[I spent my weekend inserting endnotes into my next book manuscript. At one point, I thumbed through the autobiography of the New York broadcaster Marty Glickman and happened upon the following story about the 1940s New York Knickerbockers: “I had a ball with the Knicks. They were young, fun-loving guys, and I was still a young man in my 30s, so I was just one of the boys. One time, when we checked into a hotel in Washington, Lee Knorek, who was 6-foot-7, and 5-foot-11 Stan Stutz changed hats and coats. They were wearing black derbies, and black raincoats;  Knorek’s elbows were stick ..read more

[For basketball historians, it’s only natural to wonder who invented the jump shot, the behind-the-back pass, or really anything associated with the modern game. It’s also tough to find definitive answers to the invention question. For example, many people have claimed to be the originator of the jump shot, and the truth is all of them might be right. The jump shot may have arisen in multiple places around the country at different times. It’s always seemed to me that the better question is: Who popularized the jump shot and influenced others to give it an excited try?  The three-point sho ..read more

[Phil Berger was a proud New Yorker and an avowed basketball nut. He also was a fantastic journalist who wrote some of the best material about pro basketball and its brightest stars, from the late-1960s onward. That includes this March 1969 profile of Oscar Robertson from the magazine Complete Sports. It repeats a lot of what’s already known about Robertson, but after all these years, the story is still worth reading for pulling together all the threads of the Big O’s  NBA career as of the late 1960s and just before the Bob Cousy’s arrival and rebuild in Cincinnati. With that, Phil B ..read more

[Pro athletes, like Hollywood stars, have long been the subjects of wild “read-all-about-it” headlines in the American tabloid press. From Way Downtown generally doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel for copy. But some of the tabloid stories of yore, with their wild conspiracy theories, are fun to revisit after all these years.  Take this stop-the-presses “plot” pulled from the April 1971 issue of the magazine Sports Today. Larry Bortstein, a very respected NBA scribe at the time, makes the case that the NBA powers- that-be secretly plotted to turn the expansion Milwaukee Bucks into an ..read more

re[This is a long profile of Boston’s hustling, tough-as-nails, young center Dave Cowens leaving a mark on the NBA during his third pro season. The article, which ran in the May 1973 issue of SPORT Magazine, is from the accomplished journalist Jeff Greenfield, now in his 80s and who has just about done it all in his writing career. Though the “unflamboyant” Cowens proves to be a tough nut to crack (he’s not really one to bare his soul, just his snap judgments of right and wrong), Greenfield offers some good historical background on the Celtics and basketball-indifferent Boston in the 1960s. If ..read more

[This article is sincere, but a little hagiographic in places. It also is a little too well organized and concisely written. I’m guessing that Dave Cowens worked here with a ghost writer to put pen to paper, though I don’t know that for sure. Either way, here are Cowens’ thoughts on “the old geezer,” John Havlicek, to celebrate his retirement from the NBA. The story is a quick skim and certainly raises some great points about Havlicek, the player and the man. Cowens’ farewell ran in the November 1978 issue of Basketball Digest.] **** John Havlicek, you old geezer, we’re all going to miss you ..read more

[Since my last post went way downtown to Bob Cousy, let’s keep going into some Sam Jones. He was something else. I can still vividly recall him banking in his 15-footers, part human, part machine. This opening vignette, which ran in the January 1966 issue of the magazine Dell Sports sans a byline, is admittedly too creative in places and a little mixed in its metaphors. Nevertheless, the vignette is still a fun read, and the writer does capture number 24 quite well in 600 words or less.] **** Thirty years ago, Charlie Chaplin made a movie called Modern Times. In a classic depiction of the ..read more

[I stumbled onto this old Boston Globe clip and couldn’t put it down. Thought I’d pass it along for your reading pleasure. Journalist John Ahern takes us into the madhouse known as Boston Garden for the deciding game of the Celtics’ best-of-three series with the Syracuse Nationals, a.k.a., the Nats. The date is March 21, 1953. The subject: The Cooz does it again. Enjoy!] **** A woman fan, tears streaming down her face, held onto her young son and kept saying: “It’s impossible. He did it all by himself.”  A Syracuse writer, too jittery to light a cigarette, kept insisting: “He’s the greate ..read more

[I didn’t catch a lot of Alex English’s poetry in motion back in the proverbial day. Denver wasn’t on television much as I bounced around the country getting my college degrees. The little that I did see was long, lean, smooth, steady, consistent, graceful, athletic, potent from midrange, and just a unique player. In fact, little known to most, he was the highest NBA scorer of the 1980s. English also sounds like a first-class person off the court. The latter I’ve gleaned from this brief writeup, published in Street & Smith’s 1989 Pro Basketball Annual, by one of my favorite basketball scri ..read more

[Before seven-foot Lew Alcindor rolled through New York City prep basketball in the early 1960s, there was Ray Felix at New York’s Metropolitan High. In the late 1940s, Felix was Gotham’s first seven-foot oh-my, though an extremely gangly one who didn’t come close to the skill and polish of Alcindor around the basket.   “I could have gone to UCLA,” remembered Felix, who was officially listed at 6-feet-11. “Jackie Robinson wanted me to go there. But I wanted to stay in the city, to play in Madison Square Garden, because I knew I wanted to be a pro. It was a mistake.” Felix enrolled at ..read more