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How a pro team in Detroit turned into the Los Angeles Lakers

By Stuart London

Feb 8, 2021; Los Angeles, California, USA; The retired jerseys of Los Angeles Lakers players Jamaal Wilkes (52), Wilt Chamberlain (13), Elgin Baylor (22), Shaquille O'Neal (34), Jerry West (44), Magic Johnson (32), James Worthy (42), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (33), Kobe Bryant (8 and 24) and Chick Hearn and the names of Minneapolis Lakers Hall of Fame players Vern Mikkelsen, George Mikan, Jim Pollard, Slater Martin, John Kundla and Clyde Lovellette on display at Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 8, 2021; Los Angeles, California, USA; The retired jerseys of Los Angeles Lakers players Jamaal Wilkes (52), Wilt Chamberlain (13), Elgin Baylor (22), Shaquille O'Neal (34), Jerry West (44), Magic Johnson (32), James Worthy (42), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (33), Kobe Bryant (8 and 24) and Chick Hearn and the names of Minneapolis Lakers Hall of Fame players Vern Mikkelsen, George Mikan, Jim Pollard, Slater Martin, John Kundla and Clyde Lovellette on display at Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports /
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There were quite a few professional basketball teams in Detroit before the Pistons, they just were not very successful. One of them, the Detroit Gems, morphed into the Los Angeles Lakers. … really. It was a bit of a roundabout path, but it is quite an interesting story.:

In 1946, the country was coming out of World War II and people were looking for some entertainment. Detroit was a booming metropolis, and while it already had professional ice hockey, baseball and football teams, there was no pro basketball.

Dearborn accountant C. King Boring and his partner, jeweler Maurice Winston, were granted an expansion franchise in the National Basketball League (NBL). One of the top teams in the NBL were the Fort Wayne Pistons, owned by the well-respected Fred Zollner.

In a nod to Winston’s profession, the team was named the Gems.

Back then, there were three professional basketball leagues, the NBL, the Basketball Association of America (which the NBA claims as its direct ancestor) as well as the American Basketball League.

At the time, the NBL was considered the more established league, while the BAA had more big city Eastern teams like the Knicks and Celtics. In 1949, at Zollner’s kitchen table, the BAA and NBL agreed to merge and form the National Basketball Association, but that was in the future.

There are a lot of neat pictures and newspaper clippings of the Gems at NBAhoopsonline.

The First Detroit Pistons Noel. light. Related Story

The Gems look for a place to call home

The major indoor sports venue in Detroit was the Olympia, where the Red Wings of the National Hockey League played. However, a new BAA team, the Detroit Falcons, were renting it as their home court.

The original plan was for the Gems to play in the new Dearborn Forum, but construction delays meant the owners had to make alternate plans.  Boring and Winston selected Ferndale High School as the Gems home court. Ferndale was north of Detroit in Oakland County, and it had a massive gym with a capacity of 6,000.

Yes, the Knicks were in Madison Square Garden and the Celtics played on the parquet floor of Boston Garden, but having professional basketball games in high school gyms was not unusual at the time. The Pistons in Fort Wayne played in a high school before the county built a fieldhouse.  Heck, the precursor to the Warriors rented a hotel ballroom for some of its games.

Many pro basketball teams, when forced into non-athletic venues, would put up a cage to put some distance between the game and the fans. This is why basketball players were referred to as ‘cagers’ for many years.

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