On July 21, I joined hockey-historian pals Kevin Vautour and Ed Norris on a field trip to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. Our mission: to meet with Alex Pedro from Archive Services and discuss our interest in an up-close and personal look at the Walter Brown Trophy. He generously ushered us to the trophy’s location and gave us time to peer at the old bowl and share our interests.
What we were hoping to find is any indication on the trophy itself linking the artifact to Frederick Stanley of Preston (aka Lord Stanley). News articles from the 1960s indicate that Lord Stanley’s coat of arms was buffed out as part of the preparation for the 19-inch-diameter bowl to be appropriately decorated for presentation to the professional basketball champion.
If you check online, the common lore holds that the Walter Brown Trophy has been presented to the pro-basketball champion since 1947, but articles published in the Boston Globe and other publications in the early 1960s contradict that version of the trophy’s history. The thing to know here is that no photos of the Walter Brown Trophy have been found in association with the NBA or prior basketball leagues before 1964 when the Boston Celtics won their fourth straight championship.
Walter Brown, for whom the old arena at Boston University was named in the late 1960s, was a hockey guy whose expanding interests made him a key leader in NBA and Celtics history.
Read more about Walter Brown in Vautour’s historical sketch. Vautour, a hockey author and longtime Bruins season-ticket holder, researched this story with an open mind, sharing the quest with Norris and myself. The Society of International Hockey Research (SIHR) gave Vautour, Norris and myself equal credit for this, but as Ed noted in our private correspondence, this is Kevin Vautour’s story. I was thrilled to participate.
Naturally, us three old hockey guys are giddy over the emerging fact that the Walter Brown Trophy can be traced back to the same man (Stanley) who in 1892 donated the bowl popularly known as the Stanley Cup.
The Walter Brown Trophy was officially transitioned into retirement by the NBA after the Celtics claimed it in 1976, though the Larry O’Brien Trophy had been introduced a few years earlier as the trophy the winning team could take home (with a new one created for the next season’s champion).
Where does Vautour’s research stand?
Pedro, when he finds time, intends to follow-up by examining the Basketball Hall’s photo archives to see if there is any evidence of the Walter Brown Trophy around the NBA via championship team photos or anecdotally during celebration on or off the court. Our own efforts to prove the theory wrong have not yielded any evidence that would contradict the early ’60s reporting that Brown brought the bowl to basketball and that, in its prior existence as a gigantic punch bowl, was owned/commissioned by Lord Stanley.
Ergo: Basketball has a Stanley Cup.
Rink Rap with Mick Colageo 