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NBL

George Esser, unlike the creators of the earlier NBA and later ABA, set up a non-profit organization with a very inclusive government including a Competition Congress meetings in which opinions of how the body was being administered would be heard. It is perhaps this input and exercise of corporate democracy kept it in touch with the grass roots and from suffering periodical lost of member track operators and internal rebellions, like what happened to the ABA and NBA, in the NBA's case, fatally. Mr. Esser did not start the NBL for its own sake, but for the sake of his sons Bryan and Greg Esser who were competing in local races at the time before their father knew what BMX was. The elder Esser, being a motorcycle motocross race promoter like Ernie Alexander was on the United States's west coast before him, was dissatisfied with how the sanctionless independent tracks were run and created a bicycle motocross division of his thirtythree year old National Motorcycle League (NML).[1] The National Basketball League (NBL) is one of the original leagues prior to the NBA. The National Basketball League was a professional basketball league in the United States from 1937 to 1949. The NBL started with 13 previously independent teams in 1937-38. The league was created by three corporations General Electric, Firestone and Goodyear. The league was made up mostly by teams in small Great Lakes towns and corporate teams. The NBL lasted 12 years before merging with the three-year-old Basketball Association of America in 1949 which was renamed the National Basketball Association. Some of the current NBA teams can chase their roots to the NBL.

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