Milestone #1

It took over a year (I started this blog on July 2, 2015), but I have finished going through every season of the NBL and identified all that I could. I will now go back and go through some of the mystery players with fresh eyes, and access to new sources of data that I did not have when I started, so hopefully I will be able to gain more information on the identities of some of these mystery players of the NBL. I will also update the pages to make them look a little better and add more pictures if I can find them. I will only add post if I identify someone either previously unidentified or incorrectly identified. For things like adding photos, birth places, teams played, etc, I will only update the post and not call it out in a new blogpost. Or maybe I will store those up for one big blog post, I don't know.

But so far, here is the NBL by the numbers:

Number of NBL players:  773
Unidentified/unknown whereabouts: 70
Surviving NBL players: 17 confirmed, with three more who were alive in the last 5 years but not sure if they are still around.

Longevity:
Of the 773 players, 12.68% of the NBL players are known to have lived to see the age of 90. 3.88% died before the age of 50. (I expect the 3.88% to rise some as these unknown players are found. A few of them are probably obscure because they died young.) To compare the same 12 year period with other sports:

MLB Longevity (1938-1949)
Under 50   5.84%
Over 90     12.75%

NFL Longevity (1938-1949)
Under 50   7.95%
Over 90     8.79.%

NHL Longevity (1938-1949)
Under 50   6.96%
Over 90     4.64%

NBL Longevity (1938-1949)
Under 50   3.88%
Over 90     12.68%

Thanks to John Grasso and Jay LaFountaine for their help and support, and to the family members of some players who gave us help.