Don Ohl obit

NBA All-Star and Edwardsville native Don Ohl dies at 88

 

He was on the list.

Edwardsville High School graduate Don Ohl was a five-time NBA All-Star during a 10-year professional career that included stops with the Detroit Pistons, Baltimore Bullets and the St. Louis/Atlanta Hawks.

To Don Ohl’s three children, D.J., Pam and Tracey, he was much more than just a professional basketball player.

“(Don) loved his family and his grandkids. He was a devoted husband to our mom. He was just a wonderful man,” Tracey (Ohl) Marshall said.

Ohl passed away on the morning of Dec. 2 at Barnes Jewish Hospital. He was 88 years old.

Preceded in death by his wife of 50 years, Judith Kay Ohl, Don Ohl is survived by his three children, seven grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

The move to Edwardsville

Ohl was born April 18, 1936, in Murphysboro, and later moved to Edwardsville when he was 10 years old and in the fifth grade.

It was in Edwardsville that Ohl began crafting the perfect jump shot as a point guard on the basketball court that would later be a feature story in Sports Illustrated.

“He lived in LeClaire and he had a basketball goal on his garage back behind the house. I think we played on a dirt court. He could it heave the ball from a long way out. He would just be out there by himself shooting,” said Harold Patton, who was two years younger than Ohl. “There was a streetlight out there and we would play at night, though, you could hardly see the rim. He became very good.”

Bob Gregor, who played all four seasons of high school basketball with Don Ohl, was also out there a lot.

“Don moved to Edwardsville in the fifth grade and we played together for quite a while. When we were young kids, we would go to his house on McKinley Avenue before he moved to Franklin Avenue and we would go there,” Gregor said.

“In junior high, we played together. He played outside and I always played inside. That was also the way it was in high school when we played together.”

Former Edwardsville High School boys basketball coach Joe Lucco nicknamed the pair Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside. As seniors in 1953-54, Gregor was a 6-3, 210-pound post player and Ohl was a 6-2 guard.

“I used to call Gregor ‘Mr. Inside’ and Ohl was ‘Mr. Outside.’ Ohl and Gregor were two of the better high school players you’d ever want to see,” Lucco said in a previous interview with Alton Telegraph sports reporter Greg Shashack.

Ohl with the Edwardsville Tigers

Together, the two helped lead the Tigers to their first state trophy with a fourth-place finish at the state tournament in 1953-54 in their senior seasons. The team finished with a 28-7 record. It was the program's second state tournament appearance after first making it three years earlier in 1950-51.

“At the time, our names always went together, Ohl and Gregor. He was probably good as a jump shooter from 22 feet that I’ve ever seen,” Gregor said. “He might have been the best shooter of all time. That was his strength.”

In Ohl’s senior season, he earned All-District and All-State first-team honors after averaging 19.6 points and was the recipient of the WW. Warnock Trophy Winner for the senior with the highest scholastic average.

“If your grades were good, you could go down to the gym,” Ohl said in a previous interview with the Edwardsville Intelligencer. “I would go down by myself to the gym and work out and practice different moves.

“I got to the point where I ran out of things to do and I was shooting free throws with my eyes closed, but if you wanted to get any kind of an edge, you have to work harder. That’s what I did, and I think it paid off.”

Patton was a sophomore on the team that 1953-54 season.

“I had to guard him all the time in practice and he liked to play with me a little bit,” Patton said. “I would put my hands up to guard him and every now and then, one of his passes wouldn’t be around me, it would be through my arms. That was a hard pass to block. Every now and then, he would also bounce one on off my forehead and then laugh. We had a lot of fun.”

Ohl finished his high school career with 1,032 points. He currently ranks 21st in program history.

It’s a point total that could have been much higher. IHSA didn’t adopt the three-point line until 1988.

“Don Ohl was the best out-court shooter I ever saw,” Lucco said to Shashack in a previous interview.

MVP for the Illini

Ohl chose to attend and play basketball for the University of Illinois over Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) and Vanderbilt.

Ohl played four seasons at the University of Illinois, including the last two with former high school teammates Mannie Jackson and Govoner Vaughn.

In Ohl’s senior season, he averaged 19.6 points and was chosen as the team’s MVP. He was also an NCAA All-American and second-team Converse All-American selection.

Ohl graduated from the University of Illinois with 1,230 career points. At the time of graduation, it was the third most in program history.

Though Ohl was selected in the fifth round of the 1958 Draft by the Philadelphia Warriors, he opted to work for Peoria Caterpillar Tractor Company in an office in Morton while playing in the National Industrial Basketball League.

Two years later, shortly after he married his wife Judith Kay Opel and opening the Don Ohl Supply Store on Main Street in Edwardsville, Ohl signed to play with the Detroit Pistons.

On to the NBA

Ohl played four seasons with the Pistons before being traded to the Baltimore Bullets in the one of the first blockbuster trades in NBA history.

In the 1956 postseason, Don Ohl averaged 26.7 points per game before ultimately losing in six games to the Los Angeles Lakers and Jerry West in the Western Division finals.

Ohl spent his last three professional seasons with the Hawks organization, including the first in St. Louis and the last two in Atlanta.

Retiring after the 1969-70 season, Don Ohl finished his career with 11,549 points. He averaged 15.9 points. In 47 postseason games, he averaged 16.9 points.

All three of Ohl’s children were born during his professional career. Pam was born in 1961, while D.J was born in 1963 and was born in Tracey 1966.

“It was a normal life for us growing up. Nothing really stood out. He just played basketball and did his thing. We lived what seemed like a normal life. He had an office supply story on Main Street and we would live in Edwardsville during the offseason and then drive as a family to whatever family as he was playing for at that time,” D.J. Ohl said.

Enjoying retirement

After retiring from basketball, Ohl enjoyed a reserved life.

“When he retired from basketball, he sold his office supply store on Main Street and we moved into Montclaire. Around 1966, my parents built a house in Sunset Hills and that’s where they lived for the rest of their lives,” D.J. Ohl said. “He loved to golf and bass fish. He was a heck of a gin player and bridge player.”

Ohl was humble and didn’t go out of his way to speak about his basketball career. When he was asked about it, though, according to his children, he loved to talk about the stories from those days.

Thanks to video games and YouTube, Don Ohl’s grandchildren have also been able to see the impact their grandfather had on basketball.

Ohl became a rewards card in the NBA 2K21 for players to earn.

“Our dad became a fixture on the NBA 2K series,” Tracey (Ohl) Marshall said. “D.J.’s boys were playing and they saw him on there. It was a unique, bizarre and amazing experience. Dad had no clue about it.

“To bring his career back into this world for his grandchildren, it was great. His grandkids were able to see he was a great basketball player.”

It also allowed the current generation of basketball fans and card collectors to know who Don Ohl was.

“About the time that all started happening, he got more and more mail from people asking him to sign the trading cards and send them back,” D.J. Ohl said. “Every day, he would get a piece or two of mail asking for his autograph. It was kind of wild.”

Ohl was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1973, the Edwardsville High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 1981 and the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame in 2017.

n his final college season, Ohl began to pique the interest of several NBA teams in advance of the 1958 draft. The Philadelphia Warriors selected him in the fifth round (37th overall), but he was unsure about his readiness for the next level. Ohl accepted a position with the Peoria Caterpillar Tractor Company in Morton, Ill., where he worked while playing one season for the Peoria Cats in the National Industrial Basketball League (NIBL). He never signed with the Warriors.

As Ohl told The Edwardsville (Ill.) Intelligencer in a 2008 interview, “'It may have been a mistake, but I didn’t end up playing in the NBA until two years after I got drafted. I didn’t think I was good enough for the NBA even though people who should have known kept telling me that I was. I started working for Caterpillar and they had a team in the Industrial League, which might be comparable to a farm club of the NBA.'" He played a couple of years in the NIBL.

“'In 1960, we won an AAU tournament in Denver, and the next week they had the Olympic Trials to see who would represent the U.S. in the Olympics. We played the final game against the college all-stars, who had a bunch of All-Americans like (future NBA stars) Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Walt Bellamy and Jerry Lucas, and of course, they beat us.'”

Ohl performed well enough at the Olympic Trials to put himself back on the NBA radar. He was scouted by Detroit Pistons coach Dick McGuire, who acquired his rights from the Warriors, they made an offer that Ohl couldn't turn down. In his rookie year he went from bench player to starter, and by his third year with the Pistons he was an all-star, averaging 19.3 points a game. He made five consecutive NBA all-star teams from 1962–1963 to 1966–1967. He went on play 10 seasons for the Pistons, Baltimore Bullets, and St. Louis-Atlanta Hawks. He was the Bullets team MVP in 1965 and 1966. The crafty 6'3", 190-pounder scored 11,549 points, averaging 15.9 points per game for his career.

Ohl has the highest playoff scoring average in the Washington Wizards franchise history, at 26.23.

In 1968, Ohl was traded to the Hawks for Tom Workman and a third round draft choice. Two years later, he was taken in the 1970 NBA Expansion draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers but opted to retire at 34 years of age

Career history

1959–1960            Peoria Cats

1960–1964            Detroit Pistons

1964–1968            Baltimore Bullets

1968–1970            St. Louis / Atlanta Hawks