In the early years of professional basketball, before the bright lights and global reach of today’s NBA, the game was held together by grit, geography, and a patchwork of teams fighting to survive. Few franchises capture that fragile, formative moment better than the Tri-Cities Blackhawks — a team that didn’t just represent one city, but an entire region straddling the Mississippi River.
In this episode, we’re joined by author Don Doxsie, whose book "Tri-City Blackhawks: A Turbulent History of a Pioneering NBA Team" serves as both our guide and our lens into this overlooked chapter of basketball history. Based in Moline, Rock Island, and Davenport, the Blackhawks were a product of the industrial Midwest and the now-defunct National Basketball League. They played a bruising, defense-first style, developed standout players, and, for a brief moment, stood toe-to-toe with the best teams of their era.
But as pro basketball rapidly evolved — culminating in the 1949 merger that created the modern NBA — the realities of a small, fragmented market began to close in. Through Doxsie’s reporting and perspective, we explore the team’s promising early seasons, its mounting financial and competitive pressures, and the instability that ultimately led to its relocation.
It’s a story of reinvention as much as decline — one that would eventually see the franchise evolve into today’s Atlanta Hawks, but only after leaving the Tri-Cities behind. Along the way, Doxsie brings to life the personalities, league politics, and day-to-day realities of running a team on the margins of a sport still struggling to define itself.
