Phil Jasner has been a member of the staff of the Philadelphia Daily News since 1973. He was presented the Curt Gowdy Award for excellence in print journalism in 2004 by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and is a two-time Pennsylvania Sports Writer of the Year, as presented by the National Association of Sportscasters and Sports Writers. He is a member of the Overbrook High Alumni Hall of Fame, and has been inducted into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
From 1960 to 1964, he served as a reporter, columnist, assistant sports editor and managing editor of Temple News and spent a semester as sports director of WRTl-FM, the student radio station. During that time, he covered the Owls’ basketball team in the National Invitation Tournament and countless other events at South Hall and the Palestra.
He spent his early professional days at The Mercury (Pottstown, Pa.), Montgomery Newspapers (Fort Washington, Pa.), The Times-Herald (Norristown, Pa.) and the Trentonian of Trenton, N.J.
He has covered the 76ers and the NDA for the Daily News on a full-time basis since 1981, after an earlier stint in the mid-1970s and some similar work for various suburban newspapers. He covered a portion of the Sixers’ never-to-be-forgotten 9-73 season for the Trentonian and the Daily News, as well as the 1982-83 championship season and the 2000-01 run to the NBA Finals. He has covered, among others, Hall of Famers Alex Hannum, Wilt Chamberlain, Jack Ramsay, Billy Cunningham, Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Larry Brown and Charles Barkley.
Jasner is a past president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association and the Philadelphia College Basketball Writers Association. He received a lifetime achievement award from the Professional Basketball Writers Association during the NBA Finals in 2001. He also appears regularly on Daily News Live on Comcast SportsNet.
Along the way, he has covered high school sports, the Philadelphia Big 5, the Eagles and the NFL, the World Football League, the North American Soccer League and what was then the Major Indoor Soccer League.
He lives in the Overbrook Farms section of Philadelphia with his fiancee, Marcia Levinson, an award-winning assistant professor of pediatric physical therapy at Thomas Jefferson University.