RICHMOND, Va. -- In 1925, when the Pittsburgh NHL hockey club first took to the ice at Duquesne Garden, they did so as the Pittsburgh Pirates, the use of the name granted as a favor by Barney Dreyfuss, the owner of the wildly popular, reigning World Series champion baseball Pirates, lending the team an immediate measure of respect.
Nearly a decade later, in 1933, Art Rooney’s football team first marched onto the football field as the Pittsburgh Pirates, in solidarity with their baseball brethren, with whom they shared a home at Forbes Field.
So, it stands to reason that, at some point, there must have been a basketball team called the Pirates as well, though I’d never actually heard of them until I decided to type “Pittsburgh Pirates Basketball” into the search bar on my computer last week. I discovered that there had in fact been a short-lived team in town that became the fourth franchise to use that popular nickname, taking to the court as one of the founding members of the National Basketball League in 1937.
Additional digging revealed that the basketball Pirates didn’t last long, only two seasons (making a third go of it, and lasting only one additional season, as the Pittsburgh Raiders in 1944), but the NBL flowed into the modern National Basketball Association, with several teams that exist to this day.
ROB ULLMAN / DKPS
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