Larry O'Brien

• 1. Introduction

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  Larry O'Brien was riding in the motorcade in Dallas on the 22nd of November 1963 when gunshots rang out. He watched President John F. Kennedy die. Then he accompanied the coffin and Jackie Kennedy back to Air Force One at Love Field. And while aboard that plane, Lyndon B. Johnson called for O'Brien and asked him to stay on. O'Brien had never been close to Johnson. Many writers, including Johnson biographer Robert Caro, reported that O'Brien did not like or trust the new president. He stayed anyway. That choice captures something essential about Larry O'Brien: a man who subordinated personal feeling to political duty, who built the modern Democratic Party from the ground up, and who later transformed professional basketball into a national television phenomenon. How did a son of Irish immigrants from Springfield, Massachusetts become one of the most consequential behind-the-scenes figures of twentieth-century American life? And why does his name live on today, not in any political hall of fame, but on a trophy handed to NBA champions?

• 2. Springfield Roots

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  O'Brien was born on the 7th of July 1917 in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of Irish immigrants. Politics entered his life before he was a teenager. His father, a local leader of the Democratic Party, recruited him at eleven years old to volunteer in Al Smith's 1928 presidential campaign. That early immersion shaped a lifelong partisan commitment. O'Brien earned a bachelor's degree in law in 1942 at the Northeastern University Springfield Division, an institution now known as the Western New England University School of Law. He married Elva Brassard in 1945, and the couple had one son, Lawrence F. O'Brien III, who later became a lobbyist. When he was not working in politics, O'Brien managed the family's real estate and worked in public relations. His first formal post in Washington came in 1948, when he served as administrative assistant to Representative Foster Furcolo, a relationship that would carry him toward the corridors of real power.

• 3. Architect of Kennedy's Rise

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  Foster Furcolo appointed O'Brien to direct his U.S. House of Representatives campaigns in 1946, 1948, and 1950. John F. Kennedy then brought him aboard in 1952 to run his successful U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts, and again in 1958 for his reelection. Kennedy's victories were largely attributed to O'Brien's recruitment methods, his reliance on volunteers, and his determination to reach voters in every corner of every state. In 1959, O'Brien canvassed the entire country, building the foundation for Kennedy's 1960 presidential run and cultivating relationships with state Democratic stakeholders. His election planning in primary states such as Wisconsin and West Virginia helped defuse anxiety among party heavyweights about Kennedy's Catholicism. Once Kennedy won the presidency, O'Brien moved into the White House as special assistant for congressional relations and personnel. There he lobbied successfully for expanding the House Standing Committee on Rules to secure a liberal and moderate majority, and pushed for increases to the minimum wage. His grassroots approach gradually displaced the old reliance on big-city political machines, replacing it with what he called a "statewide strategy."

• 4. Inside the White House

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  O'Brien sat at the center of President Kennedy's inner circle and held a major role in awarding patronage, the system of distributing government appointments to political allies. His access was deep enough that he accompanied Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy on the Texas trip in November 1963. After the assassination, Johnson personally called for O'Brien aboard Air Force One and asked him to remain in the administration. O'Brien complied and was appointed as Johnson's campaign director in 1964. A newly elected Johnson then named him special assistant for congressional relations and personnel, a post O'Brien held through 1965 when he was appointed U.S. Postmaster General. During his tenure at the Post Office, in September 1967, the department cancelled many "mail by rail" contracts and shifted First Class mail to air and road transport. The decision had a devastating effect on passenger train revenues and contributed directly to the end of many rail routes that had depended on mail contracts to stay afloat.

• 5. Party Chairman and Watergate

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  After Johnson declined to seek the Democratic nomination in 1968, O'Brien became campaign advisor to Senator Robert F. Kennedy. After RFK was assassinated, Vice President Hubert Humphrey hired O'Brien as his national presidential campaign director. O'Brien was also elected national DNC chairman that same year. At the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, he engineered a series of party rule changes that excluded Eugene McCarthy delegates from certain convention roles and blocked commentary on Humphrey's position on the Vietnam War. He was re-elected as chair in 1970. In that role he became a central figure in the Watergate scandal. His office at the Watergate complex was the target of the break-in that eventually brought down Richard Nixon's presidency. He was also entangled in the "Eagleton Affair" of 1972, the crisis that followed Senator Thomas Eagleton's selection as vice-presidential nominee. As DNC chair, O'Brien established a communications structure connecting national leadership with state delegates and party dignitaries, a framework that persists in the Democratic Party to this day. The DNC Lawrence O'Brien Award was created in 1992 by his family and Democratic Party leaders to honor his decades of service and his belief in the importance of volunteer participation.

• 6. Rebuilding the NBA

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  Appointed NBA commissioner in 1975, O'Brien inherited a league in legal and financial turmoil. His first major task was overseeing the ABA-NBA merger, which brought in the Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs, Indiana Pacers, and New York Nets, while the Kentucky Colonels and Spirits of St. Louis were bought out and the Virginia Squires folded. The league grew from 18 to 23 teams, with the expansion Dallas Mavericks later adding to that count. O'Brien negotiated a broadcast agreement with CBS Television and saw annual gate attendance climb significantly; by the end of his tenure, annual NBA attendance reached 10 million. Gate receipts doubled and television revenue tripled during his time as commissioner. In 1976, he orchestrated the settlement of the Oscar Robertson suit, establishing a fair system of free agency for veteran players, and negotiated a collective bargaining agreement that same year. He also modified the college draft and restored peace to the league in the midst of that legal turbulence. The year 1979 brought the adoption of the three-point field goal, another landmark O'Brien oversaw.

• 7. Television and the Modern NBA

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  Even after the merger solidified the NBA brand and games reached broadcast television, the league's TV exposure lagged behind other professional sports. In the late 1970s and into the 1980 season, CBS was airing only tape-delayed broadcasts of weekday NBA playoff and Finals games, running them after the late news. O'Brien pushed the league forward. In 1982, he coordinated the NBA's richest television contract to that point and brought the NBA to cable television through ESPN and USA, making the league a pioneer in cable broadcasting. That same year he negotiated a second landmark collective bargaining agreement, and in 1983 he introduced the salary cap. A stringent anti-drug agreement with the NBA Players Association also came in 1983, a direct response to public relations problems that followed the merger. O'Brien established the NBA College Scholarship program in 1980. The Sporting News named him its Sportsman of the Year in the year following the merger. When O'Brien retired in 1984, the NBA Championship Trophy was renamed the Larry O'Brien NBA Championship Trophy in his honor. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1991, at Springfield, Massachusetts, the very city where he was born.