Who

The owner of the most famous toupee on television, Marv Albert is the radio and television sportscaster best known for his signature catchphrase "Yeessss!" and for his part in a seamy sex scandal in 1997.

Backstory

Brooklyn-born Albert has always been obsessed with sports: As a kid, he called games for an imaginary radio station he'd dubbed the WMPBA. He was a bellboy at the old Madison Square Garden and earned his first on-air job in 1966 when he was hired to announce Rangers games on the radio. He became the radio voice of the Knicks the following year, and it was only up from there: By 1975, he was the sports anchor for WNBC; two years later, he was calling boxing, college basketball and pro football for NBC Sports; and in 1979, he became the TV voice of the Knicks. Albert spent much of the 1980s and '90s as a TV fixture, making regular appearances on David Letterman and earning entry into the annals of pop culture thanks to signature sayings like "Yesssss!" Until, that is, 1997 rolled around and his career was interrupted by the sex scandal that resulted in his dismissal from NBC. (See below.) Albert returned to the air two years later when he was hired by MSG Network to provide the play-by-play for the Knicks. In 2004, he lost the gig after clashing with the cable network's owner, Jim Dolan, over his pay (an estimated $2 million a year) and his occasionally blunt assessments of the team's performance. These days he calls NBA games for TNT and covers Nets games on the YES network.

Scandal

Albert's career came to a crashing halt in 1997 when he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman with whom he'd had a 10-year sexual relationship. Albert was accused of forcing her down, biting her on the back, sodomizing her, and then forcing her to perform oral sex on him in a Virginia hotel room; memorably, the woman also accused him of wearing a toupee and women's underwear. At trial, a second woman emerged with similar claims, and Albert quickly accepted a plea deal in which he admitted guilt to assault and battery and earned a 12-month suspended sentence. NBC fired him the same day.

Personal

Albert married Heather Faulkiner, his second wife, in 1998. They live in the West 60s. He has four children from his first marriage to Benita Oberlander, which ended in 1992: Kenny, Brian, Denise and Jackie. Kenny replaced Marv as the radio voice of the Rangers in 1995 and has gone on to have a successful broadcast career in his own right; Denise is a reporter for NBA TV. Marv's younger brothers Steve and Al are also NBA play-by-play men.