> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.grumpybuck.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Weirdest Places the NBA Actually Played - URL: https://www.grumpybuck.com/the-weirdest-places-the-nba-actually-played/ - Published: 2026-08-31T15:43:19.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-31T15:43:19.000Z - Author: Brad Riddell - Tags: Sports History Today's NBA lives in half-billion-dollar palaces with courtside sushi. It did not start there. For its first few decades, the league played wherever it could get a lease — chocolate-town hockey barns, military drill halls, high school gyms, and one arena that is now, literally, a meadow. These are the weirdest buildings that ever hosted real NBA basketball. ## The Chocolate Barn Where Wilt Scored 100 ![The photo that had to stand in for TV cameras: Wilt and the ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/arena-wilt-100.jpg) The photo that had to stand in for TV cameras: Wilt and the "100" — snapped by an off-duty AP photographer who had brought his son to the game ![The Hershey arena bowl — the room where 100 happened. (public domain)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/arena-hershey-inside.jpg) The Hershey arena bowl — the room where 100 happened. (public domain) March 2, 1962\. The Philadelphia Warriors played a "home" game 85 miles from home, at the Hershey Sports Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania — a hockey barn in a chocolate company town, because that's how the pre-TV NBA grew its brand: neutral-site games wherever there were seats. Only 4,124 people showed up. There were no TV cameras. And Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points — 36-of-63 from the floor, an impossible 28-of-32 from the line, all 48 minutes. The greatest scoring night in basketball history survives only as a fourth-quarter radio recording and a locker-room photo of Wilt holding a piece of paper reading "100." Best detail: before the game, Wilt killed time in the arcade next to the lobby. His words: "I broke every shooting record at the arcade. I killed it." ![Wilt Chamberlain in his Philadelphia warmup years (public domain)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/arena-wilt-1960.jpg) Wilt Chamberlain in his Philadelphia warmup years (public domain) ![Harrisburg Patriot-News, March 3, 1962: ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/clip-arena-wilt-1962.jpg) Harrisburg Patriot-News, March 3, 1962: "Wilt Scores 100" — the local paper had the story almost to itself ## The Armory Where the Circus Outranked the Finals ![The artifact: an NBA Finals program — ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/arena-armory-program-1951.jpg) The artifact: an NBA Finals program — "Knickerbockers vs. Rochester, N.B.A. Championship Play-Off, 69th Regiment Armory," 25 cents ![The 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue — 3 straight NBA Finals played inside. Photo: CC BY 2.0](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/arena-armory.jpg) The 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue — 3 straight NBA Finals played inside. Photo: CC BY 2.0 ![NBA basketball under the armory rafters — Knicks vs. Lakers on the drill floor](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/arena-armory-game.jpg) NBA basketball under the armory rafters — Knicks vs. Lakers on the drill floor Every spring, the Ringling Bros. circus took over Madison Square Garden — and the Knicks got evicted. Their fallback: the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, a military drill hall seating about 5,600\. This wasn't a once-a-year quirk. The Knicks played every home game of 3 consecutive NBA Finals — 1951, 1952, and 1953 — in the armory, because the Garden's boss wouldn't bump the elephants for the NBA. They lost all 3 series. Bonus history: the same drill floor hosted the 1913 Armory Show, the exhibition that introduced modern art to America. Picasso and pick-and-rolls, one building. ## The Arena That Became a National Park ![The Coliseum alone in the farmland — the population-center bet, visible from the air](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/arena-richfield-aerial.jpg) The Coliseum alone in the farmland — the population-center bet, visible from the air ![Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 30, 1976: ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/clip-arena-richfield-1976.jpg) Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 30, 1976: "Cavs' Snyder latest instant hero — Coliseum fans go berserk" In 1974, Cavaliers owner Nick Mileti built the 20,273-seat Richfield Coliseum on open farmland halfway between Cleveland and Akron — nothing around it but fields and a turnpike exit. The theory: 5 million Ohioans lived within an hour's drive. Critics called it Mileti's Folly. For one spring it worked perfectly — the 1976 "Miracle of Richfield," when Dick Snyder's running shot won a Game 7 and 20,000-plus fans shook the building nightly. The Cavs left in 1994, the wrecking ball came in 1999, and the land was absorbed into Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The site of the Miracle of Richfield is now a restored meadow where birders go to count bobolinks. No other NBA arena has ever been returned to nature. ## The Court That Belonged in a Museum ![La Crosse Tribune, Oct 5, 1977: ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/clip-arena-mecca-1977.jpg) La Crosse Tribune, Oct 5, 1977: "Arena floor is a work of art" — the Robert Indiana court's debut week The Milwaukee Arena — the MECCA — was the NBA's smallest building by the 1980s, seating 10,783\. Its immortality is the floor. In 1977 the Bucks commissioned Robert Indiana — the pop artist behind "LOVE" — to paint the entire court: two giant mirrored M's spanning the halves in gold and yellow, billed as the world's largest pop-art painting and the only fully hand-painted floor in NBA history, designed specifically to pop on television. Decades later the floor surfaced at an architectural salvage sale, one bid away from the scrap pile, before a collector rescued it. It has since been restored, exhibited as art, and rolled back out for a Bucks throwback night. ## The High School Gym in the NBA — and the Bowling Eviction ![Indianapolis Star, April 8, 1955: ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/clip-arena-indy-1955.jpg) Indianapolis Star, April 8, 1955: "Amazing Pistons Win Again" — an NBA Finals home game, 120 miles from home ![Nov 22, 1950: the 19-18 stall game — the night that provoked the shot clock](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/arena-stall-1950.jpg) Nov 22, 1950: the 19-18 stall game — the night that provoked the shot clock ![St. Cloud Times, Nov 23, 1950: ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/clip-arena-stall-1950.jpg) St. Cloud Times, Nov 23, 1950: "Ft. Wayne Gives Pros Big Black Eye" The Fort Wayne Pistons played big-league basketball at North Side High School's gym — capacity around 3,000 — into 1952\. And Fort Wayne's weirdness didn't stop when they got a real arena: in 1955, the Coliseum's management was so sure the Pistons wouldn't make the NBA Finals that it booked a national bowling tournament over their dates. The Pistons made the Finals — and played their 3 "home" games in Indianapolis, won all 3, and lost Game 7 in Syracuse by a point. One more Fort Wayne gift: in 1950 they beat the Lakers 19-18, the lowest-scoring game ever, stalling all night to neutralize George Mikan — the fiasco that provoked the invention of the shot clock. ## The Arena With Doors to Winter Rochester's Edgerton Park Arena — home of the Royals, the future Sacramento Kings — had a floor so short that, as legend has it, attendants opened the doors behind each basket on fast breaks so players could run straight through and out into the Rochester night rather than hit the wall. The Royals clinched the 1951 NBA championship in that building — meaning an NBA title was once decided in an arena where the cool-down lap went outdoors, in winter. ## Honorable Mentions ![Wharton Field House, Moline, Illinois — NBA basketball in a 1928 brick gym. Photo: CC BY-SA 4.0](https://storage.ghost.io/c/6a/b0/6ab0eb2f-edcf-411e-aaff-39e6be3d4e39/content/images/2026/08/arena-wharton.jpg) Wharton Field House, Moline, Illinois — NBA basketball in a 1928 brick gym. Photo: CC BY-SA 4.0 The Tri-Cities Blackhawks — the future Atlanta Hawks — played NBA ball in Wharton Field House, a 1928 brick gym in Moline, Illinois they shared with the local high school, where a young Red Auerbach had his only losing season. And the Minneapolis Lakers spent their final Minnesota season playing out of an armory before the moving trucks pointed toward Los Angeles. Courtside sushi came later. First came the elephants, the bobolinks, and the doors to winter.