Joe Lapchick

Joe Lapchick’s life was the lens through which I wrote LAPCHICK and learned about the fifty most critical years [1915-1965] in the development of basketball. Through his experiences as a professional player in the 1920s, as an early NBA coach, and as well as a rising collegiate one, Joe Lapchick always seemed at the center of basketball’s growth spurts, its most dramatic periods while staging its development in the most glamorous arena the game had fashioned – Madison Square Garden - its Mecca.

What were the major changes, and who were the shapers of the game’s future? What did Lapchick contribute to the NBA’s survival? What role did he play in the integration of the new league? And most of all, how did Joe Lapchick survive to become one of basketball’s legendary icons?

I played for Coach Lapchick [1956-1959] at St. John’s University, and through the 338 pages of LAPCHICK I promise to take the reader from the barnstorming back roads that Joe Lapchick traveled to pioneer early basketball, to all the locker rooms that we shared, in the glory days that provide an “eye-witness” account of a fascinating life.

I hope you’ll be left with questions that I intend to answer when you e-mail me. You are about to embark on an adventure that proved to be the most compelling trip of my life."

Gus Alfieri

Links