The NIBL was an amateur league that provided a full-time job to basketball players, who would then practice and compete after a day’s work. As Shipp told me, this league thrived in the 1950s and 1960s as a legitimate competitor league to the NBA, successfully recruiting top players out of college because the pay was better, and retirement from basketball didn’t mean you were out of a job. Shipp himself was drafted by my hometown team, The New York Knicks, but chose to join Phillips.
