Bill Tom Closs (January 8, 1922 – June 6, 2011) was an American

basketball 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 ...

player. He played collegiately for

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universities ...

. In his final year, he led the

Southwest Conference The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in the United States that existed from 1914 to 1996. Composed primarily of schools from Texas, at various times the conference included schools from Oklahoma ...

in scoring and was All-American in 1943. In 1971 he was inducted into the Rice Athletic Hall of Fame, and in 2003 his basketball jersey was retired. He joined the Marine Reserve while still at Rice, and was posted in the Fleet Marine Force Pacific Headquarters in Oahu, Hawaii in 1944. Closs started professional basketball with Indianapolis in 1946. He played for the

Anderson Packers The Anderson Packers, also known as the Anderson Duffey Packers and the Chief Anderson Meat Packers, were a professional basketball team based in Anderson, Indiana, in the 1940s and 1950s. The team was founded and owned by brothers Ike W. and Jo ...

(1948–50), Philadelphia Warriors (1950–51) and

Fort Wayne Pistons A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

(1951–52) in 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 ...

(NBA) for 186 games. Following the conclusion of his professional basketball career, Closs enjoyed over 35 years of success in the sporting goods industry. Closs died on June 6, 2011.

Career statistics

NBA

Source

Regular season

Playoffs

References

External links

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NBL stats
1922 births 2011 deaths All-American college men's basketball players American men's basketball players United States Marine Corps personnel of World War II Anderson Packers players Basketball players from Texas Fort Wayne Pistons players Indianapolis Kautskys players People from Brazos County, Texas Philadelphia Warriors players Professional Basketball League of America players Rice Owls men's basketball players Small forwards Military personnel from Texas United States Marine Corps reservists {{1920s-US-basketball-bio-stub