Peter Todd Lalich (June 23, 1920 – February 1, 2008) was an American professional

basketball player Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

. He played for the

Cleveland Rebels The Cleveland Rebels were a basketball team in the Basketball Association of America (BAA), a forerunner of the modern National Basketball Association (NBA), based in Cleveland. Franchise history The Rebels were an inaugural franchise in the BAA ...

of the Basketball Association of America (now known as the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...

High school career

Lalich played basketball for

East Technical High School East Technical High School or East Tech is a secondary school under the operation of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District in Cleveland, Ohio. History The school, when it opened on October 5, 1908, was the first public trade school in the ci ...

in Cleveland, Ohio, where he captained a championship team in 1938.

College career

A multi-sport athlete, Lalich played basketball and baseball at

Ohio University Ohio University is a public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation and subseq ...

. Playing the center position, he was a four year starter for the basketball team. In 1987 he was inducted into the Ohio University Athletics Hall of Fame.

Professional career

Lalich played professionally in the National Basketball League with the

Sheboygan Redskins The Sheboygan Red Skins (or Redskins) was a professional basketball team based in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, which was an original National Basketball Association franchise during the 1949–1950 season. History Overview The Redskins played in th ...

, the

Cleveland Chase Brassmen Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, the Pittsburgh Raiders and the Youngstown Bears. In 1946, Lalich joined the

. He appeared in one game for the team in the Basketball Association of America where he attempted one field goal and was credited with one personal foul.

Later life

Following his basketball career, Lalich worked for 35 years for Western & Southern Life Insurance Company, retiring in 1980 as divisional vice-president of sales.

Personal

He was the son of Serbian immigrants and his older brother,

Nick Lalich Nickola "Nick" Lalich (born 1945) is an Australian politician. He has been a Labor Party member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly since October 2008, representing the electorate of Cabramatta. He also served as mayor of Fairfield f ...

, was also a professional basketball player for the 1945–46 Youngstown Bears in the NBL and was the leader of the OSS team that rescued about 550 downed air crews during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Operation Halyard Operation Halyard (or Halyard Mission), known in Serbian as Operation Air Bridge ( sr, Операција Ваздушни мост), was an Allied airlift operation behind Axis lines during World War II. In July 1944, the Office of Strategic S ...

, without losing a single life or a single plane.

BAA career statistics

Regular season

References

External links

* 1920 births 2008 deaths American men's basketball players American people of Serbian descent Cleveland Chase Brassmen players Cleveland Rebels players Forwards (basketball) Ohio Bobcats baseball players Ohio Bobcats men's basketball players Pittsburgh Raiders players Sheboygan Red Skins players Youngstown Bears players {{1920s-US-basketball-bio-stub