Mendy Rudolph

Marvin "Mendy" Rudolph (March 8, 1926 – July 4, 1979) was an American professional basketball referee in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for 22 years, from 1953 to 1975. One of the few basketball game officials to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, Rudolph was the first league referee to work 2,000 games. and officiated 2,112 NBA games in all, a record that he held at retirement. He was also selected to referee eight NBA All-Star Games and made 22 consecutive NBA Finals appearances.

Following his career as a referee, he was a color commentator for CBS Sports's coverage of the NBA on CBS for three seasons from 1975 to 1978 and he appeared in a television advertisement for Miller Lite. He was a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2007.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Rudolph was raised in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. His father, Harry Rudolph, was a prominent basketball referee and baseball umpire. Mendy Rudolph played basketball as a child and eventually chose the same profession as his father. Upon graduating from James M. Coughlin High School, he began officiating basketball games at the Wilkes-Barre Jewish Community Center and later worked scholastic games. At age 20, he was recruited to referee games alongside his father, who served as Eastern Professional Basketball League (Eastern League) President from 1956 to 1970. During his career in the Eastern League, he officiated his first Eastern League President's Cup championship series in 1948 and was selected as a referee in at least one game in every President's Cup playoff and championship series between 1949 and 1953. At the same time, he also served in the United States Air Force during the Korean War.

Rudolph was married twice. His first marriage was to his childhood sweetheart and together they raised three children, but the relationship became troubled and eventually ended. In 1961, he met Susan, a receptionist at the WGN office in New York City, while both worked for the station. At the time, Rudolph worked at WGN as an additional job outside of officiating, which was common among referees from his era. Mendy and Susan Rudolph were married in 1973. Two years later, their first child, Jennifer Rudolph, was born.

Throughout his life, Rudolph suffered from a gambling problem and was labeled a "compulsive gambler". He would often spend his leisure time placing bets at race tracks and Las Vegas, Nevada, and Puerto Rico casinos. At that time, NBA referees were allowed to gamble, but this practice has since been prohibited. As he incurred gambling losses, Rudolph was once offered by a Las Vegas gambler to erase his outstanding debt by participating in point shaving. However, he refused to accept the offer and said to his wife, "It goes against all my principles. I love the game too much, respect it too much. I couldn't do it to you. I couldn't do it to the memory of my father, and I couldn't do it to myself. If I have to go into bankruptcy, something I'd hate to do, I'd do it," according to a 1992 New York Times interview with Susan Rudolph. Rudolph had cashed in his $60,000 pension fund to pay debts and he still owed an additional $100,000. While he refused to seek professional help, Rudolph cut back on his gambling habit later in his life.

Rudolph was recommended by Eddie Gottlieb, coach and owner of the NBA's Philadelphia Warriors at the time, to then-NBA commissioner Maurice Podoloff, after observing Rudolph officiate an exhibition game. Rudolph was hired by the NBA in February 1953, midway through the 1952–53 NBA season and he became the youngest official in the league. In his early years with the NBA, Rudolph quickly became an established official as he worked playoff games within his first two years in the league.

Rudolph officiated the 1955 NBA Finals between the Syracuse Nationals and Fort Wayne Pistons, which was notable for its actions by fans, fights between players, and attacks on referees. Game 3 of the series, played in Indianapolis, Indiana, was interrupted by a fan who threw a chair on the floor and ran on the court to protest calls made by Rudolph and referee Arnie Heft. Six years later, he made history by officiating the entire 1961 NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and St. Louis Hawks with his colleague Earl Strom.

Rudolph and Strom officiated another notable game in the 1964 NBA Finals. In Game 5 of the championship series, Wilt Chamberlain, playing for the San Francisco Warriors, knocked out Clyde Lovellette of the Boston Celtics with a punch. Celtics head coach Red Auerbach stormed onto the court and demanded that Chamberlain be thrown out of the game. The latter told Auerbach if he did not "shut up", he would be knocked down to the floor with Lovellette. Auerbach countered the threat, "Why don't you pick on somebody your own size." Rudolph intervened the discussion and told Auerbach, "Red, do you have any other seven-footers who'd like to volunteer?"