Professional basketball declines, by Arieh Sclar

“Basketball Jews” served as the final commentary on Jewish basketball in the 1920s and within the ABL.  The Celtics broke up in 1928, which led to a declining interest in the league.  After the Celtics disbanded, Nat Holman and Davey Banks played with the New York Hakoahs (Hakoah is Hebrew for ‘strength’), but the ABL disbanded in 1931 due to financial troubles intensified by the Depression.  The league’s ‘national’ model had failed to subdue the provincial and local nature of traditional basketball.  In 1933, promoters established a reformatted and ‘regional’ ABL in the northeast.[1]

Within the regional ABL, the Philadelphia Sphas returned to their all-Jewish origins and became one of the best teams in professional basketball.  They won seven ABL championships in a thirteen year period, barnstormed in the off-season, and frequently played non-league opponents during the season.  The team wore Hebrew letters on their uniforms and the mainstream press sometimes mentioned the team’s Jewishness.  More often, sportswriter stated that the Sphas, “don’t need much introduction to basket ball fans.”[2]  Yet, the Sphas’ success and entrepreneurial spirit received very little mention in annuals or nationally syndicated columns in the Jewish press due to the regional ABL’s ‘minor’ status among professional sport leagues.[3]

During the interwar period, other professional basketball leagues existed in the northeast, but the ABL’s semi-professional and often local nature maintained the permeable boundaries between Jewish participation and spectatorship that had encouraged the development of Jewish basketball.  Young players lived in the same neighborhoods as professional players, most of whom had other jobs even during the season.  Former professional stars such as Barney Sedran coached in the ABL and an entire generation of Jewish players made a relatively seamless transition from the streets to the professional game.  In the mid-1930s, Jews made up almost fifty percent of the league, but their meager ‘salaries,’ often only $30-40 per game, illustrated that players happily entered professional basketball to continue playing a game they loved, not to achieve financial stability.  Jewish writers did not celebrate any single player as they had Nat Holman during the 1920s, and unlike Holman, Jewish professionals competed in relative anonymity in a marginal sport.[4]  Jewish players would have an even greater impact on mainstream basketball in the 1930s, but only after college basketball surpassed the professional game in its popularity as a national sport.

---

[1] On the ABL’s rise and fall, see Peterson, Cages to Jump Shots, 84-94; Applin, “From Muscular Christianity to the Marketplace,” 199-205. According to Albert Applin, there were actually two ‘ABL’s’, the first disbanding in 1928 due to financial difficulties directly related to the Celtics.  Their dominance of the competition removed spectator interest in other cities.  The ‘first’ ABL folded in November 1928 and the ‘second’ reformed immediately with some of the old ABL teams as well as teams from the Metropolitan Basketball League.

[2] “Philadelphia SPHA Cagers Tackle Heurich Brewers Today,” Washington Post, February 17, 1935. On the Sphas’ success in the ABL, see Peterson, Cages to Jump Shots, 120-123.

[3] The author examined annuals in the American Hebrew from 1920-1945, as well as syndicated annuals published in the American Jewish World, 1920-1939. As a ‘minor’ sport in the 1930s and early 1940s, professional basketball remained on the back pages of sports pages across the country.  Like some other ‘minor’ sports of the era (such as soccer), professional basketball had not attained a level of popularity from which it could withstand a massive economic downturn. 

[4] Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbets Field, 65-67.  Levine estimated that in 1938, 45 of 91 players in the ABL were Jewish. Among the New York dailies, the New York Times virtually ignored the regional ABL whereas papers such as the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn Standard Union, and New York Herald Tribune, among others paid some attention to it.  Often, the mainstream media discussed the financial difficulties of the professional game.  Unlike contemporary times, however, the best college players did not automatically turn professional since the financial incentives often could not compare to other vocations. 

A commentary on Jewish basketball success, by Arieh Sclar

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 region, regular Saturday night games are staged, where dancing before and after the games are a feature of the evening.”  These “community houses” produced “excellent basketball players, whose names later appear in the rosters of high school, college, and professional teams.”  The article also provided the name of 17 Jewish professional players and singled out Nat Holman, who remained “the greatest basketball player in the country. …[He] has been taken for granted for so long that one runs the risk of becoming a bore to repeat his praises.”  The Forward claimed Holman “is as full of deception as the traditional fox,” and praised the professionalism that made him “a great showman.”[1]

“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.”  Popularity, however, did not explain success and Jewish athleticism remained embedded to racial identity.  The Jewish professional presence was so great because basketball “is not essentially a sport where a huge body is a requisite. Brains, nimble thinking and speedy coordination between mind and muscle are more important and effective than mere physical brawn and power.”  The ideal player needed intelligence as much, if not more, than strength.  “The average athlete is a chap whose brains are located in his biceps and whose head is stronger outside than inside. Not so, however, with the average basketball player. …Of course, a strong and husky physique is an asset in basketball as in other sports, but in general basketball players are not so dumb.”[2]

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.

“Basketball Jews” served as the final commentary on Jewish basketball in the 1920s and within the ABL.  The Celtics broke up in 1928, which led to a declining interest in the league.  After the Celtics disbanded, Nat Holman and Davey Banks played with the New York Hakoahs (Hakoah is Hebrew for ‘strength’), but the ABL disbanded in 1931 due to financial troubles intensified by the Depression.  The league’s ‘national’ model had failed to subdue the provincial and local nature of traditional basketball.  In 1933, promoters established a reformatted and ‘regional’ ABL in the northeast.[3]

---

[1] Bob Shelley, “Basketball Jews,” The Jewish Daily Forward, November 3, 1929.

[2] Ibid.

[3] On the ABL’s rise and fall, see Peterson, Cages to Jump Shots, 84-94; Applin, “From Muscular Christianity to the Marketplace,” 199-205. According to Albert Applin, there were actually two ‘ABL’s’, the first disbanding in 1928 due to financial difficulties directly related to the Celtics.  Their dominance of the competition removed spectator interest in other cities.  The ‘first’ ABL folded in November 1928 and the ‘second’ reformed immediately with some of the old ABL teams as well as teams from the Metropolitan Basketball League.

Basketball Jews, by Arieh Sclar

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 region, regular Saturday night games are staged, where dancing before and after the games are a feature of the evening.”  These “community houses” produced “excellent basketball players, whose names later appear in the rosters of high school, college, and professional teams.”  The article also provided the name of 17 Jewish professional players and singled out Nat Holman, who remained “the greatest basketball player in the country. …[He] has been taken for granted for so long that one runs the risk of becoming a bore to repeat his praises.”  The Forward claimed Holman “is as full of deception as the traditional fox,” and praised the professionalism that made him “a great showman.”[3]

“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.”  Popularity, however, did not explain success and Jewish athleticism remained embedded to racial identity.  The Jewish professional presence was so great because basketball “is not essentially a sport where a huge body is a requisite. Brains, nimble thinking and speedy coordination between mind and muscle are more important and effective than mere physical brawn and power.”  The ideal player needed intelligence as much, if not more, than strength.  “The average athlete is a chap whose brains are located in his biceps and whose head is stronger outside than inside. Not so, however, with the average basketball player. …Of course, a strong and husky physique is an asset in basketball as in other sports, but in general basketball players are not so dumb.”[4]

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.

[3] Bob Shelley, “Basketball Jews,” The Jewish Daily Forward, November 3, 1929.

[4] Ibid.

The growth of professional basketball, by Ari Sclar

Basketball’s growth in urban areas and among immigrant groups attracted both Jewish and non-Jewish entrepreneurs who sought to expand the sport’s scope.  Basketball promoters and commentators had discussed forming a ‘national’ basketball league in the 1910s and a national commission failed to control the various professional leagues of the northeast in the early 1920s.  In the middle of the decade, however, promoters formed the American Basketball League (ABL) as a ‘national’ league and attempted to reconstruct professional basketball into a mass, commercialized sport.[1]

The ABL attempted to turn basketball into a respectable sport.  The league banned profanity, used amateur rules, abandoned the ‘cage,’ and played its games in large urban arenas.  Moral condemnations of professional basketball declined as outright violence occurred less frequently.[2]  The ABL became the first league to serve as the pinnacle of a linear, though unstable, basketball hierarchy as a younger generation of former college players entered professional basketball.  Media attention remained fairly sparse, however, until the Celtics joined the league during its second season in 1926-27.[3]

ABL owners wanted to leave behind the chaos and instability of Progressive-era professional basketball where players had more control over their production.  The Celtics had illustrated the importance of continuity in building team success.  Other teams adopted the contractual model that both intensified the commodification of players and provided a massive salary surge.  ABL owners attempted to challenge all aspects of local basketball cultures, including scheduling, ticket prices, and most importantly, fan loyalties.  In some cities, fans decried an ABL team’s “unpopular attendance charge” and the possibility that the league would “unfavorably affect the popularity of local basketball games.”[4]

---

[1] For information on the national commission and discussion of the need for a national league, which would standardize rules of professional basketball, see Introduction, Reach Official Basketball Guide 1921-22 (Philadelphia, A.J. Reach & Co.: 1922);  Applin, “From Muscular Christianity to the Marketplace,” 194-196; Peterson, Cages to Jump Shots, 55. 

[2] As a ‘national’ league, the ABL had teams in New York, Brooklyn, Cleveland, Washington D.C., Rochester (N.Y.), Fort Wayne, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and Buffalo. On the ban against profanity, see “’Oh, Pshaw,’ Limit in Epithets for Pro Fives; $10 a violation,” New York Times, December 31, 1927. For sporadic incidents of violence during basketball games, see “Celtics Win from Rosenblum Five, “New York Times, April 15, 1924; “Fist Fights as Jewels Defeat Celtics,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 26, 1932. Jewish players were involved in both fights as Marty Friedman and Nat Holman squared off in 1924 during a game played for U.S. Olympic fund under the auspices of the Mayor’s Committee on Municipal Athletic Activity.  The 1932 fight occurred during another fundraiser, this time for a retired player.

[3] “Youngsters Crowding Cage Pros,” Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1927.  The article describes the generational transfer within the professional game as “college-trained youngsters” began to replace “old-timers.” 

[4] The ABL owners suspended a Brooklyn player during the first season for playing with a non-ABL team during the season.  See “Brooklyn Basketball Star Suspended,” Washington Post, November 20, 1925. Quote from “Thru Sportdom,” Baltimore Jewish Times, September 19, 1926. On salaries, see Peterson, Cages to Jump Shots, 84-94.  Holman received an annual salary of $10,000 from the Celtics during the mid-1920s.