Ray Patterson (basketball)
American basketball player (1922-2011)
Raymond Albert Patterson Jr. (January 15, 1922 – August 3, 2011) was general manager of the NBA's Houston Rockets from 1972 to 1990. He was named NBA Executive of the Year in 1977, and his Rockets appeared in the NBA Finals in 1981 and 1986. Among his most notable player acquisitions were Ralph Sampson in 1983 and Hakeem Olajuwon in 1984. He left the Rockets in 1990 with hopes of becoming co-owner of an NHL team in Houston, and was succeeded by his son, Steve. Ray Patterson's NHL dreams never materialized, but he helped found an International Hockey League franchise, the Houston Aeros, in 1994.
Patterson attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was an All-American high jumper for the Wisconsin Badgers track and field team, finishing 4th at the 1944 NCAA track and field championships.
During the 1940s, Patterson played professional basketball for the Flint Dow A.C.'s of the NBL.
From 1968 to 1972, Patterson served as president, and part-time GM, for the Milwaukee Bucks. Patterson drafted Lew Alcindor with the first overall pick in the 1969 draft and traded for Oscar Robertson in 1970.
“Ray Patterson (basketball)” enters the record as american basketball player (1922-2011). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Patterson, basketball and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3420551. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1922, 2011, 1972 and 1990.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ray Patterson (basketball)” 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.