A Jewish presence in professional basketball

The ABL used major league baseball as a model as owners sought to structure fan loyalty solely around the team.  Ethnic spectatorship had led New York baseball managers in the 1920s to hire Jewish players who would attract a specific audience.  Basketball teams had the opposite problem as ethnic identification competed with the local team identification that ABL owners desired.[1]  The Celtics had succeeded as a multi-ethnic team and its broad popularity meant it felt little pressure to change its internal structure.  For other independent teams, however, the ABL exerted a tremendous amount of influence to discard, at least to some extent, pre-ABL identities.

Teams in Rochester and Philadelphia altered their identifiably Jewish rosters in the ABL.  Rochester’s entry in the ABL, the Centrals, had formed at the Rochester YMHA in the 1900s and the team remained exclusively Jewish into the 1920s.  In the ABL, however, the Centrals included “players of other nationality on its roster, [though] it retains its Jewish identity.”[2]  In Philadelphia, promoter Eddie Gottlieb owned the Philadelphia Sphas (South Philadelphia Hebrew Association), a team that had emerged out of Philadelphia’s Jewish basketball culture in the late 1910s.  By the mid-1920s, many commentators considered the Sphas one of the top teams in professional basketball.  Yet, Gottlieb disbanded the Sphas and formed a new team called the Warriors, which included both Jews and non-Jews, as Philadelphia’s ABL team.[3]  In order to successfully compete in the ABL, Rochester and Philadelphia had to represent the entire city and overcome their traditional identification as ‘Jewish’ teams.

Other teams included Jews for other reasons.  In contrast to existing teams, a new team in Washington attracted Jewish fans by including recognizable players.  The Baltimore Jewish Times celebrated the inclusion of three local Jewish players on Washington’s ABL entry, including “’Lefty’ Stern [who] has abandoned college in favor of signing with the team.”[4]  The inclusion of three local Jews indicated that unlike Rochester, the newly-formed Washington team had to build a fan base from the ground up.  Cleveland owner, department store magnate Max Rosenblum who humbly named his team the Rosenblums as a cheap form of advertising, brought in Marty Friedman to serve as player-coach during the ABL’s first two years.  Friedman’s presence in Cleveland indicated the true character of the league.  Before he arrived in Cleveland, Friedman had played his entire 15-year professional career for northeastern teams.  Friedman’s skill and knowledge as an ‘old-timer,’ not his identity as a Jew, best served the Rosenblums as he led them to the first ABL championship.[5] 

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[1] For other Jewish professionals of the mid- to late 1920s, see “Jewish Sport Notes,” Philadelphia Jewish Times, January 15, 1926.  The column contained an “All-Jewish All-American” professional basketball team. Levine explained he used name identification.  See Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbet’s Field, 61.  Levine explained he used a similar method as Paula Fass in her book, Outside In: Minorities and the Transformation of American Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

[2] Quote from Original Celtics Game Program, 1927-28, Nat Holman file, Edward and Gena Hickox Library at the Basketball Hall of Fame, Springfield, MA. The Rochester Centrals were mentioned in the Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, but strictly as a team that emerged from the Rochester YMHA, with no comment regarding its connection to the ABL.  See Postal, Silver, and Silver, Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, 91.

[3] For information on the Sphas, see Postal, Silver, and Silver, Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, 84, 91; Also see “Philadelphia Sphas” in Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Sports in the United States, eds. George B. Kirsch, Othello Harris, and Claire E. Nolte (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000), 360-361.  A group of young Jews formed the Combine Club as adolescents.  The members then competed for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, which eventually broke its affiliation with the team.  The kept the name and began to play in the Philadelphia League in the early 1920s.  The Sphas were first mentioned in Reach as a member of a local professional league and “the leading traveling club” of the city.  They were nicknamed the “Wandering Jews” by some locals. During the 1925-26 season, the Sphas defeated both the Original Celtics and an African-American team, the Harlem Renaissance in a special series.  The team included non-Jewish players during its participation in the Eastern League in the late 1920s.  The Warriors played two seasons in the ABL and then moved to the Eastern League.  See Abe Radel, “South Philadelphia Hebrew Association,” Reach Official Basketball Guide 1924-25 (Philadelphia, A.J. Reach & Co.: 1925).  On the Hakoahs and Warriors, see the files of Nat Holman and Eddie Gottlieb in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

[4] “Thru Sportdom: Basketball Again,” Baltimore Jewish Times, September 19, 1926.

[5] Friedman led Cleveland to the ABL’s first title, called the “world series” in 1925-26, the year before the Celtics joined.  On Friedman’s role with the Rosenblums, see Peterson, Cages to Jump Shots, 85-86. According to Albert Applin, Rosenblum was the true force behind the league.  Other owners included sport promoters like George Halas and George Marshall (both NFL owners) or business groups.  See Applin, “From Muscular Christianity to the Marketplace,” 200-204.