1942–43 Sheboygan Red Skins season

The 1942–43 Sheboygan Red Skins season was the Red Skins' fifth year in the United States' National Basketball League (NBL), which would also be the sixth year the NBL itself existed. However, if one were to include their few seasons they played as an independent team under a few various team names involving local businesses like The Ballhorns (being sponsored by a local florist and funeral parlor), the Art Imigs (being sponsored by a local dry cleaning shop owned and operated by a man named Art Imig with team jerseys saying Art Imig's), and the Enzo Jels (being sponsored by a local gelatin manufacturer known as Enzo-Pac) at various points before becoming the Sheboygan Red Skins due to their promotion up into the NBL, this would officially be their tenth overall season of play as well. Five teams originally competed in the NBL for the 1942–43 season, which was the league's lowest number of teams available to that point (largely caused by World War II) before the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets folded operations four games into the season in order to have only four competing teams left there (the Sheboygan Red Skins, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, the two-time defending champion Oshkosh All-Stars, and the newly-implemented Chicago Studebaker Flyers as a replacement for the Chicago Bruins) for the rest of the season, leaving the NBL without divisions for a third straight season in a row.

The Red Skins played their home games at the Sheboygan Municipal Auditorium and Armory. For the second time in franchise history (1941), the Red Skins advanced to the NBL Championship, with Sheboygan sweeping the Oshkosh All-Stars 2-0. They then went on to win their first and only NBL championship by defeating the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, two games to one in a best-of-three series. In the third and deciding game, Ed Dancker made the game-winning shot from the corner with less than five seconds remaining to win the championship.

Head coach Carl Roth won the league's Coach of the Year Award despite Sheboygan barely having an above-average team record that year and being second place in the regular season behind the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons (as well as Roth only coaching for 13 regular season games), while player Ken Buehler was named NBL Rookie of the Year. Ed Dancker (First Team), Buddy Jeannette (Second), and Ken Suesens (Second) earned All-NBL honors. In terms of profits during the season, however, the Red Skins franchise (alongside the rivaling Oshkosh All-Stars) operated in a manner similar to that of the nearby Green Bay Packers NFL team with community members owning a share of the team. For Sheboygan's case, despite them making worthwhile profits with their new arena they had built at the time to seat a few thousand people, the actual usage of it was either free or very minimal for the team, meaning their expenses related to traveling, equipment, and player-staff salaries, to the point where some players were paid only $50 per game (with Buddy Jeannette getting $500 per game for his late inclusion for being signed away from the independently ran Rochester Eber Seagrams (now the NBA's Sacramento Kings) franchise).