November 5, 1946: Rifleman 1, Backboard 0

November 5, 1946: The Boston Celtics play their 1st home game, at the Boston Garden. Only 4,329 fans attend, and it's delayed for an hour, because a Celtic player damaged a wooden backboard with a dunk during warmups. A new backboard was brought in from the Boston Arena (now Matthews Arena, home court and ice of Northeastern University). The Celtics lose 57-55 to the Chicago Stags.

The Stags, and the original NBA teams of Washington, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis, would quickly fail. The Celtics might have as well, had their owner, Walter Brown, not also owned the Garden, the NHL's Bruins, and the Ice Capades. He was able to keep the team going long enough to hire Red Auerbach as head coach, and the rest is history.

Oh, the player who became the 1st NBA player to break a backboard? A 6-foot-5 25-year-old Brooklynite who played at New Jersey's Seton Hall University. He went on to play 1 game for his hometown Dodgers in 1949, coming to bat once as a pinch-hitter, never playing the field for them. He then got traded to the Chicago Cubs, and played 66 games at 1st base for them in the 1951 season.

The Cubs' top farm team at the time was the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. While playing in L.A., this athlete found off-season work as a stuntman, and, like John Wayne, moved from stunts to acting, mostly in Westerns. His name was Chuck Connors, famed for his portrayal of Lucas McCain, the lead character of The Rifleman; and as Jason McCord, the lead in Branded. He died in 1992, at age 71.

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November 5, 1946 was a Tuesday. One other BAA (NBA) game was played that day: The St. Louis Bombers beat the Detroit Falcons, 53-49 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. This was the only score on this historic day: Baseball was out of season, football was in midweek, and while the NHL season had started, no games were scheduled for this day.

This was also an election day. The Republican Party won control of both houses of the U.S. Congress. Among the new members of the U.S. House of Representatives were Democrat John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Republican Richard Nixon of California.

Among the new Senators were Republicans Joseph R. McCarthy of Wiscoinson, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. of Massachusetts (grandson of a Senator of the same name), and John Bricker of Ohio (former Governor and the Party's 1944 nominee for Vice President); and Democrat Willis Robertson of Virginia (father of future TV evangelist Pat Robertson).