December 18
From Hoopedia
- 1896 - Oak Park and Austin high schools play the first interscholastic girls' game in Illinois.
- 1908 - Brooklyn's Smart Set Athletic Club (right), 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 made five consecutive NBA All-Star teams, is born in Baltimore, Maryland.
- 1951 - NBA defensive specialist Bobby Jones is born in Charlotte, North Carolina.
- 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).
- 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.
