Short answers, pulled from the story.
Larry O'Brien was an American politician and NBA commissioner from 1975 to 1984. The NBA Championship Trophy was renamed the Larry O'Brien NBA Championship Trophy in 1984 upon his retirement, honoring his service to the sport, which included overseeing the ABA-NBA merger, negotiating landmark television contracts, and growing annual attendance to 10 million.
O'Brien was serving as chair of the Democratic National Committee when the Watergate break-in targeted his office at the Watergate complex. His position at the DNC made the office a focus of the Nixon administration's illegal surveillance operation, placing him at the center of the scandal that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon.
O'Brien oversaw the ABA-NBA merger, introduced the salary cap in 1983, brought the NBA to cable television via ESPN and USA in 1982, and negotiated the league's richest television contract to date that same year. Gate receipts doubled and television revenue tripled during his tenure, and annual attendance reached 10 million.
Yes, O'Brien was riding in the motorcade in Dallas on the day Kennedy was shot and was an eyewitness to the assassination. He accompanied the coffin and Jackie Kennedy back to Air Force One at Love Field, where President Lyndon B. Johnson asked him to remain in the new administration.
Larry O'Brien was born on the 7th of July 1917 in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of Irish immigrants. He died of cancer after surgery in Manhattan, New York, on the 28th of September 1990, at the age of 73, and was interred in St. Michaels Cemetery in Springfield, Massachusetts.
O'Brien introduced the salary cap in 1983, negotiated two landmark collective bargaining agreements in 1976 and 1983, oversaw the adoption of the three-point field goal in 1979, and brought the NBA to cable television in 1982. He also established the NBA College Scholarship program in 1980 and reached a stringent anti-drug agreement with the NBA Players Association in 1983.