The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the four major professional sports leagues in the U.S. and Canada. (The other three are baseball, American football, and ice hockey.)

Today's NBA games regularly draw in over a million television viewers, in addition to in-person spectators in the stands. But when the league made its formal debut in 1946, not many people knew much about basketball at all.

The Basketball Association of America (BAA), an organization that would develop into the modern-day NBA, was founded in New York City on June 6, 1946, with 11 teams spanning two divisions: East and West. The name change took place in August of 1949, when the BAA merged with the smaller National Basketball League (NBL), becoming the NBA.

The very first official game took place on November 1, 1946 in Toronto, Canada, and was a close battle between the New York Knickerbockers (now known as the Knicks) and the Toronto Huskies. The Knicks eked out a victory of 68-66 in front of a crowd of 7,000 at Maple Leaf Gardens. Ticket prices ranged from $0.75 to $2.50 per seat, with many of the spectators being completely unfamiliar with the sport.

Nevertheless, the number in attendance indicated that basketball, a sport whose humble origins can be traced back to hollowed-out fruit baskets in a gym, was finally emerging as a national pastime.

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