Nat Hickey’s false record: Kevin Willis (at 44) is the oldest player to ever play in NBA history - an accolade he’s been denied of for close to 20 years (in favor of a man who never played in the NBA). In reality, Udonis Haslem was less than two years away, LeBron is now three
TLDR: Nat Hickey is a fraud. When he (officially) set the record, he was not playing in the NBA. He was not playing in the best league, and a league called the NBA did not exist.
https://www.nba.com/news/oldest-players-to-play-in-an-nba-game
If you look up at an official NBA record book, Nat Hickey, a player-coach for the 6-42 Providence Steamrollers, in 1947, played two NBA games just shy of his 46th birthday, hit a total of two free throws, and called it a day. Ever since that, he’s held the record for the oldest player to ever play.
One small issue with that - in 1947, there was no such thing as the NBA in professional basketball. Hickey played in the BAA - definitively the second best league at the time behind the NBL.
When the two leagues merged in 1949, trying to combat mutual financial problems, then the NBA was formed. Teams that had come from the NBL won every championship until 1956, when the Warriors broke through.
But, Maurice Podoloff (namesake of the MVP trophy), and formerly the commissioner of the BAA, became commissioner of the NBA, and slowly rewrote history, centering the BAA as the sole origin of NBA basketball. Objectively speaking, it makes no sense that the BAA is considered NBA basketball, especially since the NBL isn’t.
Normally, the NBA pretending to start three years earlier than it really did doesn’t have much of an impact, but this is a specific record where it genuinely does. And it turns a seemingly unbreakable record into one that is a little more attainable.