March 6, 1957: The End of the Rochester Royals

The 1956-57 Rochester Royals

March 6, 1957: The Rochester Royals beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 82-79 at the Rochester Community War Memorial Arena. This is their last home game of the season, and they did not qualify for the Playoffs. Therefore, this is the last game they will play in Rochester: They play 3 more games on the road, and move to Cincinnati the next season.

Edgerton Park Arena

The franchise is the oldest continuously operating team in professional basketball. They began play in 1923, as the Rochester Seagrams. In 1944, they joined the Midwest-based National Basketball League (NBL), changed their name to the Rochester Royals (based on Seagram's crown logo) in 1945, and won the NBL Championship in 1946. In 1948, it joined the East-based Basketball Association of America. In 1949, the BAA and the NBA merged to form the National Basketball Association. In 1951, the Royals won the NBA Championship. In 1955, they moved from the Edgerton Park Arena to the War Memorial.

The Rochester War Memorial, now the Blue Cross Arena

But Rochester proved too small a "market" for a major league sports team. In 1957, the team became the Cincinnati Royals. Their best performance in Cincinnati was a pair of trips to the Eastern Division Finals in 1963 and 1964. Cincy is a bigger market than Rochester, but it was still one of the smallest in the NBA. In 1972, they moved again, to Kansas City. Since that city already had a baseball team named the Royals, they became the Kansas City Kings. K.C. also isn't a big market, and they moved again, in 1985, to another not-so-big market, becoming the Sacramento Kings.

Only once in K.C., and once in Sacramento, have they been to the Western Conference Finals. So that 1951 title, for which they do hang a banner, remains their only trip to the NBA Finals.

From the Royals/Kings' Rochester period, guards Bobby Wanzer and Bob Davies, forwards Maurice Stokes and Jack Twyman, center Arnie Risen, and coach team owner Les Harrison are in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame Knicks coach Red Holzman was also a superb player for the Royals. The Kings have retired Davies' Number 11, Stokes' 12 and Twyman's 27.

Today, Rochester -- the city of Port Charles on the ABC soap opera General Hospital is based on it -- is a city of 210,000 people, making it the 3rd-largest in New York State, after New York City and Buffalo. Its metropolitan area has a little over 1 million. The War Memorial still stands, under the name of the Blue Cross Arena at the War Memorial. It seats 10,662. Despite having one of the best-known minor-league hockey teams, the Rochester Americans, still playing at the Blue Cross Arena, the city remains too small to support a major league team.

*

March 6, 1957 was a Wednesday. There was 1 other game played in the NBA that night, and it was by the team that would no longer be the Royals' geographic rivals. The New York Knicks beat the Syracuse Nationals, 100-93 at the Onondaga County War Memorial Arena (now named the Upstate Medical University Arena) in Syracuse, New York.

Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. One game was played in the NHL: The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.