The ABL provided a
central location in which to examine the Jewish presence in basketball. By the middle of the decade, many of
‘old-time’ players of the pre-war era had started to retire, and though a new
infusion of Jewish talent began to trickle into the professional game, only
Holman and teammate Davey Banks served as preeminent Jewish talents. In the first two years of the ABL, Holman and
Banks of the Celtics were joined by Washington
coach Lou Sugarman, also from the lower East Side ,
as prominent Jewish representatives of the league. In addition, Eddie Gottlieb owned and Jules
Aaronson managed the Philadelphia Warriors.
According to historian Peter Levine, Jews made up 19 of 101 players on
ABL rosters during the 1927-28 season.[1] At a time when American Jews consisted of
less than four percent of the American population, such a disproportionate number
of Jews in the major professional basketball league would have legitimized the
claims of Conzel, Joel, and other commentators that Jews ‘dominated’
basketball. The notion of Jewish dominance
and innate ability also received notice in one of the era’s most thorough
articles on Jewish basketball.
On November 3,
1929, the English-section of the Yiddish daily, the Jewish Daily Forward,
published “Basketball Jews.” The Forward and other Yiddish
papers served a distinct role in American Jewish life. They provided the daily news that English
readers of the American Hebrew and other weekly Jewish newspapers would
get from the mainstream media. The
Forward contained a full
weekend sports page in Yiddish that provided information on broad athletic
events as well as Jewish athletes, although in general, the Yiddish
press provided little information on sports.
For instance, the same weekend as the publication of “Basketball Jews”
in the English section, the newspaper’s Yiddish sports page contained no
information on basketball.[2] Nonetheless, “Basketball Jews” reflected the growing presence of Jews in a
changing sport.
The Forward article did not view Jewish
participation as illustrative of Jewish acceptance, but rather as a normal
experience within basketball. The author
stated that basketball had become “a major activity among the young Jewry of
New York and the vicinity. In the YMHA’s
of innumerable small cities in the New
York
“Basketball Jews”
advanced the notion that basketball “may almost be said to be a Jewish
sport.” Basketball became popular among
Jews because “there are no football fields or baseball diamonds to speak of in
lower Manhattan
Like previous commentators, the author of “Basketball Jews”
presented basketball as a sport that required certain characteristics. He distinguished Jewish basketball players
from the ‘average athlete.’ The Jew
succeeded because of Jewish intelligence and an unchanged Jewish body. The Jewish athlete did not, and should not,
need to conform to the physical ideal to succeed. Indeed, the body of the basketball Jew could
not change if Jews wanted to maintain their advantage in the sport.
[1]
Levine, Ellis Island to Ebeet’s Field, 61.
[2]
Oriard, King Football, 34. According to historian Eddy Portnoy, many
immigrants received their sports news from the New York Daily Mirror, whose Jewish readership was large enough
that the paper occasionally printed messages in Yiddish on the sports
page. Portnoy also explained that the
Yiddish press contained virtually no coverage of sport during the interwar
period. The author’s brief examination
of the Forward confirmed this. Eddy
Portnoy, e-mail message to author, October 12, 2006.
[4]
Ibid.
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