Dennis Murphy, the impresario of alternative athletic leagues, including the American Basketball Association, who also shook up tennis and ice hockey and launched imaginative, sometimes quixotic ventures in other sports, among them indoor roller hockey, died on Thursday at an assistant living facility in Placentia, Calif. His son, Dennis Jr., told The Associated Press that the cause was heart failure. innovations became fixtures of mainstream professional basketball — most notably the three-point shot, which has increasingly become central to offensive strategy. Mr. Pluto called him its “patron saint.”Perhaps no single event with which Mr. Murphy was associated had greater cultural impact than the “Battle of the Sexes,” the 1973 tennis match between 29-year-old Billie Jean King and 55-year-old Bobby Riggs. Mr. Murphy co-produced the game, which drew an estimated 90 million viewers worldwide, stimulated by the drama of Mr. Riggs and his taunts about male supremacy being put to the test.

Source: International New York Times July 16, 2021 15:33 UTC