William G. "Bill" Mokray

Weak eyesight may have prevented Bill Mokray from taking the court, but his enthusiasm and his love for basketball helped him become one of the earliest and most prominent authorities on the game. Mokray was a promoter, historian, collector, observer, author, and basketball fanatic. Mokray’s romance started while he was a student at Passaic High School during the era of the Passaic High School “Wonder Teams.” After graduating from Rhode Island State College, he became public relations director at his alma mater and later joined the Boston Celtics in the same capacity in 1946. Mokray gathered statistics and wrote articles for the Converse Basketball Yearbook, founded and was editor of The Official NBA Guide, and authored the history of basketball for the Encyclopedia Britannica. He also wrote the 900-page Ronald Basketball Encyclopedia. Mokray’s early contributions to basketball remain in many cases the only records that exist for the game prior to the 1950s.