Fred Zollner

Owner of the Fort Wayne Pistons; host of the meeting that created the NBA

• January 22, 1901 – June 21, 1982 · Industrialist and team owner; made his name in Fort Wayne

On the record

Fred Zollner was born in Little Falls, Minnesota, on January 22, 1901, and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1927. In 1931 the family piston firm moved to Fort Wayne, where the Zollner Corporation came to employ more than 1,200 people. In 1937 he sponsored a company basketball team; the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons joined the National Basketball League in 1941 and won the sport's world professional championship in 1944 and 1945. On August 3, 1949, the meeting at Zollner's Fort Wayne home between the NBL and the rival Basketball Association of America produced the merger that created the National Basketball Association. He moved the Pistons to Detroit in 1957 and sold the team to William Davidson in 1974. At the NBA's Silver Anniversary All-Star Game in 1975 he was named "Mr. Pro Basketball," and in 1999 he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor. He is profiled here as a business figure; he owned the team and never played for it.

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• § 06 — people of the record · famous-people supplement

Sources: Michigan Sports Hall of Fame; Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana.