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1928 – 1933
The factory game: Before professional basketball had stable leagues, it had factory teams, and South Bend's factories fielded them. The player-record compilations of the era place a South Bend Bendix Brakes team playing independent professional basketball in 1928–29 and 1929–30 — the brake works' name on a court, in the years when the Bendix plant was becoming the city's industrial giant.
The succession in the record: The same compilations carry a South Bend Guardsmen independent team in 1930–31, and a South Bend entry in the National Professional Basketball League — a short-lived Midwestern industrial league — in 1932–33. That is the documented size of the city's early professional basketball: three team names across five seasons, preserved in players' records rather than in any standings book that has reached this record.
Sources:
- Pro Basketball Encyclopedia, player records — Sterling Greiner: South Bend Bendix Brakes (independent), 1928–29 and 1929–30; South Bend Guardsmen, 1930–31; South Bend, National Professional Basketball League, 1932–33.