Roundball Classic

The cofounders of the game, Sonny Vaccaro and Pat DiCesare, were two boyhood friends from the small Western Pennsylvania town of Trafford.

[6] Vaccaro wanted to do a basketball tournament in the Pittsburgh area, and asked DiCesare if he had interest in promoting the event.

DiCesare, who had just brought the Beatles to the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, wanted the event to have national appeal and take place in a large venue.

[10] Otherwise, Vaccaro had succeeded in getting big time high school talent from Pennsylvania and the rest of the United States.

In the early years, the game quickly gained greater media coverage and a bigger fan following.

[16] Some believed that changing the format and eliminating the Pennsylvania All-Stars compromised the attendance of the game.

[17] The attendance declined slightly in the mid to late 1980s, but the game still received national attention.

[19] The game suffered two major losses in the early 1990s when both Nike and the Dapper Dan Club pulled their sponsorship.

Most notably, it sold out the United Center in Chicago in 2003 when the game featured LeBron James, gathering an attendance of 19,678, the highest in Roundball Classic history,[16] beating the previous record of 16,649 established in 1977.