Pat Williams, charismatic NBA executive, is dead at 84

Pat Williams, who for 51 years was a charismatic executive with National Basketball Association teams in Chicago; Philadelphia; Atlanta; and Orlando, Florida; and who was also a prolific author and motivational speaker, died on Wednesday in Orlando. He was 84.

The Orlando Magic, which he helped found and where he spent more than 30 years of his career, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was complications of viral pneumonia. Williams was also diagnosed in 2011 with multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells.

Known for his unorthodox marketing practices, Williams was sometimes called the P.T. Barnum of professional basketball. He began his front-office career not in the NBA but in baseball’s minor leagues. He considered himself a protégé of Bill Veeck, the maverick owner of the Cleveland Indians, the St. Louis Browns and the Chicago White Sox.

Having read Veeck’s 1962 autobiography, “Veeck as in Wreck,” Williams sought a meeting with him while he was with the minor league Miami Marlins, where he had been named business manager after two seasons as a catcher.

Bill Durney, Miami’s general manager, had worked for Veeck in St. Louis, where in 1951 the team sent Eddie Gaedel, who at 3 feet 7 inches was the smallest player ever to hit in a major league game, to the plate for one celebrated at-bat. (He walked.)

“I had devoured Veeck’s book and then, with Bill Durney connecting us, built a relationship with him for almost 25 years,” Williams said in an interview for this obituary in 2022. “He convinced me that you can’t guarantee wins, but you can guarantee fun.”

During a three-year stint running a minor league team in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Williams forged a reputation for increasing attendance with eccentric promotions and halftime shows — a practice he continued in the NBA.

He created team mascots. In Chicago, he wrestled a trained bear. He was accessible to fans and reporters, often pacing in the rear of the news media work area during games.

Williams also fielded formidable teams. In Chicago, where the Bulls were founded in 1966 although they soon began playing some home games in Kansas City, Missouri, Williams helped to stabilize the franchise while producing its first winning season in 1970-71.

In 1974, after one year in Atlanta — where he is remembered for trading the team’s star player, Pete Maravich — Williams returned to the Philadelphia 76ers, where he had served as business manager before joining the Bulls. Inheriting a team that finished with nine wins and 73 losses, the worst record in NBA history, in the 1972-73 season, he steered the 76ers into the playoffs within three years.

In 1976, he sold the team’s new owner, Fitz Eugene Dixon Jr., on the acquisition of Julius Erving, for roughly $6 million, from the financially struggling New York Nets. Startled by what at that time was a staggering figure, Dixon asked, “Tell me, who is Julius Erving?” Williams, realizing that he needed a great promotional pitch, answered, “He’s the Babe Ruth of basketball.”

Erving, along with the center Moses Malone, led the 76ers to the 1983 NBA title — but not before Williams’ star-laden team lost in the league finals three times, including to the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977, despite having a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. That prompted Williams to embrace an audacious advertising pitch — “We owe you one” — to the fan base for the next season.

“I thought it was quite clever,” he said. “Except that when we got knocked out by Washington the next year, all we heard was, ‘You owe us two.’”

After leaving the 76ers in 1986, Williams worked with Jim Hewitt, an Orlando businessman, to land an expansion team. He guaranteed the league that 10,000 season tickets would be sold for its inaugural season in 1989-90. He was the team’s general manager until he was promoted to senior vice president in 1996.

“Pat was at every rotary club and city and county commerce meeting, touting the benefits of major professional sports in Central Florida,” Alex Martins, who was the Magic’s media relations director and later the team’s chief executive, said in an interview. “He was the ultimate promoter, though he would admit there was always some self-promotion involved, too.”

Williams’ personal life was nationally publicized in 1993, when Sports Illustrated devoted a feature to the 14 children that he and his first wife, Jill (Paige) Williams, who already had four children, had adopted — admittedly in an effort to save their foundering marriage. The children came from South Korea, Romania, Brazil and the Philippines.

“I have never sensed resentment on the part of our natural kids,” Williams told the magazine. “This thing would’ve been impossible if they hadn’t bought into the process completely.” He estimated that the family’s weekly food bill was $1,500.

When the couple divorced in 1996, it was front-page news in The Orlando Sentinel. Williams remarried soon after, to Ruth Hanchey, whom he had met when she conducted a time-management seminar for the Magic. He recalled in 2022 that when they were dating, she lamented having had only one child, a daughter.

“I can fix that,” he told her.

Williams’ visibility was further enhanced by his books, which in 2022 he said numbered more than 100. Many focused on leaders in sports whom he admired, Veeck included. He also wrote “How to Be Like Jackie Robinson,” “How to Be Like Michael Jordan” and even “How to Be Like Pat Williams.”

His speaking engagements were mixed with humor and occasional references to his strong Christian faith.

With uncommon luck in the NBA’s annual college draft lottery, Williams landed Shaquille O’Neal, a center, for the Magic with the first pick in 1992. He used the same good fortune a year later to trade one touted collegian, Chris Webber, for another, the point guard Anfernee Hardaway, known as Penny.

The Magic reached the 1995 league finals against the Houston Rockets but lost in a four-game sweep. The future nonetheless appeared bright until O’Neal signed with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1996, where, aligned with Kobe Bryant, he won three titles.

“He was an unrestricted free agent at 24,” Williams said of O’Neal. “Not long after, the league changed the rule, with a provision to match an offer on that second contract. Too late for us.”

Patrick Livingston Murphy Williams was born on May 3, 1940, in Philadelphia to Jim and Ellen (Parsons) Williams. His father taught and coached baseball at the high school Pat attended, Tower Hill, in Wilmington, Delaware, and died in a car crash days before Pat signed a contract with the Philadelphia Phillies organization. He was one of four children, and was the only son.

Williams attended Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he played baseball and graduated in 1962 with a degree in physical education.

Williams’ early career in baseball can be traced to his childhood friendship with Robert Carpenter III, known as Ruly, whose family owned the Phillies. They remained close until Carpenter died in 2021.

When Williams, an avid runner who completed 13 Boston Marathons, learned he had multiple myeloma, the Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi called him “a civic treasure” and wrote that without him, “there would be no Orlando Magic.” Williams stopped his long-distance running, but he didn’t retire from his role as the Magic’s senior vice president until 2019.

Williams is survived by his wife and 19 children.

In his 2022 interview with The Times, Williams said that he had long been in remission and remained active in Orlando’s attempt to land a Major League Baseball franchise, which he hoped would be named the Dreamers.

“The older you get, the longer-range goals you need,” he said. “Because when you stop setting long-range goals, that’s when the dying begins.”

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