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      Mário Zagallo, Longtime Fixture of Brazilian Soccer, Dies at 92

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      The first person to win the World Cup as a player and a coach, he was a link to decades of Brazil’s success and failure on the sport’s biggest stage. Mário Zagallo, who as both a player and coach helped lead Brazil to four World Cup soccer championships, becoming a national hero and one of only three people to lift the tournament’s trophy in both roles, died on Friday in Rio de Janeiro. He was 92.His death was confirmed by his family on his social media channels. Barra D’Or Hospital in Rio de Janeiro, where he had been a patient several times in recent months, said the cause was multiple organ failure.An attack-minded wing as a player and a tactically minded coach known as “the Professor,” Zagallo was part of the Brazil teams that won consecutive World Cup championships in 1958 and 1962 and the head coach of Brazil’s 1970 champions.His 1970 triumph made Zagallo the first person to win the World Cup as both a player and a coach, a feat that has since been matched only by Franz Beckenbauer of Germany and Didier Deschamps of France. But it may have been that team’s style of play as much as its success that cemented a recurring role for Zagallo in Brazilian soccer history.Led by stars like his former teammate Pelé, Jairzinho and Carlos Alberto, Brazil’s 1970 squad is widely considered one of the best soccer teams ever assembled. It was forged in crisis after his popular predecessor fell out with the country’s military government: Zagallo was appointed as head coach less than two months before the tournament’s opening game. Zagallo found himself having to act as the coach of many players who had only recently been his teammates.“It was easy to command, because the players saw and felt that I had the strength of personality to make the changes that I thought were necessary,” Zagallo recalled in a 2011 interview with The Blizzard, a quarterly soccer magazine. “I imposed myself — and this kind of leadership in front of the group is fundamental, even if you’ve participated in this group before as a player.”The team adjusted to Zagallo’s tactical alterations and then danced and shimmied its way into the hearts and minds of fans not only in Brazil but around the globe.Zagallo, second from left, shooting at England’s goal during a World Cup quarterfinals match in Chile in 1962. Brazil won the championship that year.Associated PressUnder Zagallo’s direction, in the first World Cup telecast around the world in color, Brazil’s team, clad in its famed canary-yellow jerseys, refined soccer to high art in its six straight victories in Mexico. Sweeping through the tournament with a highlight reel of memorable goals, the team showcased the fluid, elegant attacking style known as “o jogo bonito” (“the beautiful game”), which became Brazil’s calling card around the world.Returning as head coach, Zagallo led Brazil to a fourth-place finish in 1974. Two decades later, back on the national team’s bench as an assistant to Carlos Alberto Parreira, he helped Brazil collect its fourth championship with a victory over Italy in the 1994 final in Pasadena, Calif.Parreira’s team, a grinding and more results-oriented squad, was less beloved than previous editions of the Seleção, as Brazil’s national team is known. But it was celebrated for delivering the prize the country covets above all others.Four years after that, with Zagallo back in the top job and stars like Ronaldo leading yet another potent attack, Brazil returned to the World Cup final. But its run had come amid criticism from a nation of amateur coaches, who feared that, despite his ties to Brazil’s most mythical teams, Zagallo had surrendered to his pragmatic side.He did little to calm purists when he declared that a victorious end justified any means. “I would rather win playing ugly football than lose playing attractive football,” he said. Brazil, alas, did not: A heavy favorite, it was stunned by host France in the final.In 2002, when the team traveled to South Korea and Japan to pick up the record fifth title that had eluded it in France, Zagallo was serving as a special adviser to the coaching staff of Luiz Felipe Scolari.Zagallo, right, with his former teammate Pelé after his appointment as Brazil’s coach in 1970. They were on Brazil’s World Cup championship teams in 1958 and 1962.Associated PressThat was his last personal connection with a tournament, and a title, that by that point had defined his life for more than a half century.A pivotal moment of his life occurred in 1950, when, as a teenage soldier providing security, Zagallo had watched as Brazil was stunned by Uruguay in the final before a crowd of about 200,000 at the Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro. That defeat, in Brazil’s first trip to the final, was a bitter blow to the nation, and he was among the tens of millions of Brazilians who shed tears of disappointment. “That day has never left my mind,” Zagallo told the BBC in 2013. He went even further speaking to the journalist Andrés Cantor for the book “Goooal: A Celebration Of Soccer” (1996). “From that moment on,” Zagallo recalled about the 1950 World Cup, “I have only soccer memories.”Eight years later, as a player on the national team, he helped rewrite the ending. In the final in Sweden alongside a teenage Pelé, Zagallo scored a goal in a 5-2 victory that delivered Brazil’s first world title. Four years later, he was on the team again when Brazil repeated the feat in Chile.Mário Jorge Lobo Zagallo was born on Aug. 9, 1931, in Atalaia, a city in the eastern Brazilian state of Alagoas. His father, Haroldo Cardoso Zagallo, was a textile executive. His mother, Maria Antonieta Lobo Zagallo, was part of a family that owned a fabric factory. Mário Zagallo said his father had hoped he would become an accountant and work in the family business. Instead, he devoted his life to soccer, spending his professional playing career with two Rio clubs, making his debut with Flamengo in 1951 and retiring from Botafogo in 1965.He married Alcina de Castro, a teacher, in 1955. They had four children: Maria Emilia, Paulo Jorge, Maria Cristina and Mario Cesar. Zagallo’s wife died in 2012. His survivors include his children and several grandchildren.Since the death of Pelé in 2022, Zagallo had been the last surviving member of the first Brazil squad to win the World Cup. He would go on to burnish his legacy in five decades as a coach, assistant and adviser to generations of Brazilian teams.He would eventually lead more than a half-dozen clubs in his native Brazil, as well as the national teams of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But he was never far from his country, serving four distinct tenures as Brazil’s head coach. And even when he did not hold the post, he remained a fixture, called upon regularly — in success and failure and particularly in times of trouble — as a sage and distinguished link to its greatest teams, and its greatest triumphs.Fans pay tribute to Zagallo in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday.Lucas Figueiredo/Getty ImagesAlex Traub and Tariq Panja contributed reporting. More

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      Herbert Kohl, Former Wisconsin Senator and Milwaukee Bucks Owner, Dies at 88

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      A member of the family that founded Kohl’s department stores, he guarded federal budgets as a U.S. senator while spending lavishly to revive the N.B.A. team he owned.Herbert H. Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat who kept watch over federal budgets in four terms as a United States senator, but as the die-hard owner of the National Basketball Association’s often mediocre Milwaukee Bucks spent lavishly to keep the team afloat in his hometown, died on Wednesday afternoon at his home in Milwaukee. He was 88. His death, after a brief illness, was announced by the Herb Kohl Foundation, his nonprofit organization.By his own account, Milwaukee meant everything to Mr. Kohl. His parents had immigrated to the city from Poland and Russia early in the 20th century, and his father, Maxwell Kohl, had opened a corner grocery store there in 1927. Herbert and his three siblings were born and raised in the city, scions of a family that in one generation had built an empire of Kohl’s stores across the Upper Midwest.In Wisconsin and surrounding states, the Kohl name became almost as familiar as Schlitz, which called itself “the beer that made Milwaukee famous.” By 1972, when the British American Tobacco Company bought a controlling interest in Kohl’s, the company, still managed by the Kohl family, had 50 grocery stores, six department stores and several networks of pharmacies and liquor stores.In 2012, under new owners, Kohl’s became the largest department store chain in the United States, surpassing J.C. Penney, its biggest competitor.Herbert Kohl was president of the Kohl Corporation from 1970 to 1979, when British American Tobacco bought the remaining corporate interest. He then left management, a tycoon in search of new challenges. He found two: the Milwaukee Bucks, which he bought in 1985 for $18 million and owned for 29 years of mostly losing seasons; and a seat in the Senate, which he held from 1989 to 2013, and where he became a popular advocate of working families, small-business owners and the elderly.His political experience had been limited. He had been chairman of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party from 1975 to 1977, but he had never held office. The 1988 Democratic primary election to succeed a retiring William Proxmire, who had fought wasteful government spending for 32 years in the Senate, centered on two major issues: campaign expenditures and name recognition.Mr. Proxmire had boasted for years that his last re-election campaign, in 1982, had cost him just $145.10. Mr. Kohl acknowledged that he had spent more than $2 million in the 1988 primaries alone, mostly on television ads, but argued that it was nearly all of his own money and that, as a senator, he would not be beholden to special interests.Wisconsin voters knew the Kohl name from his family business and his Bucks’ ownership. But his primary opponents were well known, too: former Gov. Anthony Earl and Wisconsin’s secretary of state, Doug La Follette, a shirttail relative of Robert M. La Follette, the former governor, senator and presidential candidate. Mr. Kohl won the primary and easily beat a Republican in the general election.Kohl greeting soldiers before a Milwaukee Bucks game in 2012.Gary Dineen/NBAE, via Getty ImagesWith assets of $265 million, he was Milwaukee’s wealthiest resident and one of the Senate’s richest members. What colleagues found in Mr. Kohl, however, was a friendly, unassuming and modest man, something akin to what the country’s founders might have imagined in the Senate: a person of stature and accomplishment with a sense of obligation to the citizenry.He believed that government, like a family, ought to live within its means, and he supported a constitutional amendment to require Congress to pass balanced budgets. It was never adopted. But he tracked deficits that soared for most of his tenure, and voted consistently to restrain spending.Early in his Senate years, Mr. Kohl stopped taking money from special interest groups. “I think I was the only person in Washington that didn’t solicit money,” he told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2016. “I stopped taking money from people because it detracted from my ability to do my job well. We need a system that gets the ugly money out of it.”Senator Kohl strongly supported public education and educational savings accounts. On social issues, he favored abortion rights and affirmative action programs, and he voted to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. He also supported environmental protections.He opposed legislation to authorize the Persian Gulf war in 1990, but in 2002 he voted to endorse military force against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. He often joined more liberal Democrats in trying to cut military spending. At times, his voter-approval ratings were as high as 73 percent, and he won re-election campaigns in 1994, 2000 and 2006. All of them were largely financed with his own money.During his final term, Mr. Kohl supported President Barack Obama’s health care reforms, voted for the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and received high ratings from groups that sought universal health care. He voted to expand Medicare and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which became a federal program that provided matching funds to states.When Mr. Kohl announced that he would not seek a fifth term in 2012, President Obama said: “America’s children will grow up in a better place thanks to his advocacy of childhood nutrition programs, a strengthened food safety system, access to affordable health care and child care and juvenile crime prevention.”Herbert H. Kohl was born on Feb. 7, 1935, the third of four children of Maxwell and Mary (Hiken) Kohl. Herbert and his siblings, Sidney, Dolores and Allen, attended public schools in Milwaukee. At Washington High School, Herbert was an excellent student and played football, basketball and baseball.He and another a boy from the neighborhood, Allan Selig, who was known as Bud, became roommates and fraternity brothers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where Mr. Kohl earned a bachelor’s degree in 1956. They remained friends as Mr. Selig went on to become the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team and the commissioner of Major League Baseball.After receiving a master’s degree in business from Harvard in 1958, Mr. Kohl invested in real estate and the stock market for some years, and then created Kohl Investments to handle his assets. He and his brother also helped manage the Kohl Corporation in the 1970s until the completion of the company’s sale to British American Tobacco.Kohl talking to the media in 2005.Gary Dineen/NBAE, via Getty ImagesThe chance to rescue the Bucks arose in 1985 when it became known that Jim Fitzgerald, the team’s largest single shareholder, was ill and that he and other investors wanted to sell. The Bucks, which were created as an expansion team in 1968, had won an N.B.A. championship in 1971 and had been a regular playoff contender over the years, and yet they were playing in the smallest arena in the league.As fears spread that new, deep-pocketed owners might move the Bucks to another city, Mr. Kohl bought the team for $18 million in March 1985. He spent millions more on contracts for players, coaches and other personnel, as well as on team travel, promotions and arena maintenance. Still, in the 1990s, the Bucks were mired in mediocrity. Even reaching the conference finals in 2000 seemed only a temporary respite from the gloom. In 2013-14, the Bucks won only 15 games. It was the worst record in team history.In April 2014, Mr. Kohl sold the Bucks to two New York hedge-fund billionaires, Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens, for $550 million. At Mr. Kohl’s insistence, the team remained in Milwaukee. The new owners and Mr. Kohl put up a total of $200 million for a new arena, the Fiserv Forum, which was completed in 2018.Mr. Kohl also gave bonuses, totaling $10 million, to every member of the Bucks organization and every worker at the BMO Harris Bradley Center, the Bucks’ aging and soon-to-be-replaced arena. Ushers received $2,000 each, and some longtime Bucks employees got enough to pay off mortgages or buy new homes.“I was happy to do it, and they were deeply appreciative,” he told The Journal Sentinel. “It doesn’t change my life, but it changes theirs.”Mr. Kohl, a lifelong Milwaukee resident who kept a horse ranch in Jackson, Wyo., never married and had no children. He is survived by his older brother Sidney, his older sister Dolores and his younger brother Allen.He gave $25 million to the University of Wisconsin for construction of the Kohl Center, a 15,000-seat basketball and hockey field house built on the university’s Madison campus in 1998. He also founded an educational foundation that each year provides grants to graduating seniors and teachers in Wisconsin high schools.Mr. Kohl’s net worth was never disclosed, although in 2016 Forbes estimated that it was between $630 million and $1.5 billion. He remained a loyal Bucks fan, with season tickets at the Fiserv Forum, a few rows up from courtside.As if vindicating Mr. Kohl’s faith in the team, the Bucks ended decades of drought by winning the N.B.A. championship in 2021, defeating the Phoenix Suns in seven games. Mr. Kohl was presented with a championship ring for his efforts to keep the team in Milwaukee, and he rode in the lead car in the championship parade, proclaiming: “This is one of the big days of my life.”Orlando Mayorquin More

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      George McGinnis Dies at 73; Powered His Way to Basketball Stardom

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      He won two titles with the Pacers of the A.B.A. before joining Julius Erving on the N.B.A.’s 76ers, but it was 35 years before the Hall of Fame inducted him.George McGinnis, whose rare combination of size and agility made him a pillar of two early 1970s championship teams in the upstart American Basketball Association, but whose heralded pairing with Julius Erving on the N.B.A.’s Philadelphia 76ers failed to fulfill expectations of a title, died on Thursday in Indianapolis. He was 73.The Indiana Pacers, the team with which he won his A.B.A. titles, said his death, in a hospital, resulted from complications of cardiac arrest, which he suffered last week at his home in Indianapolis. McGinnis had struggled to walk in recent years after undergoing multiple back surgeries because of a hereditary condition, the team said.McGinnis played at the high school, college and professional levels in basketball-obsessed Indiana, where he broke Oscar Robertson’s scholastic scoring records while leading Washington High School in Indianapolis to a 31-0 record and a championship in 1969.McGinnis led Washington High School in Indianapolis to a 31-0 title run in 1969.Frank Fisse/IndyStar, via ImagnAs a forward, he averaged 30 points and 14.7 rebounds in his one season at Indiana University before joining his hometown Indiana Pacers. The Pacers immediately won successive A.B.A. championships, though McGinnis, surrounded by the veterans Mel Daniels, Roger Brown and Bob Netolicky, was not the team’s unquestioned star until his second season, when he averaged 27.6 points and 12.5 rebounds per game.At a chiseled 6 feet 8 inches, 235 pounds, McGinnis was a harbinger of basketball’s athletic revolution, featuring taller players who could be brawny around the basket but more agile away from it with each passing decade, navigating skillfully in open space.“Big guys in my era couldn’t handle the ball,” he said in an interview with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame before he was inducted into it in 2017, an honor that many believed was egregiously overdue 35 years after he retired. “But I could dribble with my left hand, my right hand and take guys outside.”He credited those skills to the coaching he had growing up in Indiana, where “fundamentals are well taught,” he said.Len Elmore, a Pacers teammate for one season — McGinnis’s last in Indiana before joining the 76ers in 1975 — said in a telephone interview that he harked back to McGinnis when LeBron James, slightly bigger at 6-foot-9 and 250 pounds, entered the N.B.A. in 2003 with the Cleveland Cavaliers.“Similar size, strength, mobility,” Elmore said, “I remember saying it immediately — George was LeBron before LeBron. You couldn’t believe that with his body he could be that agile.”McGinnis during Game Two of the N.B.A. finals against the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977.James Drake/Sports Illustrated, via Getty ImagesOne distinctive part of McGinnis’s game was his midrange jumper, a right-handed shot-put-like release that made purists cringe. “It was different, but he made it work for him,” Elmore said.After leading the A.B.A. in scoring, averaging 29.8 points, and sharing the league’s 1974-75 Most Valuable Player Award with Erving, his future 76ers teammate, McGinnis left the cash-strapped Pacers, calling his departure “a dollars and cents thing.”In a challenge to the N.B.A.’s constitution, he tried to circumvent Philadelphia’s draft rights by signing with the New York Knicks. But when the league voided the deal, McGinnis joined the 76ers, accepting a six-year contract for $3.2 million (the equivalent of about $18.3 million today). It was one season before the team acquired Erving from the New York Nets as it entered the N.B.A. with three other A.B.A. teams, including the Pacers.“George was the turnaround factor in pro basketball in this town,” Pat Williams, the team’s general manager, told Sports Illustrated in 1982. “Julius put up the walls and a roof, but it was George who built the foundation.”The 76ers’ slogan for McGinnis’s first season in Philadelphia was “Let George Do It.” Led by McGinnis, who was voted to play in the first of his three N.B.A. All-Star games, the 76ers increased their win total to 46 from the previous season’s 34 but lost in the first round of the playoffs.Erving’s arrival electrified the sport, though questions abounded on whether the two prolific forwards could coexist. “It was inevitable that people would say we hated each other, but Julius and I knew it wasn’t true, and we were above it,” McGinnis said in the Sports Illustrated article.The 76ers were within two victories of fulfilling their supposed destiny, taking the first two games against the Portland Trail Blazers in the 1976-77 league finals. But the Bill Walton-led Blazers won the next four. McGinnis struggled with his shot until the last game in Portland, when he scored 28 points.The Western Conference All-Stars in 1979. McGinnis is seated on the left, in the front row.NBAE, via Getty ImagesTrailing by two with one last possession in Game 6, the 76ers’ head coach, Gene Shue, called a play for McGinnis. Erving, who had already scored 40, was bewildered by Shue’s bypassing him and Doug Collins, the team’s best pure shooter.After another disheartening playoff exit the following season, the 76ers dealt McGinnis to the Denver Nuggets, landing Bobby Jones, whose staunch defense better complemented Erving and helped the 76ers win the title in 1983.McGinnis did not have a long career, especially compared with James’s 21st-century standard. His performance declined in Denver, in part because of an Achilles’ tendon injury. He returned to the Pacers during the 1979-80 season, finishing his 11th and final pro season, 1981-82, with an average of 4.7 points over 76 games.George F. McGinnis was born on Aug. 12, 1950, in Harpersville, Ala., about 30 miles southeast of Birmingham, the son of Burnie and Willie (Keith) McGinnis. His father was a carpenter. With a daughter, Bonnie, the family settled on the west side of Indianapolis.During McGinnis’s senior year of high school, his father died after falling off scaffolding at a construction site — days after watching George score 53 points and grab 30 rebounds in an All-Star game. McGinnis, who was also an all-state football player, said he left Indiana University early to help support his mother.He expressed regret that he had missed out on playing for the Indiana coach Bobby Knight by one season, speculating, “I think it would have given me different values.” (Knight died in November.)Many believed McGinnis’s induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017 was egregiously overdue, coming 35 years after his professional retirement from the sport.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE, via Getty ImagesMcGinnis was married for 43 years to Lynda (Dotson) McGinnis, who had been a high school girlfriend. She died of cancer in 2019, not long after he underwent surgery to address a back issue, spinal stenosis, that forced him to walk stooped with a cane or walker. His survivors include his sister, Bonnie McGinnis.After his playing years, McGinnis worked as a broadcaster in Indianapolis, where he and his wife founded GM Supply Company, a provider of special tooling and abrasives to manufacturers, in 1991.McGinnis remained a popular fixture in the state’s basketball community, and in September was inducted into the Indiana University Athletics Hall of Fame.Twenty years earlier, he told The New York Times, “One of the great things about being a basketball player in Indiana is that they never forget you.”Alex Traub More

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      Johnny Green, Jumpin’ Knicks All-Star, Dies at 89

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      An All-Star forward — and an all-American at Michigan State — he was known as Jumpin’ Johnny, able to soar over taller opponents for 14 seasons in the N.B.A.Johnny Green, an All-Star forward for the Knicks in the 1960s who gained acclaim for his leaping ability and rebounding prowess through 14 National Basketball Association seasons, died on Thursday in Huntington, N.Y. He was 89.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his son Johnny Jr., who said his father had had heart and kidney problems for about a year.Jumpin’ Johnny, as he came to be known, was 6-foot-5 and about 200 pounds, but he often bested taller and huskier frontline opponents, snaring rebounds, blocking shots and hitting short-range baskets.He was durable as well; he avoided serious injuries and had some of his best seasons late in his career. He played in the N.B.A. until he was 39, retiring after the 1972-73 season.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Gary Colson, Who Lobbied for 3-Point Shot in College Ball, Dies at 89

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      On a rules committee, he got fellow coaches to vote for the shot that changed the game. In 34 years as a college coach, he won 563 games with four teams.Gary Colson, who successfully lobbied to introduce the 3-point shot to college basketball during a 34-year coaching career that included stops at Fresno State, New Mexico and Pepperdine, died on Friday at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 89.The cause was complications of lymphoma, said Bob Rose, a friend, who said he had been told of the death by Colson’s wife.Colson, who had a career win-loss record of 563-385, was a member of the N.C.A.A. rules committee in 1986 when he sought a straw vote from the members to see who was in favor of adding the 3-point shot.He said he was discouraged by a number of his fellow coaches from asking for a vote. But he did anyway, and the proposal passed.The rule, which originally awarded three points for baskets made from a distance of 19 feet 9 inches or more, had little effect at first. But the 3-point shot (the current distance is 22 feet 1¾ inches) has since become an important part of the game. It had been adopted by the National Basketball Association in 1979.Colson began his head coaching career at Valdosta State College (now Valdosta State University) in Georgia when he was only 24. He led the team to a 188-69 record from 1958 to 1968 and took it to two appearances in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics’ national tournament.He next coached at Pepperdine, a small Christian school in Malibu, Calif., from 1968 to 1979, leading the team to the 1976 West Coast Athletic Conference title. The Waves went 153-137 and earned two N.C.A.A. tournament berths during his tenure.“Coach Colson put Pepperdine men’s basketball on the national college basketball map,” the school’s current athletic director, Steve Potts, said in a statement.Colson left Pepperdine in 1980 to take over at New Mexico, which was reeling after a gambling scandal that resulted in the firing of the head coach, Norm Ellenberger, and the program’s being placed on N.C.A.A. probation for three years.After probation ended in 1983, the Lobos averaged 21 wins over the next five seasons, qualifying for the National Invitational Tournament each of those years. Colson went 146-106 at New Mexico from 1980 to 1988 and was the Western Athletic Conference coach of the year in 1984.He was 76-73 at Fresno State from 1990 to 1995.Gary Colson was born in Logansport, Ind., on April 30, 1934. He graduated from David Lipscomb College (now Lipscomb University) in Nashville in 1956 and earned a master’s degree in education at Vanderbilt in 1958. He was an all-conference player at Lipscomb and was named the Volunteer State Athletic Conference M.V.P. as a senior.He later worked as assistant to the president of the Memphis Grizzlies.He is survived by wife, Mary Katherine; his sons, Rick and Wade; his daughter, Garianne; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. More

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      Walter Davis, Basketball Star With a Velvet Touch, Dies at 69

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      “Walter is a good shooter until the fourth period,” one coach said of Davis, a standout in both college and the N.B.A. “Then he becomes a great shooter.”Walter Davis of the University of North Carolina in action against Duke in 1976. He averaged 15.7 points a game over four seasons there.Harold Valentine/Associated PressWalter Davis, whose smooth shooting propelled him to basketball stardom with the University of North Carolina and the Phoenix Suns, but who late in his career struggled with drug addiction, died on Thursday while visiting family in Charlotte, N.C. He was 69.The university announced his death but did not specify a cause.Davis, a 6-foot-6 forward, played at North Carolina from 1973 to 1977 for Dean Smith, one of the most successful coaches in college history. He averaged 15.7 points a game over four seasons on Tar Heels teams that also included Bobby Jones, Phil Ford and Mitch Kupchak.In one of Davis’s signature games, in March 1974, North Carolina was losing to Duke, 86-78, with 17 seconds left. After North Carolina closed the deficit to two points with time expiring, Davis tied it with a shot from a distance estimated at between 30 and 35 feet. (The basket would have counted for three points and won the game today, but the three-point shot was not officially introduced by the N.C.A.A. until 1986.) North Carolina went on to win in overtime, 96-92.“I wasn’t trying to bank it in,” Davis, then a freshman, said afterward. “It wasn’t a desperation shot. I was just trying to do my part, that’s all. I didn’t allow myself to think about anything. I just told myself it could only do two things, go in or come back out.”In 1976 he was a member of the United States team, also coached by Dean Smith, that won a gold medal at the Olympics in Montreal. A year later, he led North Carolina with 20 points — and 10 of his team’s last 12 — when it lost to Marquette, 67-59, in the final game of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament.He was twice selected for all-Atlantic Coast Conference teams.His nephew Hubert is currently the North Carolina coach.Walter Davis was born on Sept. 9, 1954, in Pineville, N.C. His high school in Charlotte won three state titles in basketball before he left to attend prep school in Delaware. He arrived at North Carolina in 1973.In 1977, Davis had surgery on a broken finger after North Carolina won the A.C.C. tournament in his senior year. “Before they put me out, I remember looking up and Coach Smith was right there,” he told Ken Rosenthal for his book “Dean Smith: A Tribute” (2001). “I remember seeing him and having the screws drilled into my finger.”Davis was drafted by the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the 1977 N.B.A. draft. After averaging 24.2 points a game — the highest average of any season in his career — he was voted the league’s Rookie of the Year. He remained a steady performer throughout his 11 seasons with Phoenix, averaging 20.5 points a game as a small forward and shooting guard.Davis was a steady performer in his 11 seasons with the Phoenix Suns, averaging 20.5 points a game as a small forward and shooting guard.Focus on Sport/Getty ImagesDuring a game in 1983, he set a league record by scoring 34 points (on 15 field goals and four free throws) against Seattle before missing a shot.“I don’t remember a sweeter shot,” Alvan Adams, one of his teammates, told NBA.com in 2015. “He was a feared shooter. The other team knew it, too.”Chuck Daly, then the Detroit Pistons’ coach, told The New York Times in 1987: “Walter is a good shooter until the fourth period. Then he becomes a great shooter.”Davis had two nicknames: Sweet D and Greyhound.In his later years in Phoenix, Davis dealt with drug problems. In 1986, he spent a month in a drug rehabilitation center to treat cocaine and alcohol dependency. Early the next year he told The Times, “The scariest part is knowing that it is a disease that I will have to work on for the rest of my life.”When he relapsed in 1987, Davis was suspended by the league and once again entered a drug rehabilitation facility. He also received immunity from prosecution when he agreed to testify against several current and former Suns teammates, who were indicted on drug charges.In his testimony, The Arizona Republic reported, Davis said that he had first used cocaine in his second season in the league after being introduced to it by a teammate, Gar Heard. When asked by a prosecutor who else was there, he said, “Pretty much the whole team.”Later that year, Davis said that prosecutors had forced him to testify against his teammates.“I had no choice,” he told Sports Illustrated. “The last thing I wanted to do was get my teammates and friends indicted. If I’d known I was going to do that, I’d have probably gone to jail instead.”Davis left the Suns in 1988 to sign as a free agent with the Denver Nuggets. He was traded to the Portland Trail Blazers in 1991 and then re-signed with Denver, where he played in the 1991-92 season before retiring.Davis was honored by the Suns and the Black Chamber of Arizona during a Black History Month celebration in Phoenix in 2016. Barry Gossage/NBAE, via Getty ImagesDavis averaged 18.9 points a game for his career and played in six All-Star Games.After his retirement, he worked as an announcer and community ambassador for the Nuggets and a scout for the Washington Wizards.Information on survivors was not immediately available. More

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      Ivor Robson, Golf’s Celebrated Voice at British Open, Dies at 83

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      For four decades he announced the names of players — Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and more — before they teed off. He rarely took a break.At the British Open, a Scotsman named Ivor Robson became one of the most distinctive and revered voices in golf by saying little. Called a starter, he stood at a lectern near the first tee at each round of that major championship, where his job was simple: to introduce each player.“On the tee, from U.S.A., Jack Nicklaus,” he would say in his slightly high-pitched, singsong brogue.Or, “On the tee, from Northern Ireland, Rory McIlroy.”Once he was at his post, around 6:30 in the morning, he didn’t leave until every golfer had teed off — 156 in all in each of the first two rounds. He did not eat or drink anything before he took his position or for the next nine or 10 hours.Nor would he take a bathroom break, at a “comfort station,” even if he had time between introductions.“No input,” he would say, “no output.”He explained his on-course restraint to Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated in 1999: “I don’t want cups of water spilling over. I don’t want food around. I don’t have time to excuse myself. There’s no time!”When he was done for the day and back at his hotel, he would call room service for his only meal of the day.Mr. Robson, who retired from starter work in 2015, died on Oct. 15. The R&A, which organizes the British Open, announced the death but did not give a cause or say where he died. He was 83 and lived in Moffat, Dumfriesshire, in Scotland.Mr. Robson, who was born in England in 1940, was a golfer himself, having competed on the Scottish pro tour in the 1960s and ’70s and worked as a club professional in Scotland.He began his four-decade run at the Open Championship, as the event is officially known, in 1975, at Carnoustie, Scotland, at the invitation of the golf shaft company that hired the tournament’s starters. He went on to perform the role at the other links courses where the Open is played, like St. Andrews, Turnberry, Royal Birkdale and Muirfield.“Nobody told me how to do it,” he told the golf website Bunkered this year. “I just had to work it out for myself when I started in 1975. ‘What do I do here?’ Just keep it simple, where are they from, the name of the player, and let them go.”Mr. Robson endured heat, chill and rain and said he did not eat, drink or take bathroom breaks while on the job as a starter.Andrew Redington/Getty ImagesMr. Robson’s job was similar to that of public address announcers at baseball games. But they work from protected press boxes. Mr. Robson endured heat, chill and rain while always formally dressed in his blazer and tie. (A sought-after announcer for 41 years, he also played the starter role at other golf events, including the DP World Tour in Europe.)“That voice — that smile in his eyes and that lilt in his voice — was unmistakable,” Mike Tirico, an NBC sportscaster who anchored British Open coverage for ESPN and ABC, said in a phone interview. “If you mentioned his name to a player, they’d imitate how he pronounced their names, with his inflections.”Mr. Robson would often chat with players before they took their swings and witnessed them face pressure, especially in starting their final round on a Sunday.“You can see the tension,” he said in a video interview with Golfing World magazine in 2019. “They’re not listening to you. They’re speaking to you, but you know they’re not really sure what to say. The club head is shaking as they’re addressing the ball.”Tiger Woods was among the many famous golfers whose names Mr. Robson announced. “Thank you Ivor for making each one of my Open starts so memorable,” Woods wrote on social media.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesHis final British Open, in 2015 at St. Andrews, was also the final one for Tom Watson, who had won the tournament five times. “He gave me an 18th-green flag, which had a message on it,” Mr. Robson told Today’s Golfer magazine in 2022. “‘We have traveled this long road together. All the best in your retirement. Tom Watson.’”After Mr. Robson’s death, Tiger Woods wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, “Thank you Ivor making each one of my Open starts so memorable.” Woods won three British Open titles.Mr. Robson’s survivors include his wife, Lesley; his daughter, Julia; and his son, Philip.When the R&A chose Mr. Robson’s replacement, they picked two men: David Lancaster, to do most of the work, and a backup, Matt Corker, to fill in when Mr. Lancaster takes a break or two.“I believe the vocal cords need to be soothed by drinking water at some point,” Mr. Lancaster told The New York Times in 2016. “Fortunately, the R&A understood.” More

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      Terry Dischinger, College Basketball Star and Olympian, Dies at 82

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      An all-American at Purdue, he was the youngest member of the gold medal-winning 1960 U.S. Olympic team. He later became a top N.B.A. rookie.Terry Dischinger, one of the greatest players in Purdue University basketball history and the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic team that won a gold medal in Rome in 1960, died on Oct. 9 in Lake Oswego, Ore. He was 82.The cause of his death, at a memory care center, was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, said his son, Bill Dischinger.Dischinger (pronounced DISH-ing-er) was an undisputed star at Purdue, in West Lafayette, Ind. A 6-foot-7, 190-pound center, he led the Big Ten in scoring for three straight seasons; was a two-time first-team consensus all-American; and scored at least 40 points in a game nine times, still a Purdue record.After averaging 26.3 points in his sophomore season, Dischinger made the Olympic team, which included several future members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, among them Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Jerry Lucas and Walt Bellamy. The U.S. won all eight of its games, including the final against Brazil, to earn the gold medal. Dischinger averaged 11.8 points a game, fourth best on the team.Early the next year, when Dischinger was a junior, a short profile in Sports Illustrated described the skillful fakes, fast first steps and soft jump shots that made him a Big Ten star, and recalled a moment when he vexed Robertson during a practice at the Olympics.According to the profile, Robertson, whom Dischinger idolized, “ended one frustrating Olympic scrimmage in which he was trying to guard Dischinger by shouting, ‘Man, go ahead and score. Who cares!’ as Terry faked him out for the nth time.”Dischinger went on to play in the National Basketball Association, earning Rookie of the Year and All-Star honors. He was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.Dischinger was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019. He scored 40 points or more in nine games at Purdue University, setting a school record that still stands.Orlin Wagner/Associated PressTerry Gilbert Dischinger was born on Nov. 21, 1940, in Anderson, Ind. His father, Donas, was a high school teacher and football coach. His mother, Clara (Wood) Dischinger, was a physical education teacher.Dischinger was chosen by the Chicago Zephyrs in the first round of the 1962 N.B.A. draft and broke in with them as if he were still at Purdue. Converted to forward, he scored 25.5 points a game in the 1962-63 season, while playing only 57 games on a part-time contract that let him complete his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering.Despite not playing a full season, he was voted Rookie of the Year over other future Hall of Famers like Dave DeBusschere of the Detroit Pistons and John Havlicek of the Boston Celtics.Dischinger played on All-Star teams in his first three seasons.“He was a very smart player with a great shot,” Bill Bradley, the former New York Knicks forward and U.S. senator, who frequently played against Dischinger, said in a phone interview. “I remember him as much for the 1960 Olympics as for him playing in the N.B.A.”Dischinger remained with the Zephyrs when they relocated to Baltimore and were renamed the Bullets after his rookie year. He averaged 20.8 points a game in 1963-64. After one season in Baltimore, he was traded to Detroit, where he scored an average of 18.2 points a game. After two years of Army service, he returned to the Pistons in 1967.Having played on an Army basketball team, he told The Detroit Free Press in 1971, “I thought I could make the readjustment to the pros again pretty quickly.”But, he added, “it didn’t work out that way.”A knee injury reduced his playing time and his productivity. He never averaged more than 13.1 points a game in his last six seasons, five with the Pistons and his last with the Portland Trail Blazers.By the time his basketball career ended in 1973, he was already planning his next one. A friend in the Army had piqued his interest in a post-basketball career in dentistry, and he began studying at the University of Tennessee College of Dentistry in the summers between N.B.A. seasons.He completed his D.D.S. degree in 1974 and went on to earn a certificate in orthodontics in 1977 from the University of Oregon Health Sciences Center (now Oregon Health & Science University).He held several patents, including one for a version of an appliance to help an underdeveloped jaw grow. He taught orthodontics and had a practice in Lake Oswego, which Bill Dischinger joined 24 years ago and now runs.In addition to his son, Dischinger is survived by his wife, Mary (Dunn) Dischinger, whom he married in 1962; his daughter, Kelly Loomis; his sisters, Nancy Rudolph and Tommy Groth; and nine grandchildren. Another son, Terry, died in 2010.Heading into the final game of his college basketball career against the University of Michigan in March 1962, Dischinger was tied for the Big Ten scoring lead with Jimmy Rayl of Indiana University, which was playing Ohio State.Before the game, he received a telegram from two Ohio State players — Jerry Lucas, who had become a friend during the Olympics, and John Havlicek — “telling me not to worry — get my points and they’d shut down Rayl,” he told The Journal & Courier of Lafayette in 1980.Whatever they and their teammates did seemed to work.Dischinger won the title with 30 points. Rayl scored 25. More