James Enright (April 3, 1910 – December 20, 1981) was a college and professional basketball

referee A referee is an official, in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The official tasked with this job may be known by a variety of other titl ...

and sportswriter. He was born in Sodus, Michigan and began officiating at 20 years old. After retiring in 1964 from a refereeing career that saw him officiate the 1954 NCAA tournament Final Four and the

1948 Events January * January 1 ** The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is inaugurated. ** The Constitution of New Jersey (later subject to amendment) goes into effect. ** The railways of Britain are nationalized, to form British ...

and

1952 Events January–February * January 26 – Black Saturday in Egypt: Rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses. * February 6 ** Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, becomes m ...

Olympic Olympic or Olympics may refer to Sports Competitions * Olympic Games, international multi-sport event held since 1896 ** Summer Olympic Games ** Winter Olympic Games * Ancient Olympic Games, ancient multi-sport event held in Olympia, Greece b ...

basketball qualifying tournaments, Enright resumed a career he had abandoned for refereeing in 1930 and covered basketball and baseball for such publications as '' The Sporting News'' and the '' Chicago Evening American''. In 1968, Enright became president of the

United States Basketball Writers Association The United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) was founded in 1956 by National Collegiate Athletic Association director Walter Byers to serve the interests of journalists who cover college basketball. Scholarships The USBWA annually awa ...

and, in 1978, in view of his contributions to the game of basketball as a referee, Enright was inducted into the

Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is an American history museum and hall of fame, located at 1000 Hall of Fame Avenue in Springfield, Massachusetts. It serves as basketball's most complete library, in addition to promoting and pres ...

. He is also a member of the

Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame The Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame, located in the Hawthorne Race Course, in Stickney/Cicero, near Chicago, honors sports greats associated with the Chicago metropolitan area. It was founded in 1979 as a trailer owned by the Olympia Brewing Compan ...

External links

Basketball Hall of Fame profile
1910 births 1981 deaths Basketball referees College men's basketball referees in the United States Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees Sportspeople from Michigan Sportswriters from Illinois 20th-century American non-fiction writers {{Sports-official-bio-stub