IOIndianapolis Olympians

Franchise history

The Olympians joined the NBA in 1949, an unusual franchise founded and largely owned by its own players -- members of the University of Kentucky's back-to-back 1948 and 1949 NCAA championship teams who had also won gold as the core of the 1948 U.S. Olympic basketball team, which gave the club its name. Stars Alex Groza and Ralph Beard led the team, alongside fellow Olympians Wallace Jones and Cliff Barker, and Indianapolis was competitive from the start, reaching the NBA Finals in its debut season and later playing in the longest game in NBA history, a six-overtime, 75-73 win over the Rochester Royals on January 6, 1951.

The franchise unraveled after the 1950-51 season, when a point-shaving scandal centered on college basketball came to light: Groza and Beard admitted to having taken bribes to fix games during their University of Kentucky careers, before either had played in the NBA. In late 1951, NBA commissioner Maurice Podoloff banned both players from the league for life. Stripped of its best players and unable to recover, the Olympians finished 28-43 in 1952-53 and folded on April 23, 1953; Indianapolis went without an NBA team until the Pacers joined the league in 1976.

Sources

• Indianapolis Olympians — Wikipedia
• Ralph Beard — Wikipedia