End of The Phillips 66ers Winning Streak
Finally, in the 1958-59 season, the Phillips 66ers showed they were mortal, and took a mediocre third-place. First was the Denver-Chicago Truckers, with a 21-9 record, and second the Wichita Vickers, with a 19-11 record. Joining the league that season was the Buchan Bakers from Seattle.
Unhappily for the rest of the league, in the 1959-60 season, the Phillips 66ers were again on top.
The escalation in the salaries of the National Basketball Association had a serious impact on industrial basketball teams. When the salaries of NBA players and industrial league players were comparable in the 1950s, top-notch players saw little advantage to joining the pros. However, by the early 1960s, the industrial teams found that they could not compete with the pros salary-wise, as top college graduates increasingly gravitated to the NBA. The NIBL saw a decline in its program. The Peoria Cats, for example, disbanded at the end of the 1959-60 season.
In the NIBL's final season, 1960–61, the league had dropped down to only six members, and was divided into two divisions, Eastern (Cleveland Pipers, Akron Goodyears, New York Tuck Tapers) and Western (Denver-Chicago Truckers, Phillips 66ers, and Seattle Buchan Bakers). Instead of the round-robin schedule determining a winner, the league sponsored a four-team playoff. The Cleveland Pipers beat the Denver-Chicago Truckers for the championship, 136-100; and for third place, the Phillips 66ers beat the Akron Goodyears, 114-112.
In 1961 the league reorganized changing sponsorship from industrial companies and became the National AAU Basketball League (NABL). The Cleveland Pipers and the New York Tapers joined the newly-formed American Basketball League in 1961.
The Bartlesville Phillips 66ers won the league championship in 11 of the league’s 14 seasons.
Read more about this topic: National Industrial Basketball League
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