1945–46 National Basketball League (United States) season

The 1945–46 NBL season was the eleventh overall season for the U.S.A.'s National Basketball League (NBL) and its ninth season under that name after previously going by the Midwest Basketball Conference in its first two seasons of existence. Entering this season, the NBL would see itself get back to the highest number of teams it had since the 1939–40 NBL season, with it seeing eight teams competing in the league due to not just the Indianapolis Kautskys returning to the NBL following World War II's conclusion, but also seeing the Rochester Royals and Youngstown Bears joining the NBL as well, with the latter team once being misattributed as the same Pittsburgh Raiders team from the previous season being moved to Youngstown, Ohio. As a result of the increasing number of teams following the conclusion of World War II, the NBL allowed for each team to play a total of 32-34 scheduled NBL games for their respective seasons. Because of the return of the divisional formatting in the NBL, the NBL Playoffs this season would see the two best teams in each division in the NBL, with the NBL's championship series ending with the newly established Rochester Royals upsetting the Sheboygan Red Skins three games to none in a best of five series.

Following its 12th season of existence as the NBL, the NBL and Basketball Association of America merged operations to create the National Basketball Association. Despite the NBL continuing to exist until the 1948–49 NBL season as the longer-lasting operation, the NBL would not recognize the twelve NBL seasons (nor the two MBC precursor seasons nor even the one National Professional Basketball League season that inspired the league's creation) as a part of its own history. As such, none of the previous twelve NBL seasons nor even the two MBC seasons would officially be recognized by the NBA, with the NBA recognizing the 1946–47 BAA season as its first official season of play instead.

Of the eight NBL teams that competed in the league this season, four of these teams would end up playing in what can be considered the modern-day NBA, with two of them still existing in the NBA to this very day. Both the recent NBL champions in the Rochester Royals and the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons would move to the Basketball Association of America in the 1948–49 BAA season alongside the Indianapolis Kautskys, though two of those three teams would have to change their team names by the time they switched leagues from the NBL to the BAA due to them utilizing business sponsorships with their team names with Fort Wayne involving the Zollner Piston Company and Indianapolis involving Kautsky's Grocery store, with the Fort Wayne squad removing the Zollner name to just be the Fort Wayne Pistons and the Indianapolis squad renaming the Kautskys to the Indianapolis Jets. A few years after the BAA merged with the NBL to become the NBA, both the Royals and the Pistons would move out of their original home venues by the end of the 1956–57 NBA season, with the Rochester Royals now becoming the Sacramento Kings and the Fort Wayne Pistons now becoming the Detroit Pistons. Meanwhile, the fourth team that got involved, the Sheboygan Red Skins would only play for the 1949–50 NBA season before leaving the NBA to create their own rivaling professional basketball league called the National Professional Basketball League (which would not be related to the NPBL that the NBL had been inspired from, as well as ultimately lasted for only one season before being forced to close up operations early). While the two-time NBL champion Oshkosh All-Stars were also considered for the NBL-BAA merger that became the modern-day NBA, no other NBL team from this season would end up joining the NBA once the two leagues merged.