CCNY, representing 'Jewish' basketball, by Ari Sclar

During the 1946 season, Jewish players had considerable success in New York college basketball.  Jews made up six of the top eight scorers in the Metropolitan district, and seven of the ten players named All-Metropolitan.  They also remained well represented at the predominantly ‘Jewish’ schools of CCNY, NYU, LIU, and St. John’s, although not as extensively as the previous decade.  CCNY and NYU each had four Jewish starters at different times during the season, St. John’s had three starters, and LIU had two Jewish starters as well as 5’8” Jackie Goldsmith, who came off the bench to lead the Metropolitan district in scoring.[1]  These teams continued to headline the double-headers at Madison Square Garden and receive attention from the national press.  Yet, CCNY, the school that continued to represent Jewish basketball in the minds of American Jews, had minimal success as the basketball culture changed between 1938 and 1945.

In the 1930s, Nat Holman served as the ‘face’ of both New York and Jewish basketball.  His professional experience led the mainstream press to praise his ‘scientific’ coaching and his authorship of books such as Scientific Basketball (1922) and Winning Basketball (1932) solidified his reputation as a basketball expert and led to commercial and promotional opportunities.  As early as 1936, he had a ten-minute radio program on WNYC and in 1934, Time explained his unique place in college basketball: “in his spare time, he studies sculpture.”[2]  Historian Peter Levine illustrated that the Jewish press often portrayed Holman as a link between the immigrant past and the native-born future.  He served as the sole representative of basketball in the 1938-39 edition of Who’s Who in American Jewry.[3]

Holman could not have represented Jewish basketball by himself.  The preponderance of Jews on CCNY team, which Levine estimated at 83% of all players during Holman’s tenure, meant the school continued to represent the broader success of Jewish basketball.  In addition, CCNY’s reputation for intellectual debate, radical thought, and tough academic admissions encouraged the general belief that Holman could not recruit star players.[4]  Fans believed Holman’s teams “played five-man basketball,” since “talent receives no special consideration” at the school.  In fact, “it is miraculous that out of the paucity of material, Holman could weld a unit able to compete at all in intercollegiate basketball.”[5]  The perception of Holman’s teams reinforced the Progressive idea that teamwork and intelligence could overcome physical ability.  Although no successful sport program existed without talent, press reports concentrated on Holman’s ability to “mold” individuals into a competitive team since “outstanding individual stars are missing, and perhaps Holman would have it that way.  His contention is that basketball is essentially a team game.”[6]

In the early years of the national tournaments, Holman refused to acquiesce to the changing structure of college basketball.  Convinced that basketball remained a “small man’s game,” Holman continued to produce teams that represented this ideology.  Prior to the 1938-39 season, analysts declared that CCNY would have a poor season because the team, “sets an all-time high for low stature, even at City College, where a six-footer is as rare.”  In December 1938, CCNY had a surprising victory over the “tall firs” of Oregon, the eventual NCAA champion that year, which the New York press celebrated as “a great start in the New York vs. Rest of the World rivalry.”  This win only provided brief success as the team struggled during the rest of the season and then finished with a record of 8-8 in 1939-1940.  CCNY earned a spot in the NIT the next two seasons, finishing in third place in 1941, but the school had a losing record in 1943 and did not play in either postseason tournament between 1943 and 1946.[7]

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[1] On scoring, see “Individual Scoring,” New York Times, March 11, 1946.  Also see “All-Met,” New York Times, March 10, 1946.

[2] On Holman’s commercial activities, see his file at the Edward and Gena Hickox Library at the Basketball Hall of Fame, Springfield, MA. Also see the Nat Holman Papers, the City College of New York Archives, New York; “Hakoah Meets Bruins Tonight in Cage Tussle,” Chicago Tribune, December 26, 1928.  “Basketball: Mid-season Report,” Time, February 19, 1934.

[3] Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbets Field, 56-59. Nat Holman in John Simons, ed., Who’s Who in American Jewry: A Biograhical Dictionary of Living Jews of the United States and Canada (New York: National News Association Inc., 1939).  See Nat Holman, Scientific Basketball (New York: Incra Pub. Co., 1922); Nat Holman, Winning Basketball (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932); Nat Holman, Holman on Basketball (New York: Crown Publishers, 1950). 

[4] According to historian Sherry Gorelick, less than one percent of the children of Jewish immigrants reached college and even fewer graduated in the first decade of the twentieth century.  Even the celebrated and difficult entrance requirements into City College that caused many people to call CCNY the “Harvard of the Proletariat” only took effect in the late 1930s and before that decade, graduating classes generally numbered in the hundreds.  See Shirley Gorelick, City College and the Jewish Poor: Education in New York, 1880-1924 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981), 3. Also see Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth, 128-138.  Joel Perlmann explained that in 1908, well below five percent of the Russian Jewish children in the city graduated from high school.  See Joel Perlmann, Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Blacks in an American City, 1880-1935 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 123.

[5] “Readers’ Right,” New York Post, March 12, 1936.

[6] “Holman Stresses Form at CCNY,” New York Post, December 2, 1931.

[7] Quote on ‘small man’s game’ and ‘low stature,’ from “Pessimists Ruled Out as Holman’s Beavers Prepare for Opener,” New York Evening Post, December 1, 1938; “Fury and Finesse Lead to Same Results when Beavers and Redmen Take to Court,” New York Evening Post, December 19, 1938. In the final game of the 1939 season, CCNY defeated previously undefeated (and No. 1) NYU team to finish 8-8.  CCNY also had three straight losing seasons in the mid-1940s.