Vincent Joseph Boryla (March 11, 1927 – March 27, 2016) 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, coach and executive. His nickname was "Moose". He graduated from

East Chicago Washington High School East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...

in 1944. He played basketball at the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic university, Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend, Indiana, South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin fo ...

and the

University of Denver The University of Denver (DU) is a private research university in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1864, it is the oldest independent private university in the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Univ ...

, where he was named a consensus All-American in 1949. Boryla was part of the U.S team that won the gold medal at the

1948 Summer Olympics The 1948 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XIV Olympiad and also known as London 1948) were an international multi-sport event held from 29 July to 14 August 1948 in London, England, United Kingdom. Following a twelve-year hiatus ca ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

Boryla played for the New York Knicks in the early 1950s. In 1951, Boryla scored nine points in the inaugural

NBA All-Star Game The National Basketball Association All-Star Game is a basketball exhibition game hosted every February by the National Basketball Association (NBA) and showcases 24 of the league's star players. It is the featured event of NBA All-Star Weekend, ...

and played in the NBA Finals in 1951 and 1953. Boryla did not participate in the 1952 playoffs. He later became the Knicks' coach from 1956 to 1958, and had an 80–85 record with them. Later in his career, Boryla became the

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

of the American Basketball Association's Denver Nuggets early in their history when they were first the Kansas City ABA team and then the Denver Larks. He was also the general manager of the ABA's

Utah Stars The Utah Stars were an American Basketball Association (ABA) team based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Under head coach Bill Sharman the Stars were the first major professional basketball team to use a pre-game shootaround. History prior to moving t ...

. Boryla later rejoined the Nuggets when the franchise joined the NBA. He won the NBA Executive of the Year Award with the Nuggets in 1985. His son Mike was a

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

; Vince served as his agent. Boryla was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, and in 1984 into the National Polish-American Hall of Fame. Boryla died in Denver, Colorado on March 27, 2016 from complications of pneumonia, aged 89.

NBA career statistics

Regular season

Playoffs

References

External links

*
Vince Boryla (as coach) Statistics
at Basketball-Reference.com
National Polish-American Sports HOF profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boryla, Vince 1927 births 2016 deaths All-American college men's basketball players Amateur Athletic Union men's basketball players American men's basketball players Basketball coaches from Indiana Basketball players at the 1948 Summer Olympics Basketball players from Indiana Denver Pioneers men's basketball players Medalists at the 1948 Summer Olympics National Basketball Association All-Stars National Basketball Association executives New York Knicks head coaches New York Knicks players Notre Dame Fighting Irish men's basketball players Olympic gold medalists for the United States in basketball Power forwards (basketball) Small forwards Sportspeople from East Chicago, Indiana United States men's national basketball team players Utah Stars executives Deaths from pneumonia in Colorado American people of Polish descent