1965 NYK vs 76ers full game order

[Clyde Frazier]

I was just wondering.. When you say significant number of 60's games, I'd imagine they have a lot of playoff particularly finals games. What % of say Russell's and Wilt's playoff games do you think they have on tape?

Oh, by "significant number" I meant dozens of games, but not even close to full seasons or even postseasons.

I think they don't have many broadcasts but most of their footage comes from silent tapes that rarely captured full games. The big exception is 1960s Knicks coaching tapes (like the one I presented), it seems that they have a huge amount of them and they are usually complete. Unfortunately, Knicks were not relevant in the playoffs for the majority of the 1960s.

I know they have at least:

- one Celtics vs Knicks game from 1958/59,
- one Warriors Vs Knicks game from 1959/60,
- Baylor career high game (likely incomplete),
- around 10 Knicks games from 1961-62,
- Wilt's 73 points game from 1962/63,
- Warriors vs Knicks game from 1963/64,
- Royals vs Knicks game from 1964 or 1965,
- Lakers vs Knicks game from 1964/65
- Sixers vs Knicks game from 1965/65,
- many Knicks games from the late 1960s.

I have a few such silent Knicks tapes myself in my collection.

I continue to not get it.

What entity owns the footage? If it’s the NBA what is the monetary advantage to withholding it? It seems like it’d be great content for NBA TV, the website, league pass, etc.

Why are these tapes being kept from the public? Who benefits from that?

Here's a relatively recent article about it (from December 2021):

https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageNBA/s/q67v2yOU69

[kcktiny]

Wonder what happened to this effort from 2005?

https://www.cnet.com/culture/nba-to-create-huge-digital-archive/

NBA to create huge digital archive

Pro basketball league turns to SGI to create searchable digital repository of every filmed minute in its history. Photos: Full-court press for NBA video

Daniel Terdiman
Former Senior Writer / News
Daniel Terdiman is a senior writer at CNET News covering Twitter, Net culture, and everything in between.
Dec. 9, 2005 3:59 p.m. PT


MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--If you're a rabid basketball fan who's wished you could get your hands on video of that one memorable shot by Michael Jordan from the Chicago Bulls play-off game you went to in 1989, the National Basketball Association may soon be able to help you out.
The league, working with Silicon Graphics, is setting out to create a digital archive of the entire filmed history of its games, from legendary contests between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers to seemingly meaningless late-season games between out-of-contention teams. The archive will be available at NBA.com. The league unveiled the project Thursday night at SGI's offices here.

NBA video
If the project, which could take as long as six years to complete, goes as planned, fans should be able to get their hands on clips of just about any hoops moment they want, and even create their own personalized video reels.

"We're thinking of making the video available to (fans) so they could edit their own highlight videos and hopefully make them available (in turn) to NBA.com," said Stephen Hellmuth, senior vice president of operations and technology for NBA Entertainment.

The program involves archiving all new footage on a sophisticated digital storage system as well as the painstaking transfer to digital media of nearly 60 years of footage currently stored on aging videotape. It's aimed at making any filmed moment in the league's history accessible to anyone, from coaches to fantasy-league fans.

The NBA won't wait until the whole thing is done, and could start rolling out bits of the project as early as next year, but it's not yet clear how the league will charge for it. Hellmuth speculated that NBA fans could pay for the right to compete to create the best custom highlight reels, which they would upload to NBA.com. He said it was also possible that fans could pay for the right to sift through the archives and create personalized content that they could then burn onto DVDs on their own computers.

Hellmuth said he thinks the NBA is following a technological path that will be of great interest to Major League Baseball and the National Football League.

"This is a migration that all sports leagues are going to have to make," he said. "We're at the center, so we're going to get there first."

Click here to Play
Video:
A video slam-dunk
NBA uses SGI system for "replays"

According to Greg Estes, SGI vice president for global marketing, the NBA will be leveraging a system that includes SGI storage systems, its computers and its software.

"They have hard problems to solve. They have 30 satellite feeds coming every day (to manipulate and archive, and our technology) is at the heart and soul of that," Estes said. "We're excited about the NBA saying it out loud."

The NBA plans to employ an unspecified but large number of people to review every minute of its footage, both new and old, in order to time stamp and review plays. The idea, said Hellmuth, is to create a giant searchable database of plays that would note the players involved, their exact location on the court, at what point in the game the play happened, the outcome of the play and a rating for it.

Then, he continued, anyone could search the database for, say, all 3-point shots with less than two minutes on the game clock by the Golden State Warriors' Baron Davis.

Hellmuth also said the archiving project is being done in a "burning the candle at both ends" manner in which all new game footage and the oldest footage--which must be dealt with before old tapes deteriorate--will be handled and made available first. Then the league will work toward the middle.

And though the project is about making any of the footage available to anyone who needs it, the league is clearly most excited about the revenue potential such an extensive library could bring.

"I (might) want to see the three times (Milwaukee Bucks Hall of Famer) Oscar Robertson fouled out with less than 10 seconds left," said SGI's Estes. "Just as a fan, to bring fans into the game, it's just amazing. And from a business standpoint, this allows the NBA to monetize" its archive.

[Clyde Frazier]

Wonder what happened to this effort from 2005?

https://www.cnet.com/culture/nba-to-create-huge-digital-archive/

I remember this article all too well reading it when it was first published. Even taking 6 years to complete like they claimed in the article would've been reasonable considering streaming video hadn't taken off yet.

And sadly it's mainly turned into false hopes. It's pretty clear they just don't see the undertaking as financially viable. I do think we should have access to more footage than we do at this point tho.

[SNPA]

WTF?

Get interns. One reel, digitize and document, next reel. Rinse repeat. This isn’t a hard or terribly expensive operational problem to solve.

These ugly in season cup courts cost more than this project would.

[HeartBreakKid]

WTF?

Get interns. One reel, digitize and document, next reel. Rinse repeat. This isn’t a hard or terribly expensive operational problem to solve.

These ugly in season cup courts cost more than this project would.

You're talking like a tape collector who just needs to upload things to his Youtube channel.

They are a billion dollar company and have an image to uphold. Those games need to be remastered, the audio needs to be fixed, many of the reels will be damaged and require repair, some will not even have sound at all and they'd need to figure out whether to make up music, add commentary, etc. They need pay multiple people to do some of those things, they also need someone to strategize how to advertise it, they need a streaming service to put it on, they need someone to figure out how to monetize it. You need a project manager and a quality assurance person as well.

All for what is basically no return. People who grew up watching 40-70s and some 80s basketball do not use the internet enough to warrant this type of project, and many of them wouldn't know how to even find the footage in the first place. It's a tiny and dying demographic, and one that is opposite to the age demographic they try to appeal to.

They could do a project with a fraction of the work on players they already have footage of and make more money.

[70sFan]

WTF?

Get interns. One reel, digitize and document, next reel. Rinse repeat. This isn’t a hard or terribly expensive operational problem to solve.

These ugly in season cup courts cost more than this project would.

You're talking like a tape collector who just needs to upload things to his Youtube channel.

They are a billion dollar company and have an image to uphold. Those games need to be remastered, the audio needs to be fixed, many of the reels will be damaged and require repair, some will not even have sound at all and they'd need to figure out whether to make up music, add commentary, etc. They need pay multiple people to do some of those things, they also need someone to strategize how to advertise it, they need a streaming service to put it on, they need someone to figure out how to monetize it. You need a project manager and a quality assurance person as well.

All for what is basically no return. People who grew up watching 40-70s and some 80s basketball do not use the internet enough to warrant this type of project, and many of them wouldn't know how to even find the footage in the first place. It's a tiny and dying demographic, and one that is opposite to the age demographic they try to appeal to.

They could do a project with a fraction of the work on players they already have footage of and make more money.

All of that is true - yet for some reason they transferred some footage and they have uploaded a lot of rare clips, so they still spend money on that.