Jewish Basketball Players

As I fool around with coming up with all-star Jewish athletes in various sports, I am struck by how much easier it would be to select a team of internationally acclaimed Jewish pianists and violinists. So who said being a Jew or Jewish writer was easy!

Basketball was once a sport in which the Jewish player made a slightly larger splash than baseball or football. It's general­ly the sport of the ghettos — needing little space or equipment, both in short supply in ghetto areas. The rise to prominence in basketball of blacks in recent years is more than coincidental with the fact that those black basketball players were predominantly ghetto dwellers.

There was a time when many of the New York college basket­ball teams had several Jewish players each on their roster. And over the years there have been some notable Jewish college basketball players who have achieved some form 'of national recognition. Among them are the following players, with the years of most recognition and the college played for:

Dolph Schayes* - 1948, Syracuse.

Len Rosenbluth - 1955-57, North Carolina.

Art Heyman - 1961, Duke.

Barry Kramer - 1963-64, N.Y.U.

Ernie Grunfeld** - 1976-77, Tennessee.

Neal Walk — I968-69, Florida.

Moe Becker - 1941, Du­quesne.

Bernie Fliegel*** - 1938, C.C.N.Y.

Larry Friend - 1957, Califor­nia.

David Newmark - 1966, Columbia.

Coach: Nat Holman of C.C.N.Y.

Assistants: The two 'Reds' — Auerbach and Holtz­man.

*Dolph Schayes is the father of Dan Schayes who also played for Syracuse and is now with the Utah Jazz of the N.B.A.

**Ernie Grunfeld is very active in the N.B.A. with the Kan­sas City professional basketball team. Also now playing in the N.B.A. is Bob Gross of the Portland Trail Blazers and Joel Kramer of the Phoenix Suns.

***Bernie Fliegel was the Center for the C.C.N.Y. team when I attended there, and he was all of 6 feet, two inches tall!

We should not forget that among the all-time Jewish women college basketball players we have Nancy Lieber­man who played for Old Domi­nion and was all-American throughout her college career, and the dominant woman player of her time. She learned the game playing it with the boys on the playgrounds of New York City.