity and structure was still being worked out on the fly in these first few seasons.

Sources

• Basketball-Reference — NBA All-Star Game History
• Basketball-Reference — NBA & ABA All-Star Game MVP (Kobe Bryant Trophy)
• Wikipedia — 1952 NBA All-Star Game