After struggling through the 1948-49 season, the National Basketball League gave up and its six teams merged into the BAA, which was renamed the National Basketball Association.
The new NBA had 17 teams in a clumsy, three-division setup that led into an even more awkward playoff format. In the new Central Division, Minnesota and Rochester tied for first place, while Fort Wayne and Chicago tied for third, requiring tiebreaker games to determine seeding. Minneapolis and Chicago were the winners.
Led by four future Hall-of-Famers, George Mikan, Jim Pollard, and rookies Slater Martin and Vern Mikkelsen, the Minneapolis Lakers won their second straight championship, even though they had to play an extra round, in addition to their tiebreaker.
The Lakers breezed through the first two rounds, sweeping both Chicago and Fort Wayne in best-of-three series. After the second round, there were still three teams remaining. The Syracuse Nationals were given a bye into the finals, because they had the league's best regular-season record, while the Lakers had to play the Anderson Duffey Packers in a best-of-three series, which they won in two games.
Entering the finals, the Lakers had played and won seven post-season games, while the Nats had won four out of five. The Lakers took the title in six games, including two victories at Syracuse, where the Nats had lost only once during the regular season.
Mikan was the league's scoring leader for the second year in a row. Another future Hall-of-Famer, the New York Knicks' Dick McGuire, was the assists leader.
