1947-48 BAA Season Standings

The BAA's second season contracted to eight teams after four charter franchises (Cleveland Rebels, Detroit Falcons, Pittsburgh Ironmen, Toronto Huskies) folded after just one year of play, while the Baltimore Bullets joined from the rival American Basketball League to help stabilize a circuit that was still finding its footing. The Baltimore Bullets capped a strong debut BAA campaign by upsetting the Philadelphia Warriors 4 games to 2 in the Finals to win the championship, becoming the only BAA/NBA champion never to repeat given the franchise's eventual November 1954 folding partway through that season. Guard Wataru Misaka of the New York Knicks broke modern pro basketball's color barrier this season as the first player of Asian descent (and first non-white player) in the league, appearing in three games before being cut, predating Chuck Cooper's more commonly cited 1950 breakthrough by three years. The Providence Steamrollers collapsed to a dismal 6-42 record, foreshadowing the franchise's folding after the following season, part of the broader financial instability that plagued the league's smaller markets throughout its first decade. The three-way tie atop the Western Division among Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington made for one of the tightest division races in the league's earliest years, with all three teams separated only by tiebreaker procedures rather than actual games in the standings.