Frank Henry "Fronzo" Kautsky Sr. (September 30, 1888 – October 11, 1959) was an American farmer, grocery store owner, and team owner, general manager, and former head coach of the Indianapolis Kautskys/Pure Oils/Oilers/Jets basketball franchise. He also was a semi-pro baseball player at one point and even sponsored a local semi-pro baseball team up until World War II. Kautsky was also a co-founding member of the National Basketball League (NBL), which became a predecessor to the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Professional career
Early on in his life, Kautsky farmed around his hometown of Edgewood until he was 29 years old. He also played baseball on a semi-pro basis during his early professional career. After that point, he became the owner of a small, local, family-owned grocery store chain called Kautsky's that first began at South Madison Avenue. The success of his local business allowed him to promote it as a part of other local sports teams up until the 1940s. In 1928, despite never even touching a basketball in his youth, he created a young, amateur team after a good friend of his, former Indiana Central College basketball star Pete Bailey, took him to a local pick-up game at an elementary school. After being impressed by the young talents on display there, he and Bailey created an amateur team under Kautsky's sponsorship that ended up winning the state of Indiana's independent basketball title the following season. That team's success became the predecessor to what became the Indianapolis Kautskys professional basketball team (which was co-owned by Kautsky and Abe Goldsmith once it went professional) throughout the majority of its existence. One of the Kautskys' first players was John Wooden, who had to drive 115 miles to play home games in Indianapolis, but had an extra payment of $50 per game that paid more than his daily teaching job at Dayton High School at Dayton, Kentucky, which Wooden attributed as a vital payment during the height of the Great Depression due to him losing his life savings at the time. He also paid $100 to Wooden directly during a game after briefly stopping it to celebrate his 100th professional free-throw made in a row; Wooden's record of 134 made is still considered the professional record for most free-throws made in a row to this day.
Early Kautskys
After beginning as an independent team, the Kautskys made their professional debut in the short-lived National Professional Basketball League for the 1932–33 season (where they finished with a 7–4 record, but were a win behind the Toledo Crimson from competing against the Akron Firestone Non-Skids in the only NPBL championship event) before returning to their independent roots the following two seasons due in part to the Great Depression. After that point, once Kautsky gathered enough money to ensure his team would survive outside of being an independent team, they took part in the newly formed Midwest Basketball Conference, which Kautsky was a co-owner of at the time alongside Akron Firestone Non-Skids team owner and head coach Paul Sheeks and eventually became the future predecessor to the National Basketball League. During their first season in the newly founded conference, the Kautskys finished with the best record in the Western Division with a 9–3 record, where they then blew out the Pittsburgh YMHA's with a 46–18 score, but lost to the upstart Chicago Duffy Florals (who controversially replaced the Detroit Hed-Aids for what appeared to be monetary reasons) in a close, 39–35 championship match under a Round Robin tournament. Their second season there, however, finished much worse than the first, with the Kautskys finishing with a 2–5 record that season before the MBC concluded their operations. Once the MBC rebranded itself to the NBL (mainly as a means to stop local confusion between it and the college basketball conference called the Big Ten Conference that operates in the same, general vicinity), the Kautskys became one of the inaugural teams of the new league for that season.