Jews in early professional basketball, by Arieh Sclar

In 1913, the Reach Basketball Guide commented on the success of a group of Jewish players from the lower East Side without identifying them as Jews.  The Newburgh (NY) team received “a hard jolt when three of its best players jumped their contracts at the beginning of the season.”  To replace these players, the manager “was able to get the entire Clark House team together to represent Newburgh and they played grand ball.”  The guide made a seemingly minor mistake in its discussion of Newburgh’s new players.  Most of them had played at the University Settlement, not Clark House.  Though this illustrated bad reporting by the guide, it also indicated the significant step these players had to make into the world of professional basketball.[1]  They advanced into professional basketball at a time when it existed as a marginal and unstable sport.  In the process, they both helped construct a path from the street to college and professional basketball and transformed the professional game.

The Jewish players on Newburgh’s team had started formally to play professional basketball in the early 1910s.  Though many young Jews from the lower East Side played in professional games while in high school or college, they often did so under assumed names to keep their amateur status.  Among the most prominent and skilled players, former settlement and CCNY basketball players Barney Sedran and Harry Brill joined their friend Marty Friedman, who had not played in college, on an independent professional team in New York City called the Roosevelt Big Five.  The Jewish players also played in the newly formed Hudson River League, which had teams located in upstate New York towns such as Newburgh, Utica, and Kingston.[2]

In the 1910s, professional basketball existed as a chaotic sport.  The Hudson League existed alongside many other professional leagues that predominated in northeastern towns.  Teams often folded in the middle of a season.  Leagues struggled financially and occasionally disbanded after only a couple of seasons.  Players jumped from team to team for better pay and without fear of reprisal.  Sedran, Friedman, and the other Jewish players quickly adapted to the professional culture.  They too moved from team to team and league to league as players enjoyed a player-centered market system that allowed them to partially control their own labor.[3]

Jewish players adjusted to the tactics of the professional game.  In the 1900s and 1910s, professionals often played games in cages that made the game faster and rougher.  The ball remained in constant play with no out-of-bounds.  Players wore knee-pads and expected harsh treatment from opponents, fans, and sometimes even the referee.  The roughness and threat of violence influenced the style of play.  Barney Sedran remembered that two-handed set shots predominated.  “It was suicide to shoot for the basket with your feet off the ground because you’d be lucky to come down alive.”  While playing for a team in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, the 5’4” Sedran was being punched by an opponent.  His backcourt partner, Marty Friedman, the two became known as the ‘Heavenly Twins,’ remembered that he told “Barney to run at full speed past me and as the bully boy came alongside me I stepped in front of him and down he went.”  The move produced a near riot.[4]

Neither Friedman nor Sedran ever claimed the attack occurred because of anti-Semitism.  The early Jewish players experienced varying level of anti-Semitism during their careers.  Friedman claimed: “I ran into little anti-Semitism among the players,” although it occasionally emerged “in the Midwest among the fans.”  Ira Streusand’s experience differed: “I ran into anti-Semitism everywhere, from my first collegiate game until I retired from basketball.”[5]  Anti-Semitism did not restrict access to professional basketball for Friedman, Streusand, or other Jewish players, but the rough culture of the sport made it difficult to isolate incidents of anti-Semitism from the everyday occurrences of violence.

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[1] Hudson River Basket Ball League, Reach Official Basketball Guide 1912-13 (Philadelphia: A.J. Reach & Co., 1913).  A couple of the Jewish players in professional basketball did come from the Clark House, but most of the players – and the most recognized – had played at the University Settlement.

[2] Biographies of Marty Friedman and Barney Sedran in Postal, Silver, and Silver, Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, 82-84, 92-94. Also see folders of Barney Sedran, Marty Friedman, and Nat Holman in the Edward and Gena Hickox Library at the Basketball Hall of Fame, Springfield, MA.  A Picture of the Roosevelt Big Five in Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide 1912-13 (New York: American Sports Publishing Company, 1912).  Reach first mentioned the players, including Barney Sedran, Marty Friedman, William Cone (nee Cohen), Lou Sugarman, Ira Streusand, and others, in Hudson River League, Reach Official Basketball Guide 1910-11 (Philadelphia: A.J. Reach & Co., 1911). 

[3] On early professional basketball, see Peterson, Cages to Jump Shots, 46-68.

[4] Postal, Silver, and Silver, Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, 83, 92-93.

[5] Ibid., 83, 96.