Establishing a national basketball culture, by Ari Sclar

Before Garden basketball could succeed in constructing a new model in college basketball, it had to overcome the sport’s fragmentation.  In 1934, Time explained that college basketball “is played almost entirely within regional leagues.”  This restricted the sport’s nationalization because “the argument of each league that it has the best team in the land is more forceful than most such controversies, since the strongest teams play on courts of different sizes under rules differently interpreted.”[1]  Stanley Frank pointed out that the root of the problem was “a vague negative set of rules, lending itself easily to all sorts of conflicting interpretation, is the stumbling block which makes college basketball a purely sectional sport.”  Any ‘championship’ contest would “prove exactly nothing” since “the home team most probably would win because the visiting squad would be bewildered and crucified by the wholly unfamiliar rule enforced by home officials.”  Frank quoted officials who that the rule book caused many problems since it merely “tells what a player cannot do and leaves everything else to the imagination.”[2]

The first Garden double-header in December 1934 demonstrated Frank’s supposition.  In the highly anticipated second game, St. John’s played Westminster College in the opener, NYU’s predominantly Jewish team and Notre Dame provided “hardly a dull moment all evening” before a crowd of 16,000 “that knew its basketball thoroughly.”  Literary Digest declared that “the packed galleries” in the arena had acted “as they do at a professional hockey game.”  This influenced the outcome since “the conduct of the partisan crowd kept nervous Notre Dame players from sinking a lot of free shots at the basket.”  To offset the partisanship, the Garden brought in a Midwestern referee to officiate alongside a New York referee.  The New York Times explained that “the Midwestern interpretation of guarding cost NYU…a heavy penalty in fouls.”  Literary Digest concurred that the “interpretation of the guarding rule inflicted a heavy penalty on the NYU team.”  NYU, which fielded largely the same team that had gone undefeated in 1934, defeated Notre Dame 25-18 despite the rulings of the Midwestern official.[3]

Rule interpretation remained the most pressing problem of Garden basketball during the 1934-35 season.  In the second double-header, NYU played Kentucky, considered the best team in the South.  In the final minute of play, New York ref Jack Murray called a foul on Kentucky’s star player, 6’5” center Leroy Edwards.  NYU’s Sid Gross converted the free throw, which proved to be the deciding basket in a 23-22 NYU victory.  The questionable foul, “set off the most raucous and liveliest argument the sport has yet provoked.”  Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp claimed his team had been “robbed” by Eastern officials since they had not punished NYU’s rough players for fouling Edwards throughout the entire game.  Literary Digest stated that Rupp and Notre Dame’s coach both “contend that they would have made a far better showing against NYU had their games been handled by home officials.  No team can lay claim to a ‘National Championship’ as long as officials are unable to agree on their definitions of fouls in a game.”  The mainstream media begrudgingly agreed that “NYU has the strongest claim of the [national] title.”[4]

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[1] “Sport: Basketball,” Time, February 19, 1934. The centrality of conferences in college sport led New York schools to discuss forming a Metropolitan League as a way to provide publicity and revenue.  The advent of regular Garden basketball made such a league irrelevant, but even if it had been formed, it would have contributed to the confusion of college basketball. 

[2] Stanley Frank, “Court Chatter,” New York Evening Post, January 10, 1934.

[3] “Playing the Game,” Literary Digest, January 12, 1935; “NYU Five Downs Notre Dame, 25-18, as 16,000 Look On,” New York Times, December 30, 1934.

[4] “Eastern Candidates for Basketball’s Crown,” Literary Digest, February 9, 1935. For coaches’ “contention,” see “Melvin Goldsmith, “College Basketball in the Far West,” Literary Digest, January 26, 1935.  The NYU-Kentucky game led to the three-second lane in order to restrict roughness under the basket. 

A Jewish New York basketball culture

By 1934, Jewish players had become commonplace at New York colleges.  Jews occasionally played at Fordham, Manhattan, and Columbia, but had more of a presence at CCNY, NYU, St. John’s and LIU.  During the 1934 season, CCNY fielded an almost exclusively Jewish team while St. John’s had two Jewish starters and both NYU and LIU had four.  These four schools proved important in college basketball’s new model and each took advantage of the growth of Jewish basketball as it related to the experience of New York Jews during the Depression.

Historian Beth Wenger illustrated that New York Jews survived the Depression in a better position than other immigrant groups.  A decade of anxiety and economic insecurity intensified threats from American fascists who supported Nazi Germany, but Jews avoided employment in the heavy industries or large corporations, due in part to the belief that corporate anti-Semitism would restrict upward mobility.  Many Jews found employment in the garment industry and white collar positions, or owned small businesses.  Their relatively stable economic situation allowed Jews to attend college basketball games and cheer on players from the Jewish neighborhoods of New York.[1]

New York Jews did not constitute a unified community in the 1930s.  Eighty percent of New York Jews lived in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and class divisions remained strong even as differences in nationalities became less important.  Immigrant associations built around identification with a region or town in eastern Europe had virtually no appeal for native-born Jews who became more important in American Jewish life due to immigration restriction.  Their world revolved around the neighborhood, whether a middle class neighborhood like Flatbush or the working class neighborhoods of East New York and Brownsville.  By the 1930s, 75% of New York Jews lived in “neighborhoods with predominantly Jewish populations.”[2]  From the streets of Brownsville to the Williamsburg YMHA and the Brooklyn Jewish Center in Eastern Parkway, playing basketball became a daily experience for many young Jews in New York.

The Brooklyn Jewish Center (BJC) represented the changing demographic pattern of New York Jews.  The BJC was constructed in 1920 as a ‘synagogue-center’ in the middle class neighborhood of Eastern Parkway.  Historian David Kaufman defined the ‘synagogue-center’ as “any institution whose program merges the religious, the educational, and the social within one unified ‘center.’”[3]  The ‘synagogue-center’ intended to merge secular American life with Judaism, and in the early 1920s, the BJC served as the “new community center of Brooklyn Jewry.”  The building itself, an impressive structure that served as a “functional institution,” reflected the architectural boom of post-World War I America.  The BJC placed its gymnasium in the basement, along with a bowling alley, swimming pool, billiard room, locker rooms, and the boiler room.  The institution’s president hoped young members would leave the “lower regions” of the gymnasium and look “upward where Godliness and Holiness dwell.” He conceded, however, that “we would rather have them in the Center’s basement than in Goyishe [non-Jewish] clubs and organizations.”  Other ‘synagogue-centers’ formed soon after the BJC and became an important part of Brooklyn Jewish life.[4]

The BJC helped expand competitive basketball among New York Jews.  In the 1920s, New York ‘synagogue-centers’ had formed the Inter-Center Basketball League.  During the 1930s, the BJC competed against top local amateur teams, including the 92^nd Street YMHA, Union Temple, another ‘synagogue-center,’ and Ohrbach’s Department store, which like other department stores, sponsored a team as a promotional device.  In 1936, the BJC won the Kings County AAU championship.  Sam Schoenfeld, who also served as the head basketball coach at Brooklyn’s Jefferson High School, directed BJC basketball and produced a number of college players at both locations, which contributed to the growth of Jewish basketball. [5]

Along with the BJC, a street culture in Brownsville contributed to Jewish basketball.  Located just east of middle class Eastern Parkway and eighty percent Jewish during the Depression, Brownsville contained a vibrant Jewish culture and became known among some residents as the “Jerusalem of America.”  It served as the home to Danny Kaye, Alfred Kazin and other young Jews who would later become public figures.  Poverty, however, existed alongside its Jewishness.  Outside the Hebrew Educational Society (HES), there existed few neighborhood facilities and resources.  Wenger explained that streets in working class neighborhoods often served as second homes.  This certainly occurred in Brownsville, where basketball players learned the game on streets, playgrounds, and schoolyards.[6]

The Spalding basketball guide published articles in 1929, 1931, and 1934 that captured the relationship among Jewish neighborhood, college, and professional basketball.  Contributor Barney Ain focused on the heavily Jewish areas of Brownsville and East New York and explained in the first article that basketball “is now the principle athletic sport in every section of Brooklyn…Night after night, hundred of teams, and thousands of players fought for supremacy on every available playing court.”  The second article expanded on the impact of Brooklyn basketball as clubs and teams produced “more and better championship quintets than any other section of the city.”  Finally, in 1934, Ain claimed Brooklyn “is recognized as the ‘Basketball Hotbed of the East.’”  Jewish players in colleges, high schools, middle schools, amateur clubs, ‘synagogue-centers,’ and other independent organizations dominated his articles.[7]

Street basketball’s close relationship with the other forms of Jewish basketball helped construct a fluid New York basketball culture.  Even as the New York mainstream press provided more attention to college basketball during the 1934 season, they retained a relatively balanced coverage of New York basketball.  Colleges, and sometimes the ABL, received the most attention, but the press also provided information on more obscure teams, leagues, and organizations.  On any given day, the New York daily newspapers may have provided bold headlines of CCNY or NYU games as well as results from the ABL, YMHA or YMCA games, municipal leagues, or AAU games and tournaments.  Soon after Ain’s third article, however, promoters began to exploit this relationship and turned college basketball into a modern, national spectacle.

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[1] Wenger, New York Jews and the Great Depression, 1-3, 15-24, 83.  Also see Feingold, A Time for Searching, 126-128.  The author conducted interviews with former players, all of whom indicated that friends and family watched their games.  Norm Drucker, phone interview with author, September 5, 2005; Irwin Rothenberg, phone interview with author, September 3, 2005; Dutch Garfinkel, interview by author, Brooklyn, New York, April 18, 2005.

[2] On immigrant associations, see Daniel Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).  Quote from Wenger, New York Jews and the Depression, 81-96.

[3] Kaufman, Shul with a Pool, 4.

[4] Annual Message delivered by Mr. Isidore Fine, president, January 19, 1933, Ratner Center, JTS, Brooklyn Jewish Center Records, box 3/folder 8.  On Brooklyn ‘synagogue-centers, see Kaufman, Shul with a Pool, 249-257. The floor plans of the BJC on 255.

[5] For information on the formation of the basketball league, see “Basketball League,” Brooklyn Jewish Center Bulletin, October 22, 1926.  The teams in the league were the BJC, Union Temple (also located on Eastern Parkway), Ahaveth Sholem of Flatbush, the New York Jewish Center, and the Far Rockaway Jewish Center.  The following year, it was called the Jewish Temple Basketball League.  It returned to being named the Inter-Center League in 1928.  On AAU title, see “Basketball Season Ends,” Brooklyn Jewish Center Review, March 1936.  Schoenfeld was first mentioned as the BJC coach in 1929-30 while he was a star player at Columbia University.  One of the BJC players in the mid-1930s was Irwin Witty, who played for NYU at the same time.

[6] Wenger, New York Jews and the Great Depression, 85-96.  Quote on ‘Jerusalem,’ from Soyer, “Brownstones and Brownsville,” 184.

[7] Barney Ain, “Brownsville and East NY Sections of Brooklyn,” Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide 1928-1929 (New York: American Sports Publishing Company, 1928); Barney Ain, “Brownsville and East New York Sections of Brooklyn,” Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide 1930-1931 (New York: American Sports Publishing Company, 1931); Barney Ain, “Basketball in Brooklyn,” Spalding’s Official Basket Ball Guide 1933-1934 (New York: American Sports Publishing Company, 1933).

Jewish basketball's impact on college basketball - part 1

Jewishbasketball helped produce the “rise” of college basketball.  During the 1930s, Jewish players turned CCNY, NYU, St. John’s, and Long Island University (LIU) into nationally-known programs.  A significant Jewish presence existed at the Garden as players with names such as Goldman, Klein, Rubenstein, Pincus, and Rosen headlined the double-headers.  The mainstream press rarely commented directly on the Jewish presence in New York basketball, although Newsweek declared in December 1935 that basketball was “a sport at which Jews excel.” Newsweek did not attach any explicit meaning to this statement, but it served as a powerful piece of information and a potential source of pride for American Jews.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, New York became increasingly important to Jewishbasketball.  In particular, Jews began to play at St. John’s, a Catholic school, in addition to their continued presence at NYU and CCNY.  In 1928, a column in Minneapolis’s American Jewish World provided a fairly detailed account of Jewish basketball and commented on a loss by CCNY’s “all-Jewish team” to St. John’s, “a Catholic college, [that] had three Jews on its team.”  The column did not include the score (33-24), but stated that the three St. John’s players had “accounted for fifteen of the [team’s] points.”  The AJW also contextualized the game by explaining it was “the first big basketball game of the season between two first class teams” largely unknown outside of New York.

This St. John’s team, which would become the focus of the 1931 scandal, represented the growth of Jewish basketball within New York City’s basketball culture.  The AJW actually undercounted the number of Jews on the St. John’s team.  Nicknamed the ‘Wonder Five,’ the team consisted of four Jewish starters, the fifth being Polish, from the New York area.  The victory over CCNY occurred at the start of a remarkable three year run in which the team compiled a 67-4 record against both powerful programs like CCNY and ‘minor’ teams like the Albany Law School.  Prior to the 1931 scandal, New York sportswriters hailed them as the greatest college team ever.  Despite such praise, however, the Wonder Five’s prominence remained a local affair, even as the mainstream press began to play a pivotal role in promoting New York college basketball.

In the late 1920s, the New York press increased its coverage of the sport.  Sportswriters and coaches named annual All-Metropolitan teams that unofficially rewarded the best players in the city.  Often the only contact between teams and fans, sportswriters constructed a historical narrative of city basketball in which participants challenged legends and continued traditions.  Writers included pre-season forecasts, statistical analysis, and individual scoring totals alongside box scores, critical columns, and detailed descriptions of games.  Columnists debated strategies, coaching acumen, and players’ abilities.  Box scores and description of games provided information to readers about schools that played before relatively small crowds.  For instance, only 1,300 people attended the 1928 St. John’s-CCNY game.

The Depression provided the foundation for the remarkable growth of New York college basketball.  The economic downturn had a negative impact on most sports by 1931.  Baseball attendance declined, professional leagues such as the ABL and the American Soccer League (ASL) shut down, and college football teams often had difficulty filling the large stadiums built during the architectural boom of the 1920s. In contrast, the Wonder Five headlined a triple-header fundraiser for the city’s unemployment relief fund.  In January 1931, 15,000 spectators filled Madison Square Garden for a ‘Carnival’ that raised over $20,000.  Similar events occurred the following two years, which illustrated that basketball fans wanted first-hand exposure to local teams like the ‘Wonder Five.’