December 18
From Hoopedia
- 1908 - Smart Set Athletic Club of Brooklyn, the top black team in the country, travels to Washington, D.C., to play the Crescent Athletic Club. It is the first inter-city basketball game between two all-black teams.
- 1913 - Hall of Fame coach Ray Meyer, who won 724 games at DePaul University, is born in Chicago, Illinois.
- 1931 - Gene Shue, who invented the "spin move" and who was the highest scoring guard in the NBA (until Magic Johnson), is born in Baltimore, Maryland.
- 1961 - Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia Warriors scores 78 points against the Los Angeles Lakers.
- 1983 - The San Diego Clippers end their 29-game road losing streak.
- 1991 - (Right) Karl Malone, of the Utah Jazz, scores in double figures, beginning a streak of 575 games in which he will do so, ending on March 26, 1999. That streak is the third-longest in NBA history, behind Michael Jordan (840) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (787).
- 1992 - Howard Cann, who led New York University to the AAU Championship as a player and to the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) championship as a coach, passes away at age 97.
- 2002 - The NBA Expansion Committee unanimously recommends that the NBA Board of Governors approve an expansion franchise for the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, to be owned and operated by Robert L. Johnson. That franchise is now the Charlotte Bobcats.
