The New York Knickerbockers,[2] commonly known as the Knicks, are a professional basketball team based in New York City. They are part of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Established in 1946, the organization was a founding member of the Basketball Association of America, which became the NBA after a merger with the rival National Basketball League in 1949. The Knicks are one of only two teams of the original National Basketball Association still located in its original city (the other being the Boston Celtics). The "Knickerbocker" name comes from the pseudonym used by Washington Irving for his book A History of New York, a name which became applied to the descendants of the original Dutch settlers of what later became New York, and later, by extension, to New Yorkers in general.