He founded the American Basketball Association, which revolutionized the game, and participated in other imaginative, sometimes zany sports ventures.
Dennis Murphy, the impresario of alternative athletic leagues, including the American Basketball Association, who also shook up tennis and ice hockey and launched imaginative, sometimes quixotic ventures in other sports, among them indoor roller hockey, died on Thursday at an assistant living facility in Placentia, Calif. He was 94. His son, Dennis Jr., told The Associated Press that the cause was heart failure. Mr. Murphy’s most lasting achievement was the A.B.A., the competitor to the National Basketball Association from 1967 to 1976, when four of its teams — the New York Nets, San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets and Indiana Pacers — joined the N.
