American sports entrepreneur who helped co-found the American Basketball Association (1967–1976) (with Gary Davidson), the World Hockey Association (1972–1979), the original World Team Tennis (1973–1978), Roller Hockey International (1992–1999), and several other trend-setting amateur and professional sports concepts and events. Each of his innovations exhibited ground-breaking marketing and promotional tactics, new rules, and a style of play that forced the evolution of the entrenched incumbent. Among the many visionary rules and promotional concepts introduced by Murphy include the 3-point shot (ABA), the Slam-Dunk Contest (ABA), team cheerleaders (ABA), the first $1 million contract (WHA), and he paved the path for the ever-growing wave of European and Russian hockey players that now play in North America.
Murphy’s WHA and the ABA competed directly with the entrenched National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association, respectively. Murphy and company enticed one of the game’s best players, Bobby Hull, to flee the NHL to the WHA with an unprecedented $1 million contract, and “Mr. Hockey,” Gordie Howe, soon followed. Murphy was the commissioner of the WHA for three years, and the Dennis A. Murphy Trophy was presented annually to the WHA’s best defenseman. Both the WHA and ABA eventually merged teams into the more-entrenched leagues.
According to his 2013 autobiography, Murph: The Sports Entrepreneur Man, Murphy was born in Shanghai to a father who worked for Standard Oil and a housewife mother, Murphy and his family moved back to the United States a year before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. A staff sergeant in World War II, Murphy joined the reserves after the war and came out of the Korean War as a captain. Murphy attended the University of Southern California on the GI Bill majoring in economics. He was a one-term mayor of Buena Park in Orange County, California (15 April 1958 to 17 July 1959), before becoming a marketing executive for one of California’s biggest civil engineering firms, Voorheis, Trindle, and Nelson.
Dennis Murphy married and had three children. He died of heart failure on 15 July 2021 at age 94 in Placentia, California.
Link to Wikipedia biography