Howie Rader
American basketball player (1921–1991)

Howard Rader (March 29, 1921 – February 2, 1991) was an American professional basketball player who played two seasons in the National Basketball League (NBL) and one season in the Basketball Association of America (BAA). During his only season in the American Basketball League and his first season in the NBL, he played alongside his brother Len Rader as members of both the Philadelphia Sphas and the Buffalo Bisons turned Tri-Cities Blackhawks. Howie and his twin brother, Len, were two out of eight players from the original Buffalo Bisons NBL team from 1946 that ended up moving from Buffalo, New York to Moline, Illinois (as a part of what was called the "Tri-Cities" area at the time) to become the Tri-Cities Blackhawks that became the present-day Atlanta Hawks. After his brother signed with the Hammond Calumet Buccaneers for the final NBL season, Howie Rader ended up moving to the second ever NBA Finals champions of the time, the Baltimore Bullets, in the rivaling Basketball Association of America due to the NBL banning players that jumped to the short-lived Professional Basketball League of America at the time. In the BAA, he played for the Baltimore Bullets during the 1948–49 season. He attended Long Island University.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Howie Rader” is american basketball player (1921–1991). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Howie, Rader and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3699437. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 1991, 1946 and 1948.
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This entry incorporates text from “Howie Rader” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.