Carl Bennett — the man in whose front room the NBA was set in motion

7 December 1915 — 16 May 2013

The Fort Wayne Pistons' coach and general manager: Carl Bennett was born in Rockford, Indiana, on 7 December 1915, and came to Fort Wayne through sport. Fred Zollner recruited him in 1938 to play for the Zollner Pistons softball team, and he stayed on Zollner's staff for the rest of his working life. He coached the Fort Wayne Pistons through six National Basketball League seasons beginning in 1941–42, coached the club briefly again in the 1948–49 Basketball Association of America season, and then served as general manager for seven more seasons — the front office of the franchise while it won, fought and finally left for Detroit in 1957.

His place in the national record is one meeting. In 1948 Maurice Podoloff, president of the BAA, telephoned Bennett asking for a confidential talk about joining the two rival leagues. Bennett cleared it with Zollner and received Podoloff the next day at his own house — 2920 Alexander Street, on Fort Wayne's southeast side. The plan worked out in that house took the strongest BAA clubs and the four strongest NBL clubs — Fort Wayne, Minneapolis, Rochester and Indianapolis — into one league, and on 3 August 1949 that league took the name National Basketball Association. Bennett sat on the NBA's first executive committee. He also pressed Zollner to buy the team its own airplane, a first for a sports franchise, and founded the Mad Anthonys, the Fort Wayne charity-golf institution. For fifteen years he campaigned to put Fred Zollner in the Basketball Hall of Fame; when Zollner was enshrined in 1999, Bennett delivered the speech. He died in Fort Wayne on 16 May 2013, aged 97. Two months later the United States House of Representatives put a tribute in the Congressional Record (23 July 2013, by Representative Susan W. Brooks of Indiana) calling him a founding father of modern professional basketball and of the NBA, and recording the Alexander Street meeting as the merger's starting point.

Sources:

1. Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, 23 July 2013 — "Honoring Carl Bennett, a founding father of modern professional basketball and the National Basketball Association" (Rep. Susan W. Brooks).
2. Sports Business Journal, "Fort Wayne's #1," 20 August 2007 — Bennett's own account of the Podoloff call and the Alexander Street meeting; the executive-committee service.
3. The Journal Gazette, obituary, May 2013 — the coaching and general-manager seasons; the Mad Anthonys founding; the Zollner Hall of Fame campaign.