1956 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: Bob Pettit

Box score

Bench (10+ points): Harry Gallatin (16)

Bench (10+ points): Bob Pettit (20), Vern Mikkelsen (16), Maurice Stokes (10)

Game context

The 1956 All-Star Game, held January 24 at the Rochester War Memorial Coliseum, gave the West its second win in the series' brief six-year history, a 108-94 victory built around one of the most dominant individual performances the young event had yet seen. St. Louis Hawks forward Bob Pettit, in just his second NBA season, led all scorers with 20 points, but the number that truly defined his night was 24 rebounds, a game-high that showcased the relentless motor and second-effort rebounding that would define his Hall of Fame career; he added 7 assists as well, playing 31 minutes in a thoroughly complete performance that earned him his first All-Star MVP award. Pettit had help from a deep, physical Western frontcourt: Minneapolis's Clyde Lovellette scored 16 points and pulled down 9 rebounds, Rochester's own Maurice Stokes — playing in front of his home fans as a rookie sensation who would go on to a tragic, injury-shortened career that ended in early 1958 after a head injury suffered in a playoff game left him paralyzed — contributed 10 points and 16 rebounds, and the West's collective rebounding advantage proved decisive against an Eastern frontline anchored by Philadelphia's Neil Johnston (17 points, 10 rebounds) and New York's Harry Gallatin (16 points). Dick McGuire, one of the East's key playmakers, was unable to play because of injury, thinning an already stretched Eastern roster. As in the previous several seasons, coaching assignments followed the pattern of rewarding whichever teams led their divisions at the point selections were made: Charley Eckman of the Fort Wayne Pistons took the West bench, while George Senesky of the Philadelphia Warriors coached the East. The game drew 8,517 fans to Rochester, a smaller market by NBA standards even for that era, reflecting the league's continued reliance in the mid-1950s on mid-sized industrial cities — Rochester, Syracuse, Fort Wayne — as core franchise homes alongside the bigger markets of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia; the Rochester Royals themselves would relocate to Cincinnati just two years later, in 1957, part of the broader westward and southward drift that reshaped the league's map over the ensuing decades. Pettit's huge rebounding total set an early standard for interior dominance in the All-Star Game that would stand for years, and it announced him, alongside Minneapolis's aging George Mikan and a young Bill Russell soon to arrive in Boston, as one of the era's defining big men — a status he would go on to reinforce with MVP-caliber All-Star performances again in 1958 and 1962, en route to a career that would end with two regular-season MVP awards and a spot among the first players ever to score more than 20,000 career points.

Sources

• Basketball-Reference — NBA All-Star Game History
• Basketball-Reference — NBA & ABA All-Star Game MVP (Kobe Bryant Trophy)
• Wikipedia — 1956 NBA All-Star Game