Basketball’s Unrivalled Multi-Tasking “King:” Player, Traveling Secretary, Writer, and Publicist Extraordinaire

The man that perhaps best epitomizes the tenuous, improvisational nature of the NBA’s fledgling steps was Tom King – a 5’10” guard with the old Detroit Falcons. In the league’s inaugural season, he was not only a solid contributor on the hardwood, but concomitantly assumed three other roles.

Though small in stature, King was an all-state performer at East Lansing High School’s basketball and football programs. He was also involved in the journalistic side of athletics. More specifically, the teenager finagled himself a stringer job reporting on the local scholastic gridiron circuit for the Detroit Free Press. As King recalled, “We played our football games on Friday nights, and the Catholic schools played on Saturdays and Sundays, so I was able to cover them. I never won a Pulitzer Prize, but by my senior year, I had my own byline.”

At Michigan University, King earned varsity letters in hoops and baseball. Correspondingly, the jack-of-all-trades was the sports editor of the students’ newspaper. “Interested,” he recalled, “in the business side of sports,” King majored in Business Administration. During the 1943-44 campaign, the sophomore was the Wolverines second leading scorer. However, military duty cut short his collegiate athletic career.

Serving in the Marines, King was tasked with training enlistees stateside. As a result, he managed to play “enough” basketball while in the army “to keep my game sharp.” During the spring of 1945 the GI was briefly furloughed in order to compete at a prestigious all-star game, where he caught the eyes of professional scouts.

Following WW II, teams from the Basketball Association of American and National Basketball League (the two outfits would merge into the NBA on August 3, 1949) became embroiled in a bidding war over the rights to the nifty guard. In the end, King agreed to an $8,000 contract with the Detroit Falcons, which was sweetened by a $500 signing bonus.

Apart from Stan Miasek, a high-octane center, the Falcons’ roster was not much to write home about. Moreover, the team’s ailing coach, Glenn Curtis, was unable to translate his vaunted Indiana high school legacy to the pro-game.

At any rate, King soon discerned that management was distracted by the absentee ownership’s hockey and ice show interests. Consequently, the day-to day logistics and public relations were subpar. The Business Administration major took the liberty of sending a memo to one of the owners, Arthur Wirtz, enumerating the “organization’s shortcomings and also of my qualifications. After a brief face-to-face meeting, he hired me as the . . . publicity director and traveling secretary” for another $8,000 a year. King had thus become the highest compensated ‘player’ in the Association’s inaugural season.

In this capacity, the rookie was charged with ensuring that the media credentials, press room, and table were functioning smoothly. On the road, he handed out the meal money to his fellow teammates. Moreover, King would “Hustle to get train tickets . . . then hustle to get taxis from the train station to the hotel. During our first trip to Toronto, I ran around like a crazy man rounding up taxis, only to discover that the hotel was directly across the street from the train station.”

Once the team had settled into their accommodations, King would reach out to the local press with the objective of arranging interviews and promoting that night’s game. “After all my running around, I’d get to the arena, get taped, [and], play the game.”

If this were not enough, the tireless factotum continued to moonlight for the wire services. This time around the Associated Press and International News Service paid him $20 or so per game to cover his own team. “Still in uniform,” the basketball historian Charley Rosen documents in The First Tip-Off, “King would find a chair in the corner” of the post-game locker room, “lift the cover off his ancient Remington portable, and type out his stories.”

Detroit folded right after that season. However, King had played well enough to merit a generous offer from the Chicago Stags. “In retrospect, I realized that all the distractions . . . had affected my game, so I was eager for another go at playing.” Soon after, though, an enticing management position handling day-to-day operations at Chicago Stadium was thrown his way. “For the sake of my . . . family’s future, I opted to devote myself to an administrative career. And it was a decision I never regretted.”

Thomas Van Dyke King went on to become a pillar of the Chicago business community, heading a number of substantial real-estate and construction companies. Furthermore, he actively chaired or sat on the board of myriad not-for-profit organizations, foremost among them the local Better Business Bureau, United Cerebral Palsy of Chicago, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the March of Dimes. Upon his death at the age of 91, the Chicago Tribune reported that the NBA pioneer was among the Windy City’s “most dedicated civic servants.” As befits such a versatile member of “the greatest generation,” King became an accomplished jazz drummer in his seventies.