Trenton Colonials Eastern Professional Basketball League

Trenton Colonials

Eastern Professional Basketball League (1961-1969)

Tombstone

Born: 1961
Folded: Postseason 1969

First Game:
Last Game:

EPBL Championships: None

Arena

Trenton High School (2,200)11967-68 Allentown Jets Program

Marketing

Team Colors:

Ownership

 

Editor's Pick

Boxed Out

Remembering The Eastern Professional Basketball League
By Syl Sobel & Jay Rosenstein
 

In Boxed out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League, Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein tell the fascinating story of a league that was a pro basketball institution for over 30 years, showcasing top players from around the country. During the early years of professional basketball, the Eastern League was the next-best professional league in the world after the NBA. It was home to big-name players such as Sherman White, Jack Molinas, and Bill Spivey, who were implicated in college gambling scandals in the 1950s and were barred from the NBA, and top Black players such as Hal “King” Lear, Julius McCoy, and Wally Choice, who could not make the NBA into the early 1960s due to unwritten team quotas on African-American players.

 

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Background

The Trenton Colonials were a minor league basketball team that played for eight seasons in the Eastern Professional Basketball League.  The EPBL was the highest level of pro basketball beneath the NBA and the fledgling American Basketball Association during the 1960’s.  Most of the clubs were clustered in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Connecticut during the years the Colonials competed in the league.

The Colonials were usually also-rans in the Eastern League.  Their finest season came in 1963-64 when they advanced to the league championship series and lost in a two-game sweep to the Camden Bullets.

The Colonials folded following the 1968-69 campaign.  The city got a new Eastern League club in 1970 known as the Trenton Pat Pavers.  The Pat Pavers lasted only two seasons before going out of business in 1972.

1965 Trenton Colonials Program from the Eastern Professional Basketball League

 

Links

Eastern Professional Basketball League Programs

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