Basketball - The Original
City Game
Basketball has long been
known as “The City Game:” Unlike
baseball and football, which require grass,
open space and equipment, boys and girls
can play basketball with only a ball, a hoop
and a flat surface on which to run. Basketball
is thus the ultimate schoolyard game. For
decades, it has served as an entry point
for lower-income urban youth to enter the
American mainstream. This was as true for
American Jewry from the 1920s through the
1950s.
Sidney “Sonny” Hertzberg,
who grew up in New York City and played
in the first game in the history of what
is now the National Basketball Association,
reminisced, “We used to fill a stocking
hat with paper and pass it — there
was no dribbling and shoot it through the
rungs of a fire escape ladder:” Nathan
“Naf” Militzok, Hertzberg’s teammate,
recalled, “I never saw a dirt field.
Everything was cement. ... We had two choices:
either go to the schoolyard and play ball
or hang around on the corner and get in trouble.
So, we played basketball all our lives:”
Athletic scholarships in basketball served as a means
of upward mobility for nativeborn sons of New York’s immigrant Jews.
After college, experience on the court led to positions as teachers
and coaches. For a talented handful, basketball became a professional
career.
In the first game in National
Basketball Association history, the New
York Knickerbockers put four Jews on the
court for the opening tip-off and carried
six Jews on their roster. In that initial
game, played on November 1, 1946, the Knicks
won a thriller over the Toronto Huskies
by the score of 68-66. Leo “Ace” Gottlieb
led the Knicks in scoring with 14 points.
Sidney “Sonny” Hertzberg captained the team.
Oscar “Ossie” Schechtman scored on the first
shot of the game — thus becoming the
first man in the history of the NBA to score
a point. Ralph Kaplowitz was the fourth Jew
in the Knick’s starting five, while Nat
Militzok and Hank Rosenstein played as reserves.
When the league was founded, teams tended to sign
players who had roots in their communities. The Boston franchise, appealing
to a city dominated by Irish immigrants and their descendants, named
itself the Celtics. New York was home to America’s largest Jewish population.
Even though Ned Irish, a Catholic, owned the team, the Knickerbockers
recruited Jewish players from the New York area. Schectman was an All-American
at Long Island University. Kaplowitz, a butcher’s son, captained the
NYU team. Hertzberg, whose father worked in children’s clothing and
Rosenstein, whose father drove a truck, went to the City College of
New York. Militzok attended Hofstra and Cornell. “Ace” Gottlieb
played at De Witt Clinton High before playing semi-pro ball.
In the 1940s, the “city
game” was quite different than the high-flying
version played today. Players shot and passed
the ball with two hands. “In those days,
if you took a jump shot;” Militzok
recalled, “you would be sitting right
next to the coach.”
There was no such thing as the dunk, touching
the rim was a technical foul, there was
no 24-second shot clock and few players stood
taller than 6'6".
Jews filled key positions
in the league’s administration. Maurice
Podoloff, former president of the American
Hockey League, served as the NBA’s first
president. Among the league’s first Jewish
coaches were Arnold
“Red” Auerbach of the Washington
Capitols and owner-coach Eddie Gottlieb
of the Philadelphia Warriors. Both Auerbach
and Gottlieb were elected to the Basketball
Hall of Fame, as was Dolph
Schayes of the Syracuse Nationals, the
only Jewish player selected among the top
50 all-time NBA players.
Player salaries in 1946 were inadequate to support
a family. Ralph Kaplowitz signed a deal for $6,500 for the season, less
than today’s average player makes for a single game. All the players
had to work at other jobs during the off-season. For many of the players,
a year or two of such insecurity encouraged them to find more stable
careers. Hertzberg left to become a successful stockbroker, while Rosenstein
became a technical sales consultant in the plastics industry. Ossie
Schectman retired in 1947 to enter the garment industry.
Money aside, it wasn’t
easy to be a Jewish player when playing
outside New York. Kaplowitz recalled that
when he played on the road, raucous non-Jewish
fans would yell at the Knick players, “Abe,
throw it to Abe.” Militzok said, “Playing
in Pittsburgh and we came out on the floor,
I heard them singing: ‘East Side,
West Side, here come the Jews from New York.’”
Concerned that the predominance
of Jews on the Knicks might hurt at the box
office, the Knick’s management decided to
change the team’s composition. They sold
Kaplowitz’s contract to the Warriors midway
through that first season and traded Rosenstein
to Providence. Sonny Hertzberg played with
Washington and Boston before retiring to
become an optician. The Knicks never had
another Jewish player, although Hall of Famer
Red Holzman became their coach in the 1960s.
Today, the city game belongs to African-Americans.
In the future, it will pass to Hispanics and other new immigrant groups.
In 1946, professional basketball, at least in New York, was not just
the city game. It was the Jewish game.
Sources: American Jewish Historical Society |