| Overall UK Wins: 11 | Overall UK Losses: 6 | Win % 64.7 |
Date of Birth: July 5, 1913
Date of Death: April 13, 1994
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
For a generalized listing of officials, please consult this page.
Obituary - New York Times (April 15, 1994)
Philip Fox, 80, Dies; Officiated in N.B.A.
Philip Fox, a former basketball and soccer official who refereed in the first National Basketball Association season in 1946 and later toured with the Harlem Globetrotters, died on Wednesday at the Metropolitan Jewish Geriatric Center in Brooklyn. He was 80.
The cause of death was cardiac arrest, his family said.
A graduate of New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, Mr. Fox became sports director of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. The job led him to become a referee, initially at school and club games and eventually with the old Basketball Association of America, which evolved into the N.B.A. in 1946.
"He was one of the best and most capable officials we had," said Haskell Cohen, the N.B.A.'s first director of publicity, who recalled yesterday that Mr. Fox had also been something of a showman, calling fouls with exaggerated histrionics, "but he didn't overdo it."
He apparently overdid it enough, however, that after leaving the N.B.A. in 1951, he became supervising referee for the Harlem Globetrotters.
He later worked as a referee at international soccer games in the United States and was manager of the United States basketball team at the Maccabiah Games in Israel in 1965.
He is survived by his wife, Carolyn; three daughters, Ailene Fox, Ina Palatnek and Marcia Harkavy; a sister, Anne Fox, and five grandsons.
