1947–48 Baltimore Bullets season

The 1947–48 Baltimore Bullets season was the Bullets' first season in the Basketball Association of America which would later be named the NBA. They played their first three seasons in the American Basketball League in its last few seasons as a professional basketball league that rivaled the BAA and the National Basketball League, making this their fourth professional basketball season in franchise history. This season marked their second overall championship after previously winning the 1946 ABL Championship over the Philadelphia Sphas. (The Bullets also claimed a third championship in 1947 due to their overwhelming regular season record in the ABL that year. In the postseason, the Bullets felt that the ABL was unnecessarily delaying the start of their championship series, and they elected to play in the 1947 World Professional Basketball Tournament instead. The ABL therefore ruled that the Bullets forfeited the 1947 ABL Championship to the Trenton Tigers, establishing the discrepancy between the Bullets' claimed championships and the ABL's ruling.) In the 1947–48 season, the Bullets won their only BAA/NBA championship with a 4–2 series win over the defending champion Philadelphia Warriors. There were also additional talks between the younger BAA and the older NBL where the champions of the BAA (which became the Baltimore Bullets this season) and the champions of the NBL (which became the newly rebranded Minneapolis Lakers, who had an immediate shift from their early Detroit Gems days due primarily in part to George Mikan's addition to the team) competing to see who would be the ultimate champions between the two leagues (akin to a basketball version of the World Series), but that ultimately would never happen, especially once the Lakers joined the Rochester Royals, Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons (soon turned Fort Wayne Pistons), and Indianapolis Kautskys (soon turned Indianapolis Jets) as one of four NBL teams to move to the BAA by the end of the season. With their departure from the NBA during the 1954–55 season, the Baltimore Bullets are currently considered the only defunct NBA team to ever win a championship under the BAA/NBA name. The 1947-48 Bullets would go on to join the Chicago Stags from the 1946–47 season and the Washington Capitols from the 1948–49 season as the only BAA/NBA teams to close operations after competing in a BAA/NBA Finals championship series.