Bill King, a member of the Minnesota Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, died Monday. King, of Virginia, Minn., was 94.

A member of the Bois Forte Ojibwe community, King started his coaching career at Orr High School, now called North Woods High School, in 1960. Orr High School was near the Bois Forte Indian Reservation community of Nett Lake.

Over 30 seasons, King led Orr’s boys basketball team to a 405-160 record, 19 St. Louis Conference titles, six District 27 titles and three state tournaments (1976, 1978 and 1984).

Orr advanced to the 1984 Class 1A state tournament by defeating defending Class 1A state champion Barnum in the Region 7A championship game. Going into the game, Barnum had won 50 consecutive games, the sixth-longest streak in state history. The 1976 team won the Class 1A consolation title, defeating Winona Cotter 44-43. Orr reached the state tournament in 1976 by upsetting three-time defending region champion Chisholm.

After the announcement of his selection to the Coaches Association Hall of Fame in September 1994, King told the Duluth News Tribune, “We’re awful proud of the success Orr had, considering this is a town of 215 people and each class only has about 15 boys in it. We didn’t have the numbers most teams had, so we had to work twice as hard.”

In 2024, King received the Outstanding Citizen Award from St. Louis County. He also was honored as a State American Indian Educator of the Year.