Madison Square Garden (1925) Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ====Basketball==== The first professional basketball game was played in the 50th Street Garden on December 6, 1925, nine days before the arena officially opened. It pitted the [[Original Celtics]] against the [[Washington Palace Five]]. The Celtics won 35β31.<ref name=ballp /> The [[New York Knicks]] debuted there in 1946, although if there was an important college game, they played in the [[69th Regiment Armory]].<ref name=ballp /> Due to other event bookings in the arena, all their home games during the [[1951 NBA Finals|1951]], [[1952 NBA Finals|1952]] and [[1953 NBA Finals|1953]] [[NBA Finals]] were played at the Armory; thus MSG III never hosted an NBA Finals game. MSG III hosted the [[NBA All-Star Game]] in 1954, 1955 and 1968. In 1931, a highly successful college basketball triple header raised money for Mayor [[Jimmy Walker]]'s Unemployment Relief Fund. In 1934, [[Ned Irish]] began promoting a successful series of college basketball double headers at the Garden featuring a mix of local and national teams. MSG III began hosting the [[National Invitation Tournament]] annually in 1938, and hosted seven [[NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament|NCAA men's basketball championship]] finals between 1943 and 1950. On February 28, 1940, Madison Square Garden hosted the first televised basketball games in a Fordham-Pitt and [[1939β40 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team|Georgetown]]-NYU doubleheader. A [[CCNY point shaving scandal|point shaving scandal]] involving games played at the Garden led the NCAA to reduce its use of the Garden, and caused some schools, including 1950 NCAA and NIT Champion [[1949β50 CCNY Beavers men's basketball team|City College of New York]] (CCNY), to be banned from playing there.<ref>''Nat Holman: The Man, His Legacy and CCNY''.[http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/library/exhibitions/holman/basketball_scandal.html "The 1951 Basketball Scandal"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071205215227/http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/library/exhibitions/holman/basketball_scandal.html |date=December 5, 2007 }} - The City College Library - [[City College of New York]].</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page