Eastern Professional Basketball League (1961-1966)
Tombstone
Born: 1961 – The Baltimore Bullets relocate to Camden, NJ
Moved: 1966 (Hartford Capitols)
First Game:
Last Game:
EPBL Champions: 1964
Arenas
1961-1962: Delaware Valley Garden
1962-1966: Convention Hall
Marketing
Team Colors:
Ownership
Owners:
- 1961: Harold “Chip” Shapiro, et al.
- 1962-1966: Tom Moraca, Spike Shandelman, et al.
Trophy Case
Eastern Professional Basketball League Most Valuable Player
- 1963: Paul Arizin
Editor's Pick
Boxed Out
Remembering The Eastern Professional Basketball League
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 Camden Bullets were a minor league basketball outfit that competed in the Eastern Professional Basketball League during the early/mid 1960’s. The Eastern League featured teams in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Connecticut at the time.
The Bullets arrived in South Jersey in the fall of 1961 as the defending Eastern League champs. They won the 1961 title as the Baltimore Bullets the previous spring. The Bullets most of their games that first season at the Delaware Valley Gardens, later known as Cherry Hill Arena. But they also played a few in Camden’s Convention Hall and made Camden their permanent home in the fall of 1962.
Chip Shapiro was the man who brought the team from Baltimore to Camden in the summer of 1961. Shapiro served as President, General Manager and Head Coach, but only briefly. He abruptly left the team after just one month of play in December 1961, resigning all of his positions and selling his interest in the team. A group of businessmen led by South Jersey contractor Tom Moraca and Philadelphia trophy-maker Spike Shandelman took over the team and kept it afloat for the next four seasons.
The Bullets added one more title while in Camden, winning the 1964 Eastern League crown by sweeping the Trenton Colonials in a best-of-five series.
Paul Azirin
The Bullets boasted the best player in the Eastern League in the early 60’s with former 10-time NBA All-Star Paul Arizin. Arizin was Philly through and through. He was a native son of the city who played college ball at Villanova and then spent his entire NBA career with the Philadelphia Warriors. When the Warriors left town for San Francisco in 1962, Arizin decided to retire from the NBA rather than move West with the franchise. At the time of his retirement, Arizin was the 3rd highest scorer in NBA history, despite missing two full seasons in his prime to serve in Korea.
After the Warriors departed, Paul Arizin played three more seasons for Camden before retiring from pro ball in 1965. He won Eastern League MVP honors in 1963 and helped the Bullets to the league championship the following season.
Arizin was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978 and chosen as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA history in 1996.
Move To Hartford
Bullets co-owners Spike Shandelman and Tom Moraca sold the team to Hartford interests in March 1966. The sale priced was not officially disclosed but was rumored to be in the neighborhood of $15,000 (Allentown Morning Call 3/24/1966). The team changed its name to the Hartford Capitols and played eight more seasons before going out of business in 1974.
In Memoriam
Hall-of-Fame forward Paul Azirin (Bullets ’62-’65) passed away in his sleep on December 12, 2006 at age 78. New York Times obituary.
Links
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One Response
It’s amazing to me that one of the greatest basketball players ever played three years in the Eastern League *after he retired*. It would be like Derek Jeter announcing he’s just signed a three-year contract with the Somerset Patriots.