Counted Out

Harvey Pollack, the last man who had been employed by the NBA since its founding in 1946, has died of complications from a car accident at the age of 93. The OCD freak spent 67 years as a public relations man and statistician with the Warriors and 76ers, with his most notable moment in the sun being scrawling a number on a piece of paper the night Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a game, which became one of the most reprinted sports photos of all time. Pollack’s statistical analysis revolutionized record-keeping when he had nothing more than an abacus and a slide rule, but laid the groundwork for the sissies of the computer age. Pollack found statistics in the arcana of athletic contests where none had existed before, making the 76ers media guide a must read around the NBA and setting standards other teams copied. He was one of the first to record minutes, offensive and defensive rebounds, blocked shots, assists, steals and created the categories double- and triple-doubles, turnovers and points off turnovers. He combed other teams’ records for statistical gems, finding that Oscar Robertson was the first player to record 800 rebounds and assists in the same season. Even last year, Pollock was aggravated by stories that Kevin Durant was closing in on Michael Jordan’s record of 40 consecutive 25-point games, and remembering that the NBA had existed before Jordan, took it upon himself to actually read box scores to identify that Wilt Chamberlain had done it in 106 straight. Pollock brought a sense of humor to his deep statistical dives, coining the term Trillionaires Club for players who recorded minutes in a game, but managed no other statistics, leaving their stat line as a number followed by a line of zeroes. For his efforts, all 4 Philadelphia teams that won NBA titles – the Warriors in 1947 and 1956 and the 76ers in 1967 and 1983 – presented him with championship rings, and he earned a lifetime achievement award from the Basketball Hall of Fame. He also compiled statistics for all of the city's Division I collegiate basketball teams, the Philadelphia Tapers of the American Basketball League, the WFL’s Philadelphia Bell, the NLL’s Philadelphia Wings, even Mummer’s Parades. Pollack was a living cliché, smoking cigars at the scorer’s table, speaking in a thick Philadelphia accent, hunting and pecking his way to 110 words (and countless mistakes) a minute on the manual typewriters he lugged around with him. After his wife’s death in 2003, Pollack started a streak of more than 4,500 consecutive days wearing a different T-shirt.