The Chosen Game: A Jewish Basketball History

The Chosen Game: A Jewish Basketball History

by Charley Rosen
The Chosen Game: A Jewish Basketball History

The Chosen Game: A Jewish Basketball History

by Charley Rosen

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Overview

A few years after its invention by James Naismith, basketball became the primary sport in the crowded streets of the Jewish neighborhood on New York’s Lower East Side. Participating in the new game was a quick and enjoyable way to become Americanized. Jews not only dominated the sport for the next fifty‑plus years but were also instrumental in modernizing the game.

Barney Sedran was considered the best player in the country at the City College of New York from 1909 to 1911. In 1927 Abe Saperstein took over management of the Harlem Globetrotters, playing a key role in popularizing and integrating the game. Later he helped found the American Basketball Association and introduced the three-point shot. More recently, Nancy Lieberman played in a men’s pro summer league and became the first woman to coach a men’s pro team, and Larry Brown became the only coach to win both NCAA and the NBA championships.

While the influence of Jewish players, referees, coaches, and administrators has gradually diminished since the mid‑1950s, the current basketball scene features numerous Jews in important positions.

Through interviews and lively anecdotes from franchise owners, coaches, players, and referees, The Chosen Game explores the contribution of Jews to the evolution of present-day pro basketball.
 


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781496204745
Publisher: Nebraska
Publication date: 11/01/2017
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 216
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

About The Author
Charley Rosen is a writer whose work appears regularly on Fanragsports.com. He previously worked as an NBA analyst for FOXSports.com and is the author of twenty-one sports books, including Perfectly Awful: The Philadelphia 76ers’ Horrendous and Hilarious 1972–1973 Season (Nebraska, 2014) and Crazy Basketball: A Life In and Out of Bounds (Nebraska, 2011). He has coauthored two books with NBA coach Phil Jackson.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

In the Beginning

Dr. James Naismith was a thirty-one-year-old physical education teacher at the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, who, just before Christmas 1891, was charged with coming up with some kind of indoor activity to satisfy the raging hormones of his "rowdy" students.

His original thirteen rules of "Basket Ball" forbade running with the ball, as well as dribbling or kicking it. Since ball movement was limited to passing, the original Dr. J. believed that body contact would be minimized so that his students would be unlikely to injure one another. Naismith asked the janitor to find a pair of square baskets to be nailed to the track that overhung the gym, but only two circular peach baskets could be found. The track chanced to be ten feet above the gym floor, and the ball Naismith settled on was a soccer ball.

The inaugural contest was played on December 21, 1891, with nine players on each side. Fifteen minutes into the game, the first goal ever was made by William R. Chase, a sturdy young man wearing the requisite gray trousers and long-sleeved gray gym shirt and proudly displaying a small black mustache and a full head of slicked black hair. His historic shot was launched from twenty-five feet, certainly more of a baseball heave than a jump shot. The thirty-minute affair ended with a final score of 1–0.

During the subsequent Christmas holiday, the new game's enthusiastic participants introduced Basket Ball to their hometown friends. Within months several other YMCAs throughout the country also took up the game. Indeed, as many of Naismith's students began their career as Christian missionaries, Basket Ball was eventually introduced to China and various European countries.

Moreover, before the turn of the century, the joys of Naismith's invention began to be celebrated in Boston, Cleveland, and other urban areas. When the bouncing ball finally reached New York City, the game was adopted and eventually dominated by the numerous young Jewish men who lived there.

There were approximately 1,500 Jews living in America during the colonial era, mostly with Dutch Sephardic or English backgrounds. Another 100,000 Jews fled from Russia to the New World as a result of the six hundred anti-Semitic decrees issued by Czar Nicholas I during his thirty-year reign (1825–55). The next significant influx arrived from Germany in the aftermath of the failed 1848 socialist revolution. By 1881 this last group numbered around 250,000 and mostly consisted of professionals, journalists, and politicians.

Being highly educated, the German immigrants were easily assimilated into American culture to the point where in 1874, a Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) was established on Manhattan's Lower East Side. This was an alternative to the several YMCAs in the city, which restricted Jewish membership to only 5 percent. In short order YMHAs were also chartered in Seattle, Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia.

In addition to offering literary, social, educational, and religious classes, these newly formed organizations also encouraged their members to participate in sports, because "athletics and Morality go hand in hand." More specifically, sports were a more desirable alternative to dance halls, nickelodeons, amusement parks, and other "disreputable entertainment" readily available in urban areas. This was something of a radically new concept, since European Jews rarely if ever participated in any kind of athletic endeavor. But any activity that would keep immigrant youths out of trouble was worth promoting.

As pogroms (Yiddish for "devastation" or "violent attacks") increased in frequency and brutality spread throughout Russia and Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century, another wave of Jewish immigrants sought refuge in the land they called Golden Medinah (Golden Door). This latest influx mostly comprised illiterate peasants and uneducated laborers. The poverty, filth, and overall strangeness of these groups were seen by the already Americanized German immigrants as a threat to their own precarious security. To encourage and hasten the assimilation of these newcomers, the well-established German Americans founded several more YMHAs and community centers wherever these newcomers landed.

All told, the great majority of Jewish immigrants arrived and remained in New York City. By 1920 nearly half of all the Jews living in the United States resided in New York. As much as the young Jewish men and boys living on the Lower East Side sought some outlet for their athletic interests, the limited availability of public playing fields effectively ruled out baseball, football, and soccer. Also, the clubs and teams that played these outdoor sports on their own private turf accepted only Gentile members. On the other hand, there were several Jewish organizations that either owned or had access to small gymnasiums. By the process of elimination, then, Basket Ball became the athletic endeavor most favored by the thousands of young Jews living in New York City. Besides, the game was frenetic and required quick thinking, rapidity of movement, and endurance — making it the perfect urban sport.

Inevitably, several YMHAs in New York began to field basketball teams that, at first, competed against each other. Indeed, during the winter of 1896–97, the Brooklyn YMHA, powered by the play of Max Hess and F. P. Weil, soundly defeated all of its counterparts. With a new and deliberate intention of gaining respect from Gentiles, the Brooklyn YMHA team also played and bested several other squads that informally represented other ethnic organizations.

Fielding a successful basketball team became increasingly important for YMHAs, as the influx of Jewish immigrants created a backlash of virulent anti-Semitism in which the stereotypical Jew was seen as overly intellectual, crafty, small, and weak. Physically, they were depicted as being black haired, black eyed, thick lipped, swarthy complexioned, hook nosed, narrow chested, and bent. In 1907 Charles Eliot, the president of Harvard, claimed that Jews were physically inferior and should not be permitted to intermarry. A year later T. A. Bingham, the New York City police commissioner, declared that the nefarious cunning of Jews resulted in their constituting half of the city's criminals.

At the same time, and in addition to the popular basketball programs offered in YMHAs, other Jewish-dominated organizations began to field teams. These included labor unions and socialist groups whose primary motivation was to induce participating players into joining their respective movements.

Of course, there were numerous outstanding Gentile players scattered throughout the country, but most of them were centered in the Northeast. In 1898 these players were sufficient in number to join forces in forming the National Basketball League (NBL), the sport's first professional league. Despite claiming to be "national" in scope, the six charter teams were situated in Philadelphia and neighboring cities in New Jersey. Two years later several other pro leagues started up, including the New York State League, which featured a short-lived franchise in Little Falls, New York. It was here that Paul "Twister" Steinberg became the first known Jewish professional basketball player.

Born in New York City, Steinberg most likely learned the game at a Lower East Side YMHA or community center, but it was on the football field that he enjoyed his most spectacular successes. While playing pro football for several teams, including the Philadelphia Athletics and the Syracuse All-Stars, Steinberg earned his nickname for his elusive running in the open field. Dr. Harry March, celebrated as the "father of pro football," said this about Steinberg: "He ran with what seemed to be a limp combined with a pivot and hip shake which made him a menace to opponents. ... He was the most elusive, fastest, slickest, shrewdest back of the century."

As for Steinberg, he credited his basketball background for his achievements on the gridiron: "It was natural for me to change directions when in motion with the ball. I adopted the habit from my experience in basketball."

If Steinberg evolved into a celebrated football player, during the first half of the twentieth century, many (if not most) of America's most outstanding and most influential basketballers were Jews, who likewise learned the game in the Lower East Side's ethnic community centers. Foremost among these organizations was the University Settlement House (USH), charted in 1886 by a trio of wealthy Jewish reformers, Stanley Colt, Charles Bunstein Stover, and Carl Schultz, with the aim of helping Jewish immigrants to "understand American ideas." In addition to providing the requisite English-language courses, social clubs, and a library, the University Settlement House also established the first kindergarten and public baths in New York City.

In addition, the gymnasium in the USH became a fertile incubator wherein the first generation of nationally celebrated Jewish basketballers was nurtured. Indeed, early in the twentieth century, the USHwas hailed as a "basketball factory." And there's no question that the one individual most responsible for the development of the entire Jewish basketball culture in New York and beyond was a resident staff member at the University Settlement House named Harry Braun.

Born in Austria on July 18, 1882, Braun immigrated to the United States and settled in New York, eventually graduating from the City College of New York (CCNY) in 1902. The only sport he had played was lacrosse, but in 1908 he agreed to do volunteer work at the University Settlement House coaching the youth basketball team. Sometimes called "the midget" team, its roster was composed of players who were not considered tall enough to make their high school varsities. Using the only sport he knew, Braun copied the basics of lacrosse — an up-tempo pace; quick, short passes; and tight man-to-man defenses that featured (for the first time in basketball) the theory and practice of switching. He drove his players hard, insisting that they moved with and without the ball, kept their heads up, and unselfishly looked to pass to an open teammate. His young players proudly called themselves the "Busy Izzies."

During his five years coaching at this level, Braun's teams won five intersettlement championships. Yet despite his success, he refused to coach the USH's more senior teams. His reasoning was that, unlike the older players, the youngsters hadn't had time to develop bad habits and were more eager to accept and learn his precepts. In 1910 he left coaching to devote himself to a career in engineering.

Although Harry Braun's life and deeds have long since been forgotten, and his interest in basketball brief, he deserves recognition as being the originator of fundamental basketball tactics that are still universally employed. Indeed, his game plan was carried on by his pupils, many of whom became the best professional players in the early days of the game. These included Barney Sedran, Marty Friedman, Louis Sugarman, Ira Streusand, Jake and Alex Furstman, and Harry Brill.

Ossie Schectman, who one day would score the very first basket in the Basketball Association of America (BAA, the precursor of the NBA), grew up playing basketball in New York City. He remembers the small gyms and the low ceilings. "You played in a figure-eight and there was lots of movement," he said. "It was devoid of long set shots."

Basketball Hall of Famer Hubie Brown calls this style of play "Jew Ball" and cites it as containing the basic principles that have enabled teams like the San Antonio Spurs, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Chicago Bulls to win numerous NBA Championships in the modern era.

Testimony: Richie Goldberg

Richie Goldberg was an All-City point guard at James Madison High School in Brooklyn who accepted a basketball scholarship from Mississippi Southern in 1955. "I don't think they'd seen too many Jews down there," he says. "They thought that the Star of David that I wore around my neck was some kind of basketball medal. They also thought my mezuzah was a broken whistle."

The only direct anti-Semitism he encountered was getting booed when he was introduced as a member of the starting lineup before a game at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, Tennessee. But he did overhear a Mississippi Southern coed say this: "If we let Jews into the school, before you know it we'll let niggers in."

CHAPTER 2

Busy Izzies Take Over

The best of the Busy Izzies and, as far as anybody knows, the best basketball player in the country became the first Jew to achieve stardom in the college game.

Louis Sugarman

5'7", 145 Pounds

Born in the Bronx in 1890, Louis Sugarman made daily trips to the USH to learn, develop, and master this new game — a game that bore little resemblance to the one played today by sky-walking, slam-dunking, iconic, millionaire, acrobatic giants.

The typical court was about sixty-five feet long and thirty-five feet wide (today's standardized dimensions for college and pros are ninety-four feet by fifty feet). However, since players as tall as six feet were rare and considered freaks, there was ample room for players to maneuver.

If the courts were smaller, the ball was bigger and heavier — a circumference of thirty-two inches and weighing a probable average of about twenty-eight to thirty ounces compared to thirty inches and twenty to twenty-two ounces in modern times. Moreover, the ball that Sugarman and his contemporaries used was made of leather covering a rubber bladder and sealed with raised laces. Because the laces were hand stitched, the actual size, weight, and roundness of the balls were never uniform. The smooth surface made the ball difficult to handle, and if the laces chanced to hit the floor, the dribble or pass (or both) would most likely bounce in an unanticipated direction.

Given all of these handicaps, Sugarman was renowned for his tricky dribbling that — along with his unsurpassed speed and quickness — could easily get past his erstwhile defender and approach the rim. Once he got there, however, Sugarman frequently faced a challenge that's unheard of nowadays, that is, the hoops on many basketball courts lacked a backboard.

Despite these handicaps, Sugarman was only sixteen years old when his ballhandling and scoring prowess landed him a basketball scholarship at Syracuse University. He arrived on the campus with a reputation as a hothead who didn't think twice about physically assaulting opponents. However, Sugarman generally reserved his punches for players on other teams who repeatedly screamed racial epithets at him. Indeed, during a home game pitting Syracuse against Cornell, Jew baiting was the reason Sugarman decked a trio of the visiting players.

In any event, Sugarman single-handedly improved the fortunes of the previously mediocre Syracuse basketball program. The team opened the 1907–8 season with eight consecutive wins. He tallied a game-high seventeen points in a 42–22 win over Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, followed by a thirteen-point effort as Syracuse beat Williams 25–21. The Orangemen finished with a 10-3 record, by far their best showing since basketball became a varsity sport in 1899.

Then for some reason that has not survived, Sugarman transferred to Notre Dame, where he helped the 1908–9 Irishmen to a record of 33-7. This was the first but certainly not the last time that a Catholic college recruited a Jewish hooper to lead their team to glory.

After two seasons as an undergraduate player, Sugarman became a professional. For the next ten years, he played with several teams in the Eastern League (EL) and the New York State League, where he was the league's leading scorer in 1914.

There were major differences among the early pro leagues. The Eastern League employed backboards and surrounded the courts with wire cages. The cages were designed to keep the more passionate fans from injuring opposing players, but since the ball was never out-of-bounds, the games were extremely physical. Moreover, each team had a designated free-throw shooter who took all of his team's foul shots. The New York State League dispensed with backboards. Instead, the baskets were hung from a rod coming down from the rafters.

Both leagues permitted a two-handed dribble that enabled the player with the ball to aggressively back his defender toward the basket. Fouls were rarely called, and substitutions were not allowed, so if a player suffered an injury, his team played four-on-five.

(Continues…)



Excerpted from "The Chosen Game"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Charley Rosen.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Preface: Promise in the Promised Land    
1. In the Beginning    
2. Busy Izzies Take Over    
3. Beyond the Izzies    
4. Enter Sir Nat    
5. Gotty and the SPAHS    
6. Taking over the Game    
7. The Barnum of Basketball    
8. About All-Americans, Blackbirds, the Olympic Games, and the Rosenblums    
9. The SPAHS, the Crown Jewels, and the ABL    
10. The War Years    
11. The Penguin and the Birth of the BAA    
12. Too Many Jews on the Knicks    
13. The Iron Man, Moe, and the Apprenticeship of Red Auerbach    
14. Gotty Wins Again and a Crooked Ref    
15. The Fix and Close Shaves    
16. The Scandals of ’51    
17. Murray’s in the Mountains    
18. If It’s Broken, Keep Fixing It    
19. David Beats Goliath Again    
20. Molinas Redux    
21. The Jewish Olympics    
22. Some More Blue-Chip Jewish Hoopers    
23. The Coaches    
24. NBA Owners and Bigwigs    
25. Recent Notable Players    
26. The Jewish Jordan    
Appendix: Jews in the Naismith Hall of Fame    
Sources    
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