Maurice Podoloff (WIKIPEDIA).
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We are going to close Sunday with a character who was not an athlete, but a key leader in the development of the largest basketball competition on the planet. Is Maurice Podoloff.
Maurice Podoloff was born into a Jewish family in the Russian Empire in 1890, probably on August 18. Podoloff himself did not know the exact date of his birth, not even the site, although it could be near Odessa or in Yelisavetgrado (today Kropyvnytskyi), in present-day Ukraine. His family emigrated to the United States and settled in Connecticut. He entered Yale and graduated in law in 1915.
Being a prominent lawyer, in 1926 he began to manage the New Haven Arena, a dedicated ice hockey rink in New Haven. Later he would become president of the American Hockey League, forerunner of the NHL.
On June 6, 1946, he was elected president of the Basketball Association of America, a position that was concurrent with that of president of the AHL. At that time, American professional basketball was divided between the Podoloff BAA and the National Basket League.
Podoloff was an extraordinary negotiator and was the one who managed to merge both competitions, giving origen to the National Basketball Association, the NBA. It was 1949.
In addition to giving rise to the competition, his cunning and innovative capacity served to keep her alive with numerous ideas, such as incorporating the 24-second possession clock, keeping the draft of the BAA or expand the competition up to 17 teams. In addition, he negotiated the first television contract of the competition.
He stepped down as commissioner in 1963, when he was replaced by Walter Kennedy. In his honor, the MVP of the season trophy is named after him. In 1974 he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and in 1989, into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1989.
Maurice Podoloff died on November 24, 1985 in New Haven. He was 95 years old.
I hope you liked the article. Thursday, more.
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