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 Pollack was the 30th recipient of the John Bunn Award. Andrew D Bernstein/NBAE / Getty Images |
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame honored 76ers Director of Statistical Information Harvey Pollack as the recipient of the 30th annual John Bunn Award on Friday, September 27, 2002. In his acceptance speech, he jokingly summed up his 66 years in the NBA in the allotted three and a half minutes.
Photo Galleries: Friday's events | Basketball Hall of Fame | Behind the Scenes NBA.com: The Original Superstat Media Availability Sit Down With Harvey Harvey Photo Gallery Official Release
The Pollack File
Full Name: Herbert Harvey Pollack
Birth date: March 9, 1922
Birthplace: Camden, NJ
Family: Wife, the late Bea Pollack. Harvey and Bea had been married for 58 years when she passed away in 2002.
Children: Ron and Linda
Grandchildren: Brian, Allison, Paul and Eric
Great-granddaughter: Alexandra
Interesting fact: Harvey is the only person who has a ring from all four championship years in Philadelphia – the Warriors in 1947 and 1956, and the Sixers in 1967 and 1983.
Fast Facts
Harvey Pollack is the only individual who worked in the NBA in its inaugural 1946-47 season who is still working for an NBA team today.
He started as the assistant publicity director of the old Philadelphia Warriors (now Golden State) in 1946-47 and midway through the 1952-53 season, he became head of media relations for the Warriors.
Pollack served as the media relations director of the 76ers until the 1987-88 season, when he assumed the duties of director of statistical information for the team, a position he still holds.
Throughout his Warriors and 76ers career, he has been in charge of the statistical crew at the team's home games, first doing the stats manually and now being the head caller on the computer system. During these years, he demonstrated a forte in statistics, both normal ones and unusual ones. Long before the league adopted the following categories, he kept them for Philadelphia home games: minutes played, blocked shots, offensive and defensive rebounds, steals and turnovers. At the same time, he began tabulating categories the league didn't do and these esoteric items and table eventually became part of his widely read stat guide. Some of the novel analyses included distance of every field goal; dunks; technical fouls; most prevelant first, last and middle names of players; plus-minus evaluation; individual scoring by periods; four-point plays; triple-doubles; injuries; 48-minute projections and many more.
Because of his proclivity to stats, then Philadephia Bulletin write George Kiseda pinned the moniker of "Super Stat" on him in 1966.
In addition to his NBA duties, he also head basketball stat crews at six major colleges in the Philadelphia area and other local sporting events.
| Multimedia |
Harvey's reaction to his winning the award
300k Audio: Listen here! Memories of Wilt and Jordan 300k |
Harvey talks about the history behind his lucky orchid shoes
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