The Commissioner of the NBA is the chief executive of the National Basketball Association. He is elected by the NBA owners.
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Maurice Podoloff was the first president of the National Basketball Association. He served from the league's founding as the Basketball Association of America in 1946 until 1963.
After the BAA signed several of the top names in the National Basketball League into the league, Podoloff negotiated a merger between the two groups to form the National Basketball Association in 1949. As a lawyer with no previous experience, Podoloff's great organizational and administrative skills were later regarded as the key factor that kept the league alive in its often stormy formative years.
In 17 years as president, Podoloff expanded the NBA to as many as 17 teams. He also briefly formed three divisions and scheduled 557 games.
During his tenure, Podoloff introduced the collegiate draft in 1947, and in 1954 instituted the 24 second shot clock created by Dan Biasone, owner of the Syracuse Nationals which quickened the pace of games, and took the NBA from a slow plodding game to a fast paced sport. In 1954, Podoloff also increased national recognition of the game immensely by securing its first television contract.
As the president of the NBA, he was the one who gave lifetime suspensions to Indianapolis Olympians players Ralph Beard and Alex Groza, not for what they did in the NBA but what had happened in the NCAA. Groza and Beard had admitted to point shaving in college at the University of Kentucky. Why he did this is still a mystery.
Maurice Podoloff stepped down as NBA president in 1963. He in the process, helped increase fan interest during the NBA's formative years. Not to mention having improved the overall welfare of the sport of basketball through his foresight, wisdom and leadership. In his honor, the NBA would name its annual league Most Valuable Player trophy the Maurice Podoloff Trophy.
Succeeding first president Maurice Podoloff, the likable, approachable Kennedy became an iron-handed executive and let everyone know precisely where he stood on issues. Kennedy quickly exerted his authority, slapping Red Auerbach with a $500 fine for rowdy conduct during a pre-season 1963 game. At the time, it was the largest fine ever levied against a coach or player in the NBA. His title was changed to "commissioner" in 1967.
Kennedy was also the commissioner who upheld the first protest ever in the NBA, which was the one filed by the Chicago Bulls for "the Phantom Buzzer Game" against the Atlanta Hawks in 1969.
The new commissioner came into the NBA when the league was struggling with only nine teams, no television contract, sagging attendance and competition from the increasingly popular American Basketball Association. When Kennedy retired in 1975 as commissioner, the league had increased to 18 teams, landed a lucrative television contract and improved its financial standing considerably, experienced a 200 percent boost in income and attendance figures tripled during his tenure
Walter Kennedy was also instrumental in bringing an annual NBA game to Springfield to benefit the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, where he served on Hall of Fame's Board of Trustees for 13 years, including 2 years as the Hall of Fame's President. Kennedy himself would be inducted into the Hall in 1981.
Larry O'Brien was appointed in 1975 by the National Basketball Association to serve nationally as its commissioner, where he directed the successful ABA-NBA merger that brought the American Basketball Association into the NBA, negotiated television-broadcast agreements with CBS Television, and saw game attendance increase significantly. He continued this service through 1984. The NBA Championship Trophy was renamed in 1984 the Larry O'Brien NBA Championship Trophy in honor of his service to the sport of basketball.
However, his league was troubled by public relations issues through his tenure, especially after the merger. He was generally pushed by his staff into many of his decisions, most notably by the current commissioner, David Stern. Many consider Stern the driving force behind the television contracts with CBS and rise in game attendance, as well as several crucial issues that predicated the rise of the NBA in the early 1980s.[1]
O'Brien was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, located in his birthplace, Springfield, Massachusetts.
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