Portal:Basketball

From JudaismWiki

Basketball once was called “the Jewish game” because of the predominance of Jewish hoop stars. But today the players are extremely tall and no longer come exclusively from metropolitan areas. Still, the accomplishments of Jewish basketball players, in college and professional ranks, is impressive. Nat Holman, once known as “Mr. Basketball,” star of the Celtics, a famous professional team, later was the coach of CCNY and led his clubs to many victories. The Long Island University teams, loaded with Jewish players, also won national fame. New York University and St. John’s had Jewish stars and led their teams to prominence. Harry Boykoff was notable at St. John’s and Adolph Schayes at NYU. Schayes went on to a highly successful pro career. Others who won recognition include Art Heyman, Sid Tanenbaum, Max Zaslofsky and, in more recent years, Neal Walk, the professional star, and Bob Kaufmann, who has made the National Basketball League All-Star team. More notably, Red Holtzman has been a brilliant coach with the New York Knicks, and Red Auerbach was coach and general manager of the Boston Celtics.