1942–43 National Basketball League (United States) season

The 1942–43 NBL season was the eighth overall season for the U.S.A.'s National Basketball League (NBL) and its sixth season under that name after previously going by the Midwest Basketball Conference (a semipro or amateur precursor to the NBL) in its first two seasons of existence. For the third straight season in a row, the NBL would operate without any divisions whatsoever. However, they would compete with the lowest amount of operable teams to start out a season of theirs with only five teams starting out the season, with three teams leaving the NBL due to the growing presence of World War II and the Chicago Studebaker Flyers (who were owned and operated by the United Auto Workers Association) joining the NBL as an expansion team of sorts due to them replacing the Chicago Bruins this season. However, when the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets played their first four games of the season on the road against every other NBL team this season (which all ended in losses against Toledo), they ended up folding operations on December 14, 1942, with the remaining four NBL teams playing in 23 total NBL games (with each team competing against each other five or six times, with the one game they each played against Toledo counting as a part of their record as well). Because of the unique circumstances this season provided for the NBL, this season would see the four surviving NBL teams competing against each other in the NBL Playoffs this season (with the best team competing against the worst surviving team in the playoffs and the second-best team competing against the second-worst team in the playoffs), with the final two teams competing against each other in the championship series. In this season's case, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons would defeat the Chicago Studebaker Flyers two games to one and the Sheboygan Red Skins would sweep the Oshkosh All-Stars two games to none before Sheboygan upset Fort Wayne two games to one in the championship series this year. An entire book focusing on the NBL's existence would be released in 2009 by historian and author Murry R. Nelson called "The National Basketball League: A History, 1935–1949", with an entire chapter being dedicated to both this and the following season of play.^[1]

Following its 12th season of existence as the NBL, the NBL and Basketball Association of America (the latter league not existing until 1946) merged operations to create the National Basketball Association. Despite the NBL continuing to exist until the 1948–49 NBL season as the longer-lasting operation, the NBL would not recognize the twelve NBL seasons (nor the two MBC precursor seasons nor even the one National Professional Basketball League season that inspired the league's creation) as a part of its own history (outside of certain circumstances), sometimes without comment. As such, none of the previous twelve NBL seasons nor even the two MBC seasons would officially be recognized by the NBA, with the NBA recognizing the 1946–47 BAA season as its first official season of play instead.

Out of the five turned four NBL teams that competed in the league this season, two of these teams would end up playing in what can be considered the modern-day NBA, with one of them still existing in the NBA to this very day (albeit under a different name). The Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons would move to the Basketball Association of America in the 1948–49 BAA season, though they would have to change their team name in order to remove their business sponsorship they have with team owner Fred Zollner's Zollner Piston Company, with Fort Wayne going with just the Fort Wayne Pistons. A few years after the BAA merged with the NBL to become the NBA, the Fort Wayne Pistons would move from Fort Wayne, Indiana to Detroit, Michigan by the 1957–58 NBA season to become the Detroit Pistons, which they would use to this very day. The other team that joined the NBA years afterward, the new NBL champion Sheboygan Red Skins, would only play for the 1949–50 NBA season before leaving the NBA to create their own rivaling professional basketball league called the National Professional Basketball League (which would not be related to the NPBL that the NBL had been inspired from, as well as ultimately lasted for only one season before being forced to close up operations early). While the Oshkosh All-Stars were also considered for the NBL-BAA merger that became the modern-day NBA, neither the All-Stars nor the Studebaker Flyers from this season (who at one point in time had been misattributed to have had their history been shared with the modern-day Philadelphia 76ers after the Cleveland Chase Brassmen franchise joined the NBL and were later renamed to the Cleveland Allmen Transfers following the early replacement of the Chicago Studebaker Flyers entering the 1943 World Professional Basketball Tournament^[2]) would end up joining the NBA once the two leagues merged.

• At one point in time before the season even began, the NBL (alongside the rivaling American Basketball League and other professional basketball leagues going on at the time) had considered shutting down operations due to the growing tides of World War II's impact (especially with the U.S. military utilizing as many athletic players as they possibly could either due to either being drafted to the military or otherwise enlisting out of their own volition), but the U.S. government would make sure that the professional sports leagues in the U.S.A. would not shut down operations and instead continue to run for as long as they possibly can do so while dealing with the war's impact upon the world as a means of encouraging the continuation of the impact of athletics and sports in general in order to boost the morale of those discouraged by wartime cutbacks.^[3]
• Originally, the NBL planned to start their season with only four teams in the NBL with the Chicago Bruins folding operations (though team owner George Halas did have the option to revive his team at any time he had wished to do so), the Indianapolis Kautskys suspending league operations (for the second time in their history) due to World War II, and the Akron Goodyear Wingfoots leaving the NBL in order to have their squad become an Amateur Athletic Union works team that would later play in the future National Industrial Basketball League instead. However, the NBL would get a new team operating in Chicago before the start of the season instead with the Chicago Studebaker Flyers (a works team representing Studebaker that was a part of the United Auto Workers Association at the time, which had been exempt from having the people there being drafted for World War II due to Studebaker converting its factories for war time purposes similar to the Zollner Piston Company for the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons at the time), meaning the NBL would start their season with five teams playing in the Chicago Studebaker Flyers, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, the two-time defending champion Oshkosh All-Stars, the Sheboygan Red Skins, and the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets for what was intended to be a 24-game scheduled season.^[4]
• Before the NBL's season began, they would hammer out an agreement with the rivaling American Basketball League and the more minor Connecticut State Basketball League (which were considered the three remaining professional basketball leagues being ran at the time^[5]) to not allow any of their leagues to sign players away for teams in their rivaling leagues without due compensation in the process. As a result of that agreement combined with World War II's continued impact, the three leagues faced serious pressure for player acquisitions both inside and outside of each league's own resources with players sometimes switching teams during a season with impunity, to the point where just simply surviving this season of play was an accomplishment for most teams and these professional leagues in and of itself (especially since the Connecticut State Basketball League would just outright end their own season of play without any playoff or even championship formatting in mind following their final regular season's conclusion^[6]).^[7]
• The completion of the Sheboygan Armory for the Sheboygan Red Skins would be considered the envy of other NBL teams that either competed in a junior high school gymnasium in the case of Oshkosh, a high school gymnasium in the case of Fort Wayne, or being forced to play in multiple venues in the case of Chicago. (Toledo would not have a chance to utilize their own home venue for their season, as all four of the games they played in this season would be on the road instead of at home.)^[8]
• During the start of the season, both the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets and the Chicago Studebaker Flyers would end up with mixed, integrated rosters to start out their seasons due to Toledo's minority owner (and soon to be head coach) Sidney Goldberg suggesting that teams like his be allowed to utilize mixed races to save the rosters that needed it (such as Toledo themselves) during the previous season, which would lead to both Toledo and the new Chicago team having mixed, integrated rosters for their squads (notably with black players that came from the all-black Harlem Globetrotters and New York Renaissance teams, alongside potential Washington Bears players for good measure) to start out the season. That trend began by Toledo the previous season and both Chicago and Toledo this season would continue providing similar changes for the rest of the NBL's existence up until their merger with the Basketball Association of America on August 3, 1949 to create the present-day National Basketball Association, thus technically making the NBL the first professional sports league to utilize mixed race teams during seasons of play.^[9] Despite the positive notion of seeing African-American players entering the NBL for this season and the previous season, these players would still see discrimination and humiliation in mind, to the point where some players would not stay in hotels or eat in restaurants and instead slept in their own cars,^[10] as well as later see the Chicago Studebaker Flyers fold operations following the end of this season due to racial discrimination at hand.^[11]
• Throughout the season, the NBL would see further decreased coverage from the few media outlets that would report on their league, as reporting for the sport of basketball was primarily held by the U.S. military's own basketball teams (with the Great Lakes Naval Base team being considered to be one of the best teams in the nation during this period of time) over any of the actual professional basketball leagues during this period of time. This would significantly hurt the NBL's chances for survival during this time, as not only would they compete against the U.S.A.'s military teams for both media and spectator support, but they also hoped to survive until the end of the World War II period of time (ideally with an Allied forces victory over the Axis powers) before regaining the lost ground they had this season with an eight team league being back in action on their ends.^[12]
• After playing only four games in the regular season (each on the road against the other four teams in the NBL this season), the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets would fold operations as a franchise early on in the season on December 14, 1942 (though it's claimed that the Toledo franchise would return to the NBL under the Toledo Jeeps name with most of the same ownership at hand there a few years later). Following their early closure into the season, the four remaining NBL teams would adjust the rest of their schedules from the originally planned 24 games (with the five teams having six home and away games against each other for an even 24 games played between each other) to having only 23 games against each other (with each of the four remaining teams playing each other seven or eight times instead, with each of their home victories against Toledo still counting toward their original record) instead due to the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets leaving the NBL early. This would mark the first and only time in NBL history that a team would fold operations during a season of play without the league utilizing a back-up plan to replace the team during a season of theirs.^[13]
• Throughout the season, each of the four surviving NBL teams would hold rosters that resembled the 1920s period of professional basketball for free agency up until the Original Celtics' team owners initiated an exclusivity clause within their own team contracts. In terms of stability, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons works team (who had the Zollner Piston Company fully engaged to be a war working company during this time) had the most stable roster with nine players playing at least 18 out of their 23 scheduled games, followed by the Chicago Studebaker Flyers works team (who also had Studebaker be fully engaged with war working materials during this time) with eight players playing at least 18 games and five players playing at least one game this season, then the Sheboygan Red Skins having only five players playing at least 18 games alongside six players in at least five games and three more players playing at least one game for them this season, and finally the two-time defending NBL champion Oshkosh All-Stars with only three players of theirs (Leroy Edwards, Charley Shipp, and Ralph Vaughn) playing at least 18 games this season with eleven players having at least five games played there and six more players having at least one game played for Oshkosh due in part to World War II.^[7]
• Following a 41–40 upset victory the Chicago Studebaker Flyers had over the Oshkosh All-Stars, NBL coverage for the city of Chicago would go from the Chicago Tribune to the African-American owned and operated The Chicago Defender, with their stories on the Studebaker Flyers team promoting the notion of racial harmony and integration with stories that helped note the black players and white players that were on the team showcasing the players were on the team were based off of their ability of play and not race or religion over that specific notion, which was a point many African-American owned newspapers had mentioned before this point in time with the NBL.^[14]
• Despite having home venue issues for this season, the Chicago Studebaker Flyers would still end up getting five consecutive home victories, though it would come at the price of four consecutive road losses along the way with regards to them starting their season properly (with them also ending the 1942 year with losses to Oshkosh and Sheboygan for good measure).^[15]
• By contrast, for the start of the 1943 year, this season had the two-time defending champion Oshkosh All-Stars in first place with a 6–3 record (despite injury and team roster construction problems for their season that had them facing danger at times), with them first being ahead of the Sheboygan Red Skins at 5–4 and then being ahead of both the Chicago Studebaker Flyers and Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons at 4–4 and 3–3 respectively. Despite Oshkosh beating Sheboygan twice in a row to start the 1943 year off on a better note (once being a 61–55 victory and the other being a game where the Red Skins shot an abysmal 11% field goal percentage with only 7/65 shots being made, the latter game also resulting in Sheboygan waiving/firing player-coach Erwin Graf and replacing him with team manager Carl Roth as the new head coach for the rest of their season), the season rankings of each team would be dramatically different by the end of the season.^[16]
• On January 8, 1943, the city of Milwaukee would host the first back-to-back NBL doubleheader series of matches that had been promoted by Bill Veeck (a future MLB team owner, World Series champion for the Cleveland Indians, and member of the Baseball Hall of Fame), with 3,565 fans seeing not only the Sheboygan Red Skins defeat the Oshkosh All-Stars 42–33 in a rough match played between the two teams, but also see the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons have a high-scoring (for the era) affair with the Chicago Studebaker Flyers in a 78–62 thriller that not just saw Bobby McDermott tie the NBL's scoring record for the time in one game (while making 14 field goals (albeit on 31 shot attempts)) and the Fort Wayne squad making a very high (for the era) 32/66 shots for a 48% field goal shooting percentage, but also saw four different players score 16 points that night in Jake Pelkington for the Zollner Pistons alongside three former Harlem Globetrotters turned Studebaker Flyers players in Hillery Brown, Duke Cumberland, and Bernie Price for Chicago.^[17]
• In Chicago's next match played against the Oshkosh All-Stars (which occurred after the doubleheader series in Milwaukee), the Studebaker Flyers would end up becoming the first team in professional basketball history to have a starting line-up consisting of all-black players (with Bernie Price replacing Mike Nokak and Hillery Brown playing the open (power) forward spot for the team) after previously utilizing a mixture of black and white players for all of their games up until that point in time. Despite Roosie Hudson later mentioning that the Studebaker Flyers always played like a proper team regardless of who was starting in a certain match, the Studebaker Flyers would end up their match to Oshkosh (with their fans still staying in their home venue following the starting line-up for Chicago's team being announced) not long afterward.^[18]
• Later in the same week that saw those prior two occurrences go down, the Office of Defense Transportation banned pleasure driving in 17 Eastern states (including the state of Wisconsin, which hosted both the Oshkosh All-Stars and Sheboygan Red Skins) in order to save up on gasoline consumption; that ban would continue to be implemented until the end of World War II.^[19] This not only made vehicles like buses, trolleybuses, and subway trains become the more preferred method to travel over automobiles for most people when it came to pleasurable purposes like professional basketball matches, but also made things harder for both the All-Stars in Oshkosh and the Red Skins in Sheboygan to properly schedule matches against each other due to the temporary ban leading to rural areas either suspending or cancelling scheduled games during this particular season for certain leagues and teams, as well as led to the statewide Connecticut State Basketball League shutting down their season earlier than expected following their New Britain team folding operations early on in their season after their 0–9 record for that season.^[18]
• In the middle of January 1943, Oshkosh would barely lead the entire NBL with a 9–7 record for first place, with them being behind the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons with a 7–4, while the Sheboygan Red Skins held a 5–6 record and the Chicago Studebaker Flyers held a 4–7 record for last place.^[18] However, a late midseason run by Fort Wayne (with them winning twelve out of their last fourteen matches for a 17–6 regular season record) would later cause Oshkosh to end their run of first place finishes in the NBL (either as a whole or in divisional formatting back when the NBL still had divisions) for the first time in both the team and the NBL's own particular histories.^[20]
• Despite adding a defensive specialist in Ted Strong, who was another former Harlem Globetrotters player at the time during the middle of their season, the Chicago Studebaker Flyers would still see continued issues with their performance throughout the season (which later caused them to fold operations entirely after the end of the 1943 NBL Playoffs) due to ego issues involving both Mike Novak and Sonny Boswell (primarily during practices when Novak thought Boswell shot the ball too much during practice and didn't share the ball enough to other players on the team) and not racial issues like what most people had initially thought from them at the time.^[18]
• By the end of January, the Chicago Studebaker Flyers would upset the Oshkosh All-Stars with another high-scoring (for the time) match in a 73–60 victory for Chicago, making it the second-highest scoring match in league history by this point in time.^[20]
• On February 9, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons would clinch both the top seed and the regular season championship in the NBL for the first time in their young history by defeating the Oshkosh All-Stars 47–44 at their local North Side High School Gym home venue under 4,000 fans (with apparently thousands more being turned away as well) seeing the close victory occur.^[20]
• At some point near the end of the regular season, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, Oshkosh All-Stars, and Sheboygan Red Skins alongside the since regrouped Toledo White Huts independent team after the original Toledo Jim White Chevrolets folded operations for their season in the NBL) would all compete in a minor invitational tournament in Memphis, Tennessee that saw the winning team get $1,000 in prize money, with second place getting $750 in prize money as well. This minor tournament would later end with Oshkosh defeating Sheboygan in a close 40–36 victory that saw Oshkosh earn some necessary money to keep their funds going and Sheboygan gaining some extra money to help out their own funding operations for the season as well.^[20]
• Throughout this season, Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons owner Fred Zollner would become the main pillar helping keep the NBL afloat at various points of need by bankrolling the other three remaining teams of the league whenever necessary.^[21]
• With only four games left to go in the regular season, the Sheboygan Red Skins would sign up former Warren Penns/Cleveland White Horses/Detroit Eagles star guard Buddy Jeannette onto their roster, with him being grabbed away from the Rochester Eber Seagrams by being paid an exorbitantly high $500 per game for the rest of the season (most other Sheboygan players were paid $50 per game), including NBL Playoff matches. Despite the lack of games played for Sheboygan, Buddy Jeannette would somewhat controversially be named a member of the All-NBL Second Team over a teammate of his named Rube Lautenschlager, who was in seventh place for the overall number of points scored this season (though Lautenschlager ultimately wouldn't mind considering the team's finish in the NBL Playoffs this season).^[22]
• By the end of the regular season period, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons would finish up their season with a first place finish at a 17–6 record with the Sheboygan Red Skins being the only other team to have a winning record by the end of the season with a 12–11 record, followed by Oshkosh dropping down to third place through an 11–12 record and then the Chicago Studebaker Flyers being in last place with an 8–15 record.^[23] Despite the standings for this season, the NBL would utilize a new, temporary measure for their NBL Playoff formatting with every team that survived this season being able to compete in the NBL Playoffs, with the best team competing against the worst team and the second place team going up against the third place team before the two remaining teams competed in a best of three championship series.^[20]
• Following the #4 seeded Chicago Studebaker Flyers' defeat to the #1 seeded Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, the Studebaker Flyers franchise would move operations to South Bend, Indiana to become the South Bend Studebaker Champions by the time the 1943 World Professional Basketball Tournament began.
• Following the end of Game 1 of the 1943 NBL Championship series between the Sheboygan Red Skins and the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, it was announced that Sonny Boswell would be named a member of the All-NBL Second Team, which marked the first (and only) time an African-American player would be named a member of the All-NBL Team during a season.^[24]
• After Game 2 of the NBL's championship series ended with Sheboygan and Fort Wayne tied up, the two teams ultimately delayed their third and deciding game to be played until March 9, 1943 instead due to neither team finding a suitable arena to play in following the game played on March 2. This delay would cause another parallel to professional basketball back in the 1920s (albeit not directly so) when the two champions of the Penn State Basketball League and the New York State Basketball League, the Scranton Miners and the Albany Senators, had the middle of their seven game series be significantly delayed (by 13 days) due to both teams having players that could each compete in a different playoff series of sorts held between the Original Celtics and the New York Whirlwinds before ending with its final two games played. As a result of the week-long delay for determining the NBL's newest champion, it would still illustrate the state of professional basketball by this point in time akin to the sport's early history where it simply survived on a day-by-day basis, similar to what the NBL was doing throughout this season alongside the upcoming season afterward due to World War II.^[25]
• With an upset series victory by the #2 seeded Sheboygan Red Skins over the #1 seeded Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons after they previously swept the #3 seeded two-time defending NBL champion (and current WPBT champion) Oshkosh All-Stars, the Red Skins would be the first NBL champions since the Akron Goodyear Wingfoots during the NBL's first season of existence under that league name to be named champions of the NBL while holding a lower record than the highest-seeded team in the entire league.
• Throughout this entire season, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons would employ their players at team owner Fred Zollner's own Zollner Pistons Company and split profits from the basketball season with those players by the end of the season (with players splitting several thousand dollars with each other and being substantially richer as the best paid players in the sport), which would later help set up higher paid wages for all professional sports players (not just those in basketball) for future seasons to come forth.^[26] By contrast, the Chicago Studebaker Flyers would have their players be paid through Studebaker themselves by the United Auto Workers Association under what would be considered proper work related wages at the time for players that were also employees at the factory they were involved with and both the old NBL champion Oshkosh All-Stars and new NBL champion Sheboygan Red Skins would be teams that operated under a community group ownership basis similar to that of the nearby brethren in the Green Bay Packers for the NFL, with Sheboygan being suggested to have a small profit of about $943.49 for this season and Oshkosh being suggested to have a bit of a higher profit margin (despite their lesser results this season) due to them being a more popular team attraction both at home (albeit under a smaller venue than Sheboygan's new armory home arena) and on the road, to the point where they could afford to pay their players at higher prices for the season.^[27]
• Following the championship series between Sheboygan and Fort Wayne, all four of the NBL's teams would enter the 1943 edition of the World Professional Basketball Tournament (albeit with the Chicago Studebaker Flyers rebranding themselves through a move from Chicago, Illinois to South Bend, Indiana to become the South Bend Studebaker Champions during the event instead), which saw a decrease from 16 to 12 teams in the event (which still primarily featured other independent teams) due to the Office of Defense Transportation's ban on pleasure driving still going on by this time, meaning a record-high four teams (including two of the NBL's own teams) in the new NBL champion Sheboygan Red Skins, the defending WPBT champion Oshkosh All-Stars, the world famous all-black Harlem Globetrotters, and the undefeated all-black Washington Bears (who were suggested to have replaced the all-black New York Renaissance for this particular event) would see first round byes this time around. This time around, the tournament would see Studebaker's team be upset in the first round by the Minneapolis Sparklers, the new NBL champion Sheboygan Red Skins get upset in the second round through revenge done by the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons losing their semifinal round match to the WPBT defending champion Oshkosh All-Stars (though winning their third place match to the Dayton Dive Bombers), and the WPBT defending champion Oshkosh All-Stars losing their championship match to the undefeated Washington Bears (who would first beat the Minneapolis Sparklers and the Dayton Dive Bombers military-based team) to see the Washington franchise become the third (and final) independent team to win the WPBT championship (and an apparent prize pool of $1,500 for first place, with Oshkosh receiving a prize pool of $1,000 for second place) back when that tournament was primarily dominated by (all-black) independent teams for most of its existence as a winner takes all tournament.^[28]

Due to the effects of World War II significantly affecting the health of the league during this season (notably with five competing teams turning to four remaining early on in the season following the early folding of the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets) combined with the NBL abandoning the usage of divisions entirely for a third straight season, the NBL would utilize this season's playoffs with an entirely different formatting by having all four of the surviving NBL teams competing in a best of three format with each other (with the best NBL team competing against the worst NBL team and the second-best NBL team competing against the second-worst NBL team), with the two remaining teams going up against each other in a best of five championship series. In this case, the two works teams of the NBL in the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons and the newly established Chicago Studebaker Flyers would compete against each other as the best and worst NBL teams respectively this season, while the second-best team this season in the Sheboygan Red Skins went up against their cityside rivals in the two-time defending NBL champion Oshkosh All-Stars (who were the second-worst NBL team this season) for the third battle of Wisconsin in four straight seasons while competing against each other in the NBL Playoffs. In this season's case, the Zollner Pistons would get a scare from the Studebaker Flyers early on before Fort Wayne ultimately beat Chicago 2–1 in that franchise's only season in the playoffs, while the Red Skins would turn the tables on the defending champions in Oshkosh and sweep the All-Stars 2–0 in what would be the first NBL championship won by either remaining franchise in a best of three format. Despite Fort Wayne having home court advantage in this series, it would prove to not be useful for them at all for a change of pace, with Sheboygan upsetting the Zollner Pistons 2–1 (with the Red Skins winning in the games played at Fort Wayne) to give Sheboygan their first (and only) championship in the NBL's history.

Note: Prior to the 1969–70 NBA season, league leaders in points were determined by totals rather than averages. Also, rebounding and assist numbers were not recorded properly in the NBL like they would be in the BAA/NBA, as would field goal and free-throw shooting percentages.

• NBL Most Valuable Player: Bobby McDermott, Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons
• NBL Coach of the Year: Carl Roth, Sheboygan Red Skins
• NBL Rookie of the Year: Ken Buehler, Sheboygan Red Skins

^[36]

For the fifth World Professional Basketball Tournament ever hosted, it would feature a total of twelve teams competing in the event held in Chicago on March 15–18, 1943, with all four of the NBL's remaining teams from this season (though with the Chicago Studebaker Flyers suddenly rebranding themselves into the South Bend Studebaker Champions in order to represent South Bend, Indiana by the start of this event instead of the local people in Chicago, Illinois for some odd reason (probably due to the inclusion of the Chicago Ramblers in there)) competing in the event against other independently ran teams due to the lingering effects of World War II. For the NBL teams that were in the first round in this year's event, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons would see themselves defeat the Indianapolis Pure Oils (who were slated to be the Indianapolis Kautskys participating in the WPBT under a different name following their second hiatus from the NBL starting in 1942) with a 57–52 victory, while the Studebaker team that claimed to represent South Bend instead of Chicago this time around would see their team come to an early close as they would be upset 45–44 by a Minneapolis Sparklers team that was led by future Minneapolis Lakers head coach John Kundla, leaving the NBL with only three competitive teams for the quarterfinal round since both the defending WPBT champion Oshkosh All-Stars and the new NBL champion Sheboygan Red Skins were joined by the world famous all-black Harlem Globetrotters and the all-black Washington Bears (who not only were composed of players from the all-black New York Renaissance, but were also the only time where the Bears replaced the Renaissance in the WPBT, making people think those two teams were just one and the same there) as the four teams to have first round byes for this event. For the quarterfinal round, the defending WPBT champion Oshkosh All-Stars would beat down on the former NBL turned barnstorming Detroit Eagles team for the last time with a 65–36 blowout victory, while the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons got their revenge on Sheboygan for the NBL championship series loss with a 48–40 win over the new NBL champion Sheboygan Red Skins, though this meant that the semifinal round would only have one NBL team competing for a chance at the WPBT championship and one team competing for the third place consolation prize. On March 17, the team that would move onto the championship round would be the Oshkosh All-Stars, as they would barely defeat the Zollner Pistons 40–39 in order to try and repeat as WPBT champions, while Fort Wayne would see if they could at least get a third place finish. By the end of the event, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons would do exactly that, as they would defeat the Dayton Dive Bombers (who were composed of servicemen players that previously played for both the rivaling American Basketball League and the New York Renaissance that were stationed at Wright Field in Riverside, Ohio that previously beat the Chicago Ramblers and the world famous all-black Harlem Globetrotters before losing to the Washington Bears) 58–52, while the Washington Bears (who had previously lost only one game for this season of theirs and had beaten both the Minneapolis Sparklers and Dayton Dive Bombers military team earlier on) would end up being the third and final (all-black) independent team to win the WPBT throughout its entire history (though some would claim the Washington Bears there would actually be the New York Renaissance winning the WPBT once again, just under a different team name) once they beat the Oshkosh All-Stars 43–31 to win the entire event. With that being said, despite this team not making it to the championship match, the WPBT MVP this time around would be given to Curly Armstrong of the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, as he was voted the tournament's best player before the championship match was actually played.

• National Basketball League (United States)

• NBL Standings, 1937–1949 on apbr.org
• National Basketball League III – 1942–43 NBL Season Overview on retroseasons.com