Fort Wayne General Electrics (original) (raw)

Fort Wayne General Electrics

Founded: 1936 Joined NBL: 1937 Folded: 1938 Location: Fort Wayne, IN Arena: North Side High School Gym Built in: 1926 Capacity: 3,000 Titles: 0

General Electrics by year and league Year League W L % Playoffs W L 1936-37 MBC 6 6 .500 1 3 1937-38 NBL 13 7 .650 - -

The Electrics were also often referred to as the Electricians.

The GE Electrics were set up as a corporate industrial team owned by the General Electric cooperation in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The goal of these corporate owned teams was to use the games as a means of advertising for their products, and the goal of the players was to have a steady day job while continuing their basketball careers.

In their only year in the MBC they won their divisional playoff round by forfeit. In one of the strangest events in basketball history the Electrics were scheduled to host the Dayton London Bobby's, but just hours before the game the Bobby's manager, Ray Lindemuth called Electrics manager Bill Hosket and told him the game would not be played, and when Hosket inquired as into why, Lindemuth hung up the phone.

Fort Wayne would lose the Championship series two-games-to-none to the Akron Goodyear Wingfoots

Hometown Stars:
Scott Armstrong, a 6 foot 4, 190 pound forward, was the teams top player. He was from near by Butler University and gave a local flair to the team. Armstrong would average nearly 9 points a game in his only season in Fort Wayne. He would also be named to the NBL first team that season.

Bart Quinn, a 6'2", 200-pound forward from Fort Wayne was recruited directly out of high school. In the 1937�38 season, he averaged 9.4 points per game and was named to the All-NBL Second Team.

After his only season in the NBL, Quinn went to Toledo to play college basketball. He was a three-year starter for the Rockets, finishing his career with 702 points. As a senior in 1941�42, Quinn led the Rockets to the 1942 National Invitation Tournament. He was named All-Ohio and an first-team All-American by Madison Square Garden. Following his college career, he served in the United States Navy during World War II.

He died in 2013 as the last surviving player from the inaugural season of the NBL

History of early professional basketball in Indiana

Before the Indiana Pacers joined the ABA and eventually the NBA, the state of Indiana was the hot bed of professional basketball. From 1935 until 1953 the state hosted no less than 11 different teams in the major professional basketball leagues. Unfortunately, almost all of them would end and leave the state with no professional basketball teams for nearly two decades.

Indiana is synonymy with the game of basketball. The University of Indiana is one of the most storied programs in all of college basketball winning 5 NCAA titles, but it was Purdue who would bring the state its first NCAA basketball title in 1932.

Through out the early years of basketball a lot of fly by night leagues and teams called Indiana home, in fact Indiana even had its own semi-pro league of teams completely made up of teams in the Indianapolis region. It was not until 1935 when the Midwest Basketball Conference formed did the state of Indiana start seeing regular professional basketball at the highest levels and quality

Complete Article

| | | | Totals | | | | Per Game | | | | --------------- | --- | ------ | -- | -- | --- | -------- | --- | --- | | Player | Pos | Games | FG | FT | PTS | FG | FT | PTS | | Bart Quinn | F | 18 | 71 | 28 | 170 | 3.9 | 1.6 | 9.4 | | Scott Armstrong | F-C | 17 | 56 | 35 | 147 | 3.3 | 2.1 | 8.6 | | James Hilgemann | G | 17 | 50 | 30 | 130 | 2.9 | 1.8 | 7.6 | | Preston Slack | C-F | 16 | 38 | 10 | 86 | 2.4 | 0.6 | 5.4 | | Bud Lindberg | G | 18 | 30 | 20 | 80 | 1.7 | 1.1 | 4.4 | | Willie Adams | F | 16 | 21 | 16 | 58 | 1.3 | 1.0 | 3.6 | | Claude Holmes | G | 15 | 17 | 7 | 41 | 1.1 | 0.5 | 2.7 | | Byron Evard | G | 10 | 7 | 2 | 16 | 0.7 | 0.2 | 1.6 |