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.

CCNY beats Yale!, by Arieh Sclar

In the early years of the twentieth century, basketball thrived at small colleges.  For instance, one historian found that Oberlin College, located in Ohio, did not have the resources to build a ‘big-time’ football program, so it offered basketball as a way to provide athletic opportunities to students, attract loyalty and funds from alumni and fans, and build institutional prestige.[1]  For similar reasons, New York City colleges such as New York University (NYU), and the City College of New York (CCNY) established basketball programs in the mid-1900s.  Along with Columbia University, which focused on basketball after de-emphasizing football, these schools expanded the athletic opportunities of Jewish students.  Jews from the lower East Side competed for these schools as Samuel Melitzer starred at Columbia and Joe Girsdansky played for NYU.  CCNY’s vast Jewish student population and high number of Jewish players, however, led the school to symbolize Jewish athletic achievement in college basketball.[2] 

During the 1900s, Jewish players helped turn CCNY into an early basketball power.  The tuition-free CCNY primarily served a Jewish population and Jewish players from the University Settlement such as Barney Sedran, Ira Streusand, and Harry Brill led CCNY to a record of 9-2 in 1908.  During the 1909 season, Jews made up the entire team and served as manager, assistant manager, and coach.  The team finished 8-3 and its competitive success drew the notice of the New York press and Spalding guides.[3]  More importantly, a ‘Jewish’ team in college sports drew the attention of Jewish newspapers.  In December 1908, at the beginning of the basketball season, the American Hebrew claimed CCNY’s victories over Princeton and Yale, “stamps them as the premier college five.”[4]  Yet, even as CCNY became a prominent program due to its Jewish players, the school experienced problems associated with the basketball program.

In November 1907, the student newspaper The Campus had exclaimed that basketball could “advertise” the school “to the public outside of New York City.”  The paper equated the fame of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, known as the “Big Three,” to their prestige in the athletic world, and stated, “there can certainly be no harm in athletics flourishing in any college.”  Commentators had been denouncing the commercial and competitive pressures of ‘big time’ college sport since the 1890s, and The Campus ignored the recent ‘crisis’ of college football caused by brutal and violent play.  Instead, the newspaper claimed, “athletics have not been detrimental to the growth of any institution or impaired their high standard.”[5]

The Campus wanted basketball to be a positive force at the college.  The editor criticized students in December 1907 for “hissing” at opponents, which “violated the first laws of hospitality.”  The paper condemned similar behavior during a 33-23 loss to Columbia, but had little to say about CCNY’s overwhelming victory over Adelphi the following week by a score of 95-11.  Later that season, an editorial again asked fans to “be manly and display some courtesy toward visitors.”[6]  Controlling crowds upwards of 1,500 proved difficult.  So did attempts to limit basketball’s impact on other campus activities.  In March 1908, The Campus stated that athletics “are not everything.  Last Friday evening, with the game as a counterattraction, not a single one of the literary societies could muster a quorum and conditions very much the same as this have been the rules since the opening of the basketball season.”[7] 

As much as the basketball team’s success drew students away from other campus activities, a lack of success hurt the basketball program.  In 1910, CCNY remained a predominantly Jewish team, although without Sedran, Streusand or Brill.  The basketball team lost early and often, including to Navy, whose “coach told our [coach] Mr. Palmer that his team learned how to play the game from us.”  Such praise meant little to the students who, during the season, became “indifferent and failed to support the team.”  The lack of attendance proved financially costly because the school’s Athletic Association had provided “our basket-ball men with the best outfits that money could purchase.”  As a result, the team barely made a profit since “it was never dreamt that our student body could be so devoid of any semblance of college pride as to be interested in a team only so long as it is always the victor.”[8]

CCNY’s basketball fortunes returned in 1911 and students looked to avenge the previous season’s loss to Yale.  As the date of the rematch drew close, The Campus appealed for the students to organize more cheers in order to “help the players.”  It became important to beat Yale in order to “maintain the reputation which we have built up by the hardest kind of work.”[9]  CCNY’s 20-15 victory merited a three-page article in The Campus, which exclaimed: “the high standards of our curriculum could not have done, in years, what the glorious triumph of the varsity basketball team over Yale accomplished in one short evening.”[10]

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[1] Horger, “Play By The Rules,” 210-215.  ‘Big-time’ programs existed as an abstraction between the absolutes of professional and amateur sport.  ‘Student-athletes’ received no pay, but universities often earned large amounts of revenue from competitions.  On the history of college basketball, see Neil D. Isaacs, All The Moves: A History of College Basketball (New York: Harper and Row, 1984); Peter C. Bjarkman, Hoopla: A Century of College Basketball (Indianapolis: Masters Press, 1996).  On college sport, see Smith, Sports and Freedom.

[2] On early college basketball, see Isaacs, All The Moves, 39-45.  Columbia abolished football in the early 1900s and expanded the basketball program to compete with professional, non-college, and amateur teams.  New York provided the infrastructure and acceptance for Columbia basketball to thrive in the 1900s and 1910s as it dominated the Ivy League. 

[3] For information on the CCNY team, see Basketball, CCNY Microcosm, 1909.  The New York Times provided regular coverage of CCNY games during the late 1900s, although with only brief commentary on the game.  On CCNY in Spalding, see the guides in 1906, 1908, and 1909.

[4] “The Jewish Athlete,” American Hebrew, December 18, 1908.

[5] Editorial, The Campus, November 25, 1907. In 1907, CCNY moved from 23^rd Street to 137^th Street (its present location).  The new campus included expanded facilities, including a gymnasium.  That same year, the college hired Leonard Palmer as a “tutor in the department of Physical Instruction and Training at a salary of $600 per annum.”  In October, Palmer’s salary was increased to $800.  See Proceedings of the Board of Trustees of the College of the City of New York, February 25, 1907 and October 21, 1907.  On the football crisis of 1905, see Smith, Sports and Freedom, 191-208; Oriard, Reading Football, 164-165, 170-171. 

[6] Condemnation of fan behavior as well as Adelphi score in Editorial, The Campus, December 11, 1907.  Columbia score found in The Campus, December 4, 1907.  The second condemnation found in The Campus, January 8, 1908.

[7] Editorial, The Campus, March 18, 1908.  The same issue contained an article entitled “Basketball Statement,” which illustrated the team had produced net revenue of $440.14 for the season.  On the financial considerations involving basketball at CCNY in the 1900s and 1910s, see reports in the CCNY Microcosm: Official Annual of the College.

[8] “Basketball,” The Campus, February 9, 1910; “Athletics: The Last Straw,” The Campus, February 23, 1910.

[9] “Athletics: Soon,” The Campus, December 7, 1910.

[10] “Our Recent Victory,” The Campus, December 21, 1910. 

The 'basketball Jew' arrives, by Ari Sclar

In 1908, the American Hebrew published its first series of articles on Jewish athleticism.  The first article, “Activity of the Jews in Athletics,” celebrated the fact that teams from either the Clark House or University Settlement, “solely made up of Jewish boys, has held the basketball championship of the settlement league…ever since the league came into existence.”  The newspaper focused on basketball played on the lower East Side in an environment predominated by Jews, which led to the conclusion that, “it is a well established fact that in basketball, the Jew has no superior.”  More significantly, the newspaper attempted to examine the root of Jewish success.  This urban, frenetic and hurried sport, according to the Hebrew, “requires a good deal of quick thinking, lightning like rapidity of movement and endurance; it does not call for brutality and brute strength and that is why the Jews excel in it.”[1]

The Hebrew’s assertion of Jewish basketball superiority fit into the dominant writing about the sport’s required characteristics.  Early accounts of the sport noted that “basket-ball requires the most rapid kind of play,” which necessitated a certain kind of player.  The focus on passing placed a premium on quickness and speed.  A 1912 treatise explained that “agility and alertness are two of the fundamental and principle characteristics.”  In 1903, Spalding’s editor pronounced: “Basket ball is a game of skill and not of brute force.  I have seen a team weighing on an average fifteen pounds less than the other win a game by skill in passing the ball.”[2]  Even inventor James Naismith commented: “The first principle on which the game was based was that it should demand of, and develop in, the player of the highest type of physical and athletic development.  This type in the mind of the writer was the tall, agile, graceful, and expert athlete, rather than the massive muscular man on the one hand, or the cadaverous greyhound type on the other.”[3]  The stereotyped Jewish immigrant body did not fit Naismith’s ideal, but it was not negated as either the ‘cadaverous greyhound’ or the ‘massive muscular’ type.

The Hebrew took the dominant writing about basketball and applied it to the imagined category of the ‘Jew.’  The Hebrew proposed, possibly for the first time, that the Jewish body could serve as an advantage in athletic competition.  The Hebrew inverted the lack of physical size from a determinant of Jewish non-athleticism and weakness into an advantage in basketball.  Jewish vitality could be transformed into endurance and intellectual ability translated into mental acuteness in a rapid game that required instinctual quickness.  Yet, ascriptions of Jewish intelligence perpetuated the underpinnings of the stereotype.  The implication that Jews did not have “brute strength” meant Jewish masculine identity had not escaped perceptions of Jewish physical inferiority.  Jews succeeded because of quickness and thinking, not because of physical strength.

The Hebrew’s ‘basketball Jew’ possessed the immigrant body and an essential Jewishness.  Speed and the ability for fast play served as important characteristics, but the Jew also had the necessary mental makeup needed to succeed.  Thus, the Jew succeeded as, and because of being, a Jew.  The racial pride involved in celebrating this distinctiveness indicated that although Bushnell and others presented Jewish athleticism as a way to overcome ‘clannish’ tendencies, Jews did not have to change their racial or cultural identity to become American.  In fact, the underlying assumption of the Hebrew’s argument was that if Jews lost either their small body or their Jewish intellect, they would also lose their status as superior basketball players.  American Jews had found an activity that proved their willingness to participate in mainstream society without losing their positive racial identity.

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[1] “Activity of the Jews in Athletics,” American Hebrew, September 18, 1908. 

[2] Paret, “Basket Ball,” 227; “Basket Ball and Its Success,” New York Times, November 12, 1893. The press explained that playing positions were virtually interchangeable with the exception of center, which required an additional characteristic: height.  Guerdon N. Messer, How to Play Basket Ball: A Thesis on the Technique of the Game (New York: American Sports Publishing Co., 1912); “Order v. Chaos,” Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide 1902-03 (New York: American Sports Publishing Company, 1903).

[3] Naismith, “Basket Ball,” 340.

The 'busy izzies', by Ari Sclar

In the 1900s, New York Jewish youth dominated play at a number of non-Jewish settlements, most importantly, the University Settlement.  Upon the formation of the Inter-Settlement League, University Settlement members organized an Athletic Association, which by the end of 1903, had “upwards of one hundred members, each paying monthly dues of fifteen cents and an initiation fee of twenty-five cents.”  Though the settlement had a “small and inadequate gymnasium,” basketball became a popular sport.  “The enthusiasm and skill developed” at the settlement resulted in the junior class winning the title during each of the Inter-Settlement League’s first three years.  In 1906, the settlement received $50,000 to expand the gymnasium facilities and brought in a new coach for the youngest and smallest players, called the schoolboys or midgets.[1]

Harry Baum, a Jewish immigrant from Central Europe, had never played basketball when he began coaching at the University Settlement.  He had, however, played one year of lacrosse in college and applied many of the lessons he learned in that sport to basketball.  Lacrosse “taught him the value of passing and the folly of losing possession of the ball with long heaves,” so he taught a style of constant movement, cutting to the basket, and quick passes.  The spatial limitations of urban environments shaped how participants played basketball as cramped city gymnasiums restricted player movement.  Yet, Baum applied his concepts to basketball not only because of limited space, but also because of the type of player at the settlement.  His first team, made up exclusively of Jews and nicknamed the ‘busy izzies,’ consisted of “players [that] were so small,” Baum developed “tactics based on speed and deception.”  He focused on developing a style that commentators later claimed had placed a “heavy emphasis on brains in the absence of brawn.”[2]

Baum had tremendous success at the University Settlement, which dominated the schoolboy division during his five-year tenure.  He became a “slave-driving coach” to Jewish youth “who wanted exactly that sort of thing.  They were fearless and had an overwhelming ambition to make good…and [were] grateful for instruction in their main passion in life.”  His first team, consisting of future professionals Barney Sedran, Marty Friedman, and Ira Streusand, among others, won both the schoolboy division in the Inter-Settlement League and the Metropolitan Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championship.[3]  Their success reflected a broader athletic success of American Jews, which the mainstream press presented as a break from the Jewish past.

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[1] On the settlement league, see “Basket Ball Records,” Official Handbook of the Inter-Settlement Athletic Association of Greater New York (New York: A.G. Spalding & Bros., 1908).  On information of the University Settlement’s Athletic Association and gymnasium, see Settlement Athletics, Seventeenth Annual Report (New York: University Settlement, 1904 and 1905).  On the donation, see Headworker’s Report, Twentieth Annual Report (New York: University Settlement, 1906). 

[2] Stanley Frank, “It Was Obvious – But Here is the First Man to See It,” New York Evening Post, December 12, 1934.  For a similar depiction of early black basketball, see Bob Kuska, Hot Potato: How Washington and New York Gave Birth to Black Basketball and Changed America’s Game Forever (Charlottesville, VA.: University of Virginia Press, 2004).

[3] Frank, “It Was Obvious – But Here is the First Man to See It.”

Basketball at the 92nd Street YMHA: success and tension, by Ari Sclar

The YMHA experienced both success and problems during its first two basketball seasons.  By February 1901, a second YMHA team had formed.  The “first” team, made up of the YMHA’s “brawniest members,” opened its second season in October 1901 with high hopes since, “during the Summer months, [the players] practiced the rules of 1901 and are quite proficient in the game.”  A “regular second team” opened its season with a 44-5 victory over the Nordica Basketball Team in a “free and easy fashion.”  The YMHA also increased its admission charge to ten cents in order to decrease attendance.[1]  The measure did not appear to have the desired effect.  At the end of 1901 and YMHA officials banned basketball games with outside, or non-institutional, teams.  The institution’s 1902 annual report declared that “intense rivalry and limited quarters” influenced the decision.[2]

The basketball ban reflected the ideology of YMHA physical education, which limited competitive opportunities.  In January 1902, the Bulletin published an article entitled “Athletic ‘Specialists.’”  The article explained that members would “derive great benefit” from physical activities, but denounced the “small minority [of members] who seem to think that the gymnasium is a training ground for specialized work…we think that a young man ought to join a gymnasium for the purpose of rounding himself out physically, and not for the purpose of abnormally developing some particular muscle.”[3] Attempts to minimize the importance of athletic specialization conflicted with some members’ aspirations, especially those of the Atlas Athletic club, which had changed its name from the YMHA Athletic Club in order to function “without being interfered with by the YMHA.”  The club had been formed to encourage physical culture, but members primarily focused on competitive sport in the early 1900s.[4]  They found the YMHA generally unwilling to cater to their desires.  Officials initially kept their distance from the competitive basketball world as they encouraged mass education, not specialized athletics.

For example, the YMHA did not immediately join the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), amateur basketball’s ruling body, after forming its original basketball team.  The AAU took over control of basketball after YMCA leaders denounced basketball due to commercialism and professionalism.  Led by Luther Gulick, the AAU Basketball Committee implemented a registration plan in the 1890s to combat the influence of professionalism in basketball and forbad AAU teams from playing even independent, or non-AAU, amateur teams.[5]  The AAU realistically understood it could not eliminate professional basketball, but sought to contain it from spreading into ‘pure’ amateur competition by banning non-registered players and teams from all AAU competitions.  During its initial foray into basketball, therefore, YMHA basketball had been on the outside of the official amateur structure.[6]

In November 1903, the YMHA joined the AAU and resumed basketball games against outside teams.  Both developments brought the YMHA closer to the commercial and competitive culture of mainstream amateur sport.  AAU membership meant emphasizing conformity to the amateur ideal.  It also introduced new pressures.  Competition necessitated practice, representative teams, and a hierarchical athletic structure.  An admission charge to all games accompanied the resumption of outside competition.  Unlike the initial admission fee established in 1901 to control attendance, the new admission charge served purely financial ends.  Officials requested that “since the money is to go toward the vacation camp fund everybody ought to patronize them [basketball games].”[7]  

Membership in the AAU made competitive sport more visible at the YMHA.  After the YMHA’s representative team went winless in five games at the 1904 Metropolitan AAU championship, including a 57-10 loss, the Association hosted the tournament in 1905.[8]  YMHA officials publicly explained that they had offered the use of the gymnasium out of a “belief that all amateur sport should be put on a high plane and kept free from professionalism.”  More importantly, the tournament “attracted several thousands [spectators]…many of whom had never heard of the Association,” and generated almost $150 from tournament receipts.  Officials also claimed that the AAU tournament directly increased basketball’s popularity at the YMHA.[9] 

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[1] For mention of the second team, see “Physical Department,” Y Bulletin (February 1901). On the “brawniest” members, the opening victory and the admission charge, see “Physical Department,” Y Bulletin (October 1901).  While an admission charge successfully decreased attendance, it is unclear whom the YMHA was attempting to exclude.  The Bulletin commented it was due to a “large number of outsiders” at games.  Superintendent Mitchell wrote in his journal that the fee resulted in “much less crowding and the classes were not depleted of their pupils.” See William Mitchell Journal, February 6, 1901, Young Men’s Hebrew Association records, 92^nd Street Y Archives, New York. The 1901 Annual Report simply mentioned that the charge was made to “avoid overcrowding of the track.”  See Young Men’s Hebrew Association, Twenty-Seventh Annual Report, 1901 (New York: 1902). In the 1890s, YMCAs charged admission in order to exclude unwanted guests.  Luther Gulick believed spectators could learn as much from the instructional game as the players.  If basketball was to serve instructional ends, it needed to exist as a respectable medium since the enforcement of certain standards of decorum would improve the public behavior – and thus morals – of working class spectators.  While at the YMCA, Gulick believed this possible through two methods: charging admission and stopping games until unruly behavior ceased. Historian Marc Horger has connected charging admission to historian Lawrence Levine’s description of a “cultural hierarchy” since some reformers hoped that sport could exist in a polite, and even silent, environment.  Gulick believed that the audience needed to abide by cultural norms imposed by basketball’s guardians.  This conception fit into the standard pattern of cultural development described by Levine.  See Horger, “Play By The Rules,” 42-44; Lawrence Levine, Highbrow, Lowbrow: Cultural Hierarchy: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).

[2] Young Men’s Hebrew Association, Twenty-Eighth Annual Report, 1902 (New York: 1903). The Bulletin explained that the final game occurred on December 18, 1901, because competition with outside teams, “interfere too much with the regular work of the gymnasium.” See Physical Department, YMHA Bulletin, January 1902.  Mitchell made no reference of interference, but he noted that two YMHA players were injured in the December 18^th game and that during an October game, one of the players “struck his head against the wall.” See William Mitchell Journal, October 23, 1901, Young Men’s Hebrew Association records, 92^nd Street Y Archives, New York.

[3] “Athletic ‘Specialists’,” Y Bulletin, January 1902. 

[4] Soon after the publication of “Athletic ‘Specialists,’” the YMHA suspended the Atlas Athletic club. The following is derived from the Minutes of the Atlas Athletic Club, William Mitchell Journal, the Y Bulletin, Minutes of the Board of Directors and Minutes of the House Committee, Young Men’s Hebrew Association records, 92^nd Street Y Archives, New York.  In February 1902, one of the club’s founding members was suspended from the gymnasium.  In response, the club expelled the YMHA’s physical instructor, Charles Jardine, as an honorary member. In April, Jardine appealed to the Board of Directors for an assistant and suspended three more Atlas members for “insubordination and mischief breeding in the Gymnasium.” At the club’s meeting on May 5, 1902, which was held at the home of the one of the members due to the suspension, it was club decided: “Applicants for membership need not be member of YMHA gymnasium.” Association officials demanded the club turn over their minute book, but they refused and in response, the YMHA suspended the entire club.  After club representatives met with YMHA President Percival Menken, the club returned to the Association without further penalty.  That summer, Jardine resigned and was replaced by a professional physical director, George Schoening.  An examination of the Atlas minute book indicated no reason for YMHA officials to demand its appearance.  No pages appear to have been removed.  In the midst of the controversy, Atlas joined the AAU in April 1903, preceding the YMHA’s AAU membership of November 1903. See Minutes of the Atlas Athletic Club, May 5, 1903, Young Men’s Hebrew Association records, 92^nd Street Y Archives, New York.

[5] Some commentators praised the ‘perfect’ plan, but it proved ineffective since registration did not stop amateurs and professionals from playing against one another.  See Horger, “Play By The Rules,” 67-72; “AAU Controls Basket Ball,” New York Times, November 13, 1907; Paret, “Basket Ball,” 225.

[6] For the first mention of the YMHA’s membership in the AAU, see Harry Sperling, “Gymnasium Notes,” Y Bulletin, November 1903.  The YMHA would not have been considered a renegade, but it is nonetheless surprising that YMHA officials did not immediately conform to governing amateur rules in order to avoid any pretense of controversy. Throughout the late 1890s and early 1900s, the AAU found itself in the midst of controversies involving the registration policy.  Problems were often intensified when a non-registered team played a registered team, which made the registered team ineligible for AAU membership.  If that team then played others, all the teams would be considered non-registered and so on. For information and controversies regarding AAU sport, the use of registration fees, and the AAU’s connection to commercial consumption, see Horger, “Play By The Rules,” 76-79.

[7] Harry Sperling, “Gymnasium Notes,” YMHA Bulletin, December 1903. 

[8] “Metropolitan Basket Ball Championships, Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide, 1904-05 (New York: American Sports Publishing Co., 1904); “Championship Basket Ball Games,” New York Times, April 14, 1904.  See Gymnasium Notes, YMHA Bulletin, April 1904.  An article in the 1906-07 Spalding Guide on the 1905 AAU championship written by William Mitchell did not comment on the importance of a Jewish institution hosting such a tournament. See William Mitchell, “Metropolitan Junior Championships,” Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide, 1906-07 (New York: American Sports Publishing Co., 1906).

[9] Quote on professionalism from “The Recent Basketball Tournament,” Y Bulletin, May 1905. Comment on publicity from Young Men’s Hebrew Association, Thirty-First Annual Report, 1905 (New York: 1906).

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.

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[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. 

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.

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[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.