TCBTri-Cities Blackhawks

Franchise history

The Blackhawks arrived in the Tri-Cities on December 25, 1946, after just 38 days as the Buffalo Bisons, relocating owners Ben Kerner and Leo Ferris' struggling National Basketball League club to a genuinely unusual home base: Moline and Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, three separate small cities straddling the Mississippi River with no single metro area of significant size. Playing out of the roughly 6,000-seat Wharton Field House, the Blackhawks were the smallest market ever to support a major professional basketball franchise, though they were competitive on the court, reaching the playoffs in the NBA's inaugural 1949-50 season (the franchise's first as an NBA team, following the NBL-BAA merger) under a young coach named Red Auerbach.

Despite that early success, the Tri-Cities region simply could not generate the attendance a league franchise needed, and the team struggled through 1950-51. Kerner moved the club to Milwaukee for the 1951-52 season, becoming the Milwaukee Hawks -- the franchise's next stop on the way to St. Louis and, eventually, Atlanta.

Sources

• Tri-Cities Blackhawks — Wikipedia
• Atlanta Hawks — Wikipedia