Cagers
From Hoopedia
By Barry Rubinstein from NBA Encyclopedia
In its early stages, professional basketball was violent and chaotic. And that was on the court. Players armed themselves with knee, elbow and shin pads. At worst, it could resemble something closer to a riot with players vulnerable to physical attack from vitriolic, mean-spirited crowds cramped inside the tiny halls and gymnasiums where the games were played.
Frank Basloe, an early promoter and manager, remembered a Trenton player being knocked out cold during a game in Millville, New Jersey, as the fans "proceeded to kick him in the face. He ended up with a broken jaw." Indeed, home-court advantage certainly carried a much different connotation than it does today.
Such incidents resulted in drastic measures. The Trenton team took to playing its games inside a wire cage, designed I to separate the players from the bellicose fans, and vice versa.
That was the intent, anyway. To Fred Paderatz, who managed the Trenton team part-time when he wasn't toiling at his regular job as a carpenter, fashioning the first cage from chicken wire seemed to provide adequate protection for all involved. Fred Cooper, the team captain, advanced the process by building a stronger cage of steel mesh.
The reality led to unexpected results; players learned to change direction and elude opponents by bouncing off the siding of the cage, ripping their skin apart in the process, despite the padding they wore. "Players would be thrown against the wire," recalled Barney Sedran, one of the great small players of the time, "and most of us would get cut. The court was covered in blood."
Not surprisingly, the players quickly developed an affinity to a net made of rope rather than steel, first introduced by a team from Bristol, Pennsylvania, and used extensively throughout Pennsylvania and neighboring states into the 1920s.
Whether using a cage fashioned of rope or metal, the players -particularly those on visiting teams, as well as officials -remained at the mercy of the often unruly spectators. Some took to jabbing players' legs with hatpins and lit cigarettes. Nails, heated with mining lamps, were the weapon of choice in hardscrabble Pennsylvania coal towns, as miners would throw them in the general direction of the referee or the opposing free-throw shooter. Heavily-waxed floors -- in preparation for the social dances often held after games -- added to the already treacherous playing conditions.
While trying to avoid being shoved into the cage, felled by a slippery floor or hit by sharp flying objects, teams generally employed two methods of scoring baskets. There was the layup -made more difficult by the practice of the opposition placing a "standing guard" in the free-throw lane -and the two-handed set shot, at times propelled by an underhand delivery.
The era did contribute what was at the time a literal description; players came to be known as "cagers," a phrase that would be a part of the game for generations.
