Elmore Morgenthaler
American professional basketball player

Elmore Robert Morgenthaler (August 3, 1922 – November 25, 1997) was an American professional basketball player. He played for the Providence Steamrollers and the Philadelphia Warriors in the Basketball Association of America (BAA), among other franchises and leagues. Standing at 7 ft 1 in (2.16 m), Morgenthaler is officially recognized as the first seven-foot player in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Morgenthaler was raised in Mart, Texas. He attended Hobbs High School in Hobbs, New Mexico, after he had been recruited by coach Charles Finley. Morgenthaler followed Finley to play college basketball for the New Mexico Mines and he finished second in the nation in scoring with 21.8 points per game after playing for just the second semester of the 1945–46 season. The Mines were abolished at the end of the season and Morgenthaler transferred to play for the Boston College Eagles for the 1946–47 season. He quit college basketball at the end of February 1947 to play professionally for the Providence Steamrollers of the BAA. He was waived by the Steamrollers on September 27, 1947, and did not return to the BAA until he signed with the Philadelphia Warriors on November 18, 1948.
Morgenthaler's health deteriorated after his retirement. He worked at a liquor distillery to support himself.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Elmore Morgenthaler” as american professional basketball player. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3723595. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1922, 1997, 1945 and 1946.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elmore Morgenthaler” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.