1947–48 National Basketball League (United States) season

The 1947–48 NBL season was the thirteenth overall season for the U.S.A.'s National Basketball League (NBL) and its eleventh and penultimate season under that name after previously going by the Midwest Basketball Conference (a semipro or amateur precursor to the NBL) in its first two seasons of existence. Entering this season, the NBL would see the addition of the Flint Dow A.C.'s (who would move operations in the middle of the season to Midland to become the Midland Dow A.C.'s, with future mentions of the team going forward representing them as the Flint/Midland Dow A.C.'s instead), who had originally operated as an Amateur Athletic Union turned works team that was intended to join the NBL the previous season before missing its initial deadline there.

It would also see the removal of both the Youngstown Bears due to financial difficulties and the defending NBL champion Chicago American Gears due to team owner Maurice White being bitter about not being named the President of the NBL and instead defecting his team from the league to create a rivaling professional basketball league of his own called the Professional Basketball League of America (which turned out to be a very short-lived rivaling league).

Despite the number of teams decreasing by one this season, the eleven NBL teams would compete in the highest number of regular season scheduled games yet in the league with either 59 or 60 total games played for each team. For the second season in a row, the NBL would utilize an extra round of playoff competition, in which the four best teams in each division in the opening round (with the best team competing against the third-best team in each division, while the second-best team faced off against the fourth-best team in each division in best of five series matchups), with the two remaining teams from each division faced off against each other in best of three series matchups in what was considered to be the "Division Semifinals" for each division there before the two teams from each division competed against each other in a return to the best of five series matchup for the NBL championship.

For this series, the Minneapolis Lakers (who would operate as a hard reboot from the previous season's Detroit Gems franchise and acquire star center George Mikan from the Chicago American Gears from a dispersal draft during the season) would defeat the Rochester Royals three games to one for the Lakers' first and only NBL championship won while in that league, as well as their first ever professional championship won in franchise history. An entire book focusing on the NBL's existence would be released in 2009 by historian and author Murry R. Nelson called "The National Basketball League: A History, 1935–1949", with an entire chapter being dedicated to this season of play.

After their next and final season of existence as the NBL occurred, the NBL and Basketball Association of America (the latter league only officially existing during this previous season) 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 (outside of certain circumstances), sometimes without comment. 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.

Following the end of this season, four of the eleven NBL teams that competed in the league this season would successfully switch leagues before the start of the new season, with the new defending NBL champion Minneapolis Lakers, the runner-up Rochester Royals, the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, and the Indianapolis Kautskys all successfully defecting from the NBL to the BAA for the 1948–49 BAA season (though the Zollner Pistons and Kautskys would have to rebrand themselves due to them utilizing business sponsors as their team names while in the NBL, which they did as the Fort Wayne Pistons and Indianapolis Jets respectively). Two other NBL teams in the Oshkosh All-Stars and the Toledo Jeeps also tried to defect from the NBL to the BAA as well, but they both failed to do so by comparison themselves for reasons that likely related to conditions involving their home venues at the time (with Oshkosh's venue being too small for the BAA's standards (with them still using the 2,000 seated South Park School Gymnasium by this time instead of upgrading their venue like the Sheboygan Red Skins had already done, likely only justifying it due to the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons still playing in the North Side High School Gym themselves (which does hold twice as many people, albeit with a smaller basketball court somehow)) and Toledo's basketball court having the wrong kind of floor to play the game on with slippery terrazzo being used instead of the typical wooden flooring). Not only that, but both the aforementioned Toledo Jeeps and the Flint/Midland Dow A.C.'s would leave the NBL due to financial difficulties after this season's end as well, leaving the league with only five teams remaining in the league for this season. However, of the teams that still remained intact by this season that would still compete for the NBL's final season of play, four more teams in the Anderson Duffey Packers (who would since rebrand themselves as just the Anderson Packers), the Sheboygan Red Skins, the Syracuse Nationals, and the Tri-Cities Blackhawks would all see themselves enter the National Basketball Association alongside the Lakers, Royals, and (Zollner) Pistons from this season once the NBL-BAA merger officially happened, with the Oshkosh All-Stars also being considered at one point, though they ultimately declined their entry themselves. Both Anderson and Sheboygan would only stay in the NBA to play for the 1949–50 NBA season before leaving the league to create their own rivaling professional basketball league (similar to what the Chicago American Gears had done to compete against the NBL) 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). As for every other surviving NBL team that made it to the NBA, they would all end up moving elsewhere at one point in time over the years, but would all still survive to the present day, with the NBL champion Minneapolis Lakers becoming the Los Angeles Lakers, the Rochester Royals becoming the Sacramento Kings, the Fort Wayne (Zollner) Pistons becoming the Detroit Pistons, the Syracuse Nationals becoming the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Tri-Cities Blackhawks becoming the Atlanta Hawks.