Excerpt from the Book

PREFACE - by Gus Alfieri

I was fifteen years old and a freshman at St. Francis Prep in Brooklyn in the early 1950s when I got to know Joe Lapchick watching the former Original Celtic on my fifteen-inch black and white Zenith television. He was standing tall, all 6-5 of him, and erect by the New York Knickerbockers bench with his hands on his hips staring at referee Sid Borgia after what must have been a bad call. I loved the Knicks and basketball, and the tall lean coach was part of my world. I seem to have complete recall of my first meeting with Coach Joe Lapchick. I passed him as I entered the 69th Armory in New York City. I was a little awed when I first spotted him. He had just completed a practice and I was entering the armory to play a prep school game.

Then in the fall of 1956 he was rehired to coach the St. John’s Redmen and I was a sophomore scholarship player his first year back. I paid particular attention to how he coached, and I found him to be an interesting man, someone I wanted to understand better. I played three seasons for Coach Lapchick and then spent the last eleven years of his life keeping in touch and communicating by letter, phone calls, or social meetings. I kept all my correspondence with him and realized when they were read in their entirety that there was much that was unanswered about him and I set out to find the missing pieces. His three children were extremely helpful, and after I had visited in Boston with his youngest, Dr. Richard Lapchick, I was off and running in my hunt for answers. When I began the project Richard Lapchick gave me his father's papers, which included extensive newspaper clippings, photos and sports memorabilia, and he helped in sorting out the chronology of his career. Joe Lapchick’s other two children, Barbara Lapcek and Joe Donald Lapchick each helped me to see their father in a different light. Over the seven years of research I conducted more than 250 interviews, from Wilt Chamberlain, Bob Knight and John Wooden, to Benito, his favorite waiter at Leone’s Restaurant, and his Yonkers’ neighbors. Joe Lapchick had seen and done it all in the fifty years that he traveled through the world of basketball. After studying his life and knowing him as one of his players, and as a former coach, I was able to understand how the sport became the natural pastime for kids all over the world. Even though basketball has become international, its roots are found in America’s soil, and Joe Lapchick will always be the experienced lens through which all can examine, study and enjoy the fifty years of basketball he lived.

CELTICS VS. KAUTSKYS

“The armory's gym was on the second floor," Frank Baird sketched from memory. Fans in the balcony paid twenty-five cents, downstairs forty cents, “And you're seeing the best basketball in the country."

Frank Baird, pioneer professional player, in a 1998 interview with Gus Alfieri

It was a Celtic-Kautsky Sunday afternoon sellout. By game time the sun had melted the remaining snow. The Celtics pushed past early birds waiting by Tyndall Armory's entrance on Pennsylvania Street, wanting close-ups of "World Champions" while youngsters gathered looking for autographs. Indiana fans loved their basketball. Lapchick scribbled a large, clear version of his name. Dehnert and Hickey repeated the ritual. Unwashed uniforms buried in their game bags betrayed Celtic neatness. Popcorn and hot dog aromas competed at the doorway with pre-game cigarette smokers setting the game’s ambience.

Herb Schwomeyer was sixteen working the concession stand to earn college tuition. He liked his job. He saw boxing and wrestling bouts two nights a week, sold popcorn and Coca-Cola. His concession manager sold no alcohol, but fans privately drank. No Coke bottles were given to customers to prevent them from being thrown at visiting players.

Anticipation cut the air. The Celtics defeated the Kautskys last year, but the Hoosier home crowd sensed victory. An amateur preliminary game received mild attention, which only increased pre-game tension.

“The armory's gym was on the second floor," Frank Baird sketched from memory. Fans in the balcony paid twenty-five cents, downstairs forty cents, “And you're seeing the best basketball in the country." The bleacher seats reached the sideline, making them pinching distance from players running by. The basket near the stage was suspended from the ceiling while the other one hung on the wall near the Pennsylvania Street entrance. There was little room under the stage basket, which was close to the wall. No modern padding cushioned a player shoved into the stage.

To save money teams dressed together in the basement. When ready, the Celtics charged past the spectators near the concessions. A drunken fan staggered toward Lapchick yelling. The crowd's buzz increased as Celtic Green made its entrance onto the armory floor to begin warm-ups, followed by the blue-gold trimmed Kautsky team.

Unlike today's arenas there was no game clock or scoreboard. The score was posted at the far end of the gym by dropping numbers into a slot. Some old gyms used a chalkboard and a scorer who rewrote numbers as they were tallied. The official scorer at midcourt often doubled as timekeeper. It was his duty to fire a starter pistol at halftime and the game's end. The Kautskys’ running game was often slowed down from the slippery spots on the wooden floor left by professional wrestling the night before. It bothered the owner enough that if conditions didn't improve, he threatened to play the remaining games at nearby Pennsy Gym.

While entertaining fans Celtic warm-ups were also instructional and allowed future coaches to scratch notes in their pads. Part of the Celtic mystique was learning from the best. After fifteen minutes of pre-game loosening up the referees signaled team captains to half-court to set the rules. Lapchick's graceful strides and confident smile could intimidate opponents. A lifetime of globetrotting had earned the look. He looked and acted like a World Champion.

The tall center and the Purdue All-American Wooden sized each other up like prizefighters in a ring. There was intensity about Wooden, “The stern, single-mindedness of a preacher,” Lapchick thought. Pros questioned the ability of college players. The Celtic center had reservations about hotshots. Having played against Wooden he saw him as a great prospect who scored bushels of points but gave them back on defense. The captains agreed to unlimited personal fouls, so fans could see the stars play, shook hands and headed back to their teams. Lapchick paid attention to handshakes. Personality was conveyed through them. Game psychology was in full bloom.

Lapchick strutted an erect, military walk to the center jump, a much smaller circle than today's, one that squeezed centers together. The official’s vertical toss caught "Stretch" Murphy off-guard, but Lapchick's quickness and extra-long reach guided the ball to Dehnert whose perfectly timed, over-the-head flip led the streaking Banks for an easy lay- up.

Fireworks ignited a minute into the game. A loose ball brought the Kautsky enforcer, Clarence "Big" Christopher, crashing into Nat Hickey, burying an elbow into the Celtic’s midsection while all 240 lbs. landed on him. War erupted. Hickey, who had gotten the worse of it, came up swinging. The pair tangled, ignoring referee whistles and fan hoots. After a half-dozen well intentioned but misguided punches, local police separated them with threats of arrest. Both were ejected. The fans, loving it, rained abuse on Hickey with their shredded programs while "Big" Clarence received a hero's sendoff as he headed to the dressing room. The game’s tone was set, warning officials they were in for a long afternoon. Down to five men, the aging Celtics sorely missed Hickey. Physical play caused both teams to lose focus, but by halftime the Kautskys led, 20 - 12.

Schwomeyer delivered cokes as the teams poured into the dressing room. "It was exciting seeing professional players, the ones you read about the next day. You kind of felt part of the game. I was surprised to see them smoke and joke around."

Lapchick led his squad aside to regroup. He reached inside a bag for his Lucky Strikes as drinks were passed around. Needy hands begged for a smoke. As they cooled down, each volunteered second-half strategy. They knew as pros that eight points was a big lead and it would take careful play to get back into the game, and to try to make only one basket at a time.

On this Sunday the Kautskys were not to be denied. The second half was controlled more by the referee's whistle than team play. Calling thirty-eight personal fouls with twenty-four against the visitors, the Kautskys’ lead was steady in spite of Celtic attempts to disrupt their tempo. But as the game was coming to a close, an incident occurred that Wooden never forgot.

As he took an outlet pass and raced up court, he suddenly lunged forward out of control and sprawled onto the floor. He turned to see big Joe Lapchick nearby and assumed he had tripped him. “I went down hard and I came up ‘fightin mad’ and I went after him.” Lapchick, realizing Wooden’s mistake, tried to defuse the potential argument, but the fired up Hoosier came after him flailing away at the veteran center.

“But I couldn't get to Joe; his long arms held me by the shirt and I was swinging wildly but not getting anywhere,” Wooden said, “I was mad momentarily.” After several exhaustive efforts, he realized it was hopeless. “It finally got funny and we both laughed. We were good friends from that time on.”

PROLOGUE - by Gus Alfieri

“It doesn’t look good,” Gellis whispered to his friend in the runway. “Parenti and Chrystal are in the tank,” he insisted.

“Do you know for sure?” Lapchick pleaded, as he weaved toward the locker room, sucking on a Lucky Strike, despite the facts all seeming to verify the sportswriter’s suspicions.

“Nobody, and I mean nobody, plays that bad, especially after the showing they made two weeks ago against Rhode Island.”

Ike Gellis, sports editor of the New York Post after Brigham Young game.

Joe Lapchick looked upset, almost as if he felt an odd sensation in the pit of his stomach as he watched his St. John’s Redmen warming up in Madison Square Garden. The team was playing the 2 PM game against Brigham Young in the first round of the 1956 Holiday Festival. The repeated rumors were that the St. John’s Redmen were dumping games. The team had been sluggish in yesterday’s Christmas afternoon practice, but perhaps that had been too much holiday cheer. Today Lapchick watched them carefully from the bench, sipping a cup of water. There was no spirit, no energy on the court, just lethargic lay-ups to Gladys Goodings’ organ music.

At 6-5, Lapchick was the pro game’s first successful big man, and his play with the Original Celtics is historic. He was a legendary basketball figure, twice inducted in the Hall-of-Fame, first with his team, and then as an outstanding pro player. Less than a year ago, at a hasty press conference in the Garden, the Knicks front office had announced that Coach Joe Lapchick had “resigned.” In fact, the Knicks had forced him out, but he had quickly found a new home, returning to St. John’s University for a second tour of duty. He was happy to be at St. John’s, in the Garden coaching again, but he didn’t like what he found. Unknowingly, he had walked into a scandal.

His suspicions had been aroused during last week’s loss to Utah, a team St. John’s should have beaten. One sportswriter said, the Utes seemed “more determined” during their 79-71 win, but Lapchick wasn’t convinced. But Dick Young of the Daily News targeted one post game statistic that stuck in Lapchick’s craw: Alan Seiden, a 5-10 sophomore guard, had out-rebounded the team’s big men.

It wasn’t only one play that was wrong but an overall lack of effort. To Lapchick, a winning team was like fingers on a hand: they all had to work together. This team lacked chemistry. The sophomores – Seiden and Buddy Pascal – seemed like orphans from a Dickens novel, hungrily waiting for someone to feed them the ball. Hustle was Lapchick’s coaching trademark. He knew how to motivate, press the right buttons for players to give their best. Lapchick was familiar with the fresh clean smell of success, he sensed it miles away; now he only inhaled the daily stench of deception.

Lapchick’s gut instincts were borne out when BYU sprinted to a 12-0 lead. St. John’s missed its first six shots and didn’t score in the first five minutes. As he kneeled by the bench, he focused on his big seniors, 6-7 Mike Parenti and 6-5 Bill Chrystal, the tarnished gold dust twins. Both had great skills but now only loped through practice and games. Worse, their tepid approach was contagious. Parenti watched flatfooted as Brigham Young forward John Benson beat him to the ball and scored a lay-up, points Lapchick could only classify as garbage points.

He took special notice when Seiden raced down court, only to have Chrystal whip him a crosscourt pass that wound up in the coach’s lap. After several other misguided plays, Chrystal allowed his man to dribble past him for an easy hoop, almost as if he were inviting the Cougar to score. But there was one play that had to ring the old pro’s bell.

St. John’s guard Dick Duckett was nursing the ball up court after a Cougar score when he hand-signaled Seiden to set a screen for Chrystal, hoping to free him for a score. But when Chrystal came around the pick, he allowed BYU’s Lynn Rowe to cut between, intercept the pass and sprint home for an easy basket. Boos poured from the crowd. What further infuriated Lapchick was that Chrystal never moved a muscle to stop Rowe.

Lapchick immediately called timeout, and it didn’t take much imagination to see smoke exploding from his ears. He looked around as the starters gathered in the huddle. No one was paying attention, and the two big men didn’t look into his eyes. “What kind of a play was that, Bill?” Lapchick asked the senior.

“I don’t know, Coach. Guess I didn’t pay attention,” he muttered carelessly in his own defense. Lapchick didn’t like fussing over mistakes publicly, but this was different. Chrystal looked as if he didn’t give a damn. Lapchick waited until after the next series, and then sent in a substitute for Chrystal. The Redmen guards, Duckett and Seiden, didn’t fare much better, giving up 47 of the 89 points BYU scored. The malaise had contaminated the whole team. St. John’s lost 89-75, and Bill Briordy of The New York Times felt, “St. John’s blew baskets that you could make.”

As an Original Celtic who had barnstormed the country, and as coach of the New York Knicks, he had seen pros dogging it, but Parenti and Chrystal looked as if they were doing illegal business. At eight and a half point favorites, the seniors had a margin of error to work with and still cash in their gambling chips.

Old pros like Lapchick knew how a game was fixed: play poor defense, miss free throws, keep the ball away from teammates with hot hands, and who knows the difference? Done with skill, it was hardly noticeable. The fixer could even score, but he also had to make key mistakes -- like dribbling off your foot, which St. John’s players did often. But how could kids understand the harm they were doing -- deceiving a university and thousands of its fans?

Joe Lapchick had grown up with basketball and basketball had grown up with him. During his Celtic days in the Depression he traveled back roads to spread the new game. It was fun but difficult to scratch out a living. He took the initiative and learned to manage the team, getting them from one town to another, buying beat-up, second-hand Pierce Arrows and Cadillacs big enough to hold everyone, making sure everyone gave his best. The history of basketball is indebted to the tall thin coach. His fifty-year career mirrors the game’s rise from kids playing with stuffed volleyballs to today’s international competition. He had worked to win honorably his whole life and in his twilight years he ran into a bunch trying to lose. It was a nightmare, but it was real. And there was little he could do. He had no evidence, nothing he could use to confront the suspects.

After the loss, Lapchick shook hands with BYU coach Stan Watts and headed to the dressing room. Ike Gellis, The New York Post’s sports editor, caught up to him. Gellis, gruff as a dance hall bouncer and looking like an angry but miniature bulldog, hooked an arm under Lapchick’s and blurted out what troubled him.

“It doesn’t look good,” Gellis whispered to his friend in the runway. “Parenti and Chrystal are in the tank,” he insisted.

“Do you know for sure?” Lapchick pleaded, as he weaved toward the locker room, sucking on a Lucky Strike, despite the facts all seeming to verify the sportswriter’s suspicions.

“Nobody, and I mean nobody, plays that bad, especially after the showing they made two weeks ago against Rhode Island.” St. John’s, picked eighth in the country during the pre-season, had clobbered Rhode Island, setting a Garden record by scoring 115 points. Everyone had looked good, from seniors to the sophomore kids, but it all seemed to disintegrate between then and the Brigham Young game.

“Joe, they took last week’s Utah game off the boards. What does that tell you?” When bookmakers suspected a fix they refused to take bets on it, or took it off the boards.

The weary coach went home thinking about Gellis’ words. He couldn’t shake them, or thoughts of his team’s inconsistent play, and his troubles didn’t end in the Garden. Sitting in his attic study, the phone rang, and his wife, Bobbie answered it.

“It’s for you, Joe. He didn’t give his name.” The coach turned off the radio, slid down the stairs and picked up the phone.

“Hey, Lapchick, your team is in the sewer, and you’d better do something about it!”

“What do you mean?” he wanted to know.

“They’re dumping! I lost a bundle last night on the Brigham Young game. Wake up, we know about it on the street!”

The phone on the other end slammed down, leaving Lapchick holding the receiver. Bookmakers on the street were as good a barometer as there was, and the first line of defense.

Dumping college games was nothing new and was talked about since 1945 when Brooklyn College tried unsuccessfully to fix a game in Boston. Lapchick heard rumors of other fixed games. It was whispered about among coaches, but other than Brooklyn College, nothing ever made the newspapers, and there were never any charges.

In 1951 college basketball was rocked by a point-shaving scandal, which implicated many players and schools. The point-spread craze caught players from Eastern and Midwestern schools fixing games. The shock changed the history and innocence of sports forever in America. Five years had passed and New York basketball was trying to recover but what was being whispered about his team could cause a new scandal to explode in his face.

Since the early 1940s a new system of sports gambling involving point spreads had become popular – you didn’t bet on whether the team would win or lose, which was often pretty obvious, but on how much they would win or lose by. If you bet on a team that was an 8-point favorite and they won by ten, you’d win. But if they won by 6, you’d lose. As a result, gamblers appeared to have a better chance of winning, and betting boomed. The problem was that now, it was easier for players to orchestrate a winning bet, and there was money in it for them.

He paced the attic, measuring the floor over and over again, until he decided he needed air, a walk to clear his head. Joe Lapchick was a tall man easily recognized in his hometown of Yonkers, New York, but on this night, he had no interest in being sociable.

“Hi, Joe. The team didn’t look so hot last night,” next-door neighbor, Berj Kalpak called over. The coach looked up, smiled, waved, and moved on to Tibbetts Park. Team practice was becoming uncomfortable. Dick Duckett, the floor leader, seemed lost, while Parenti and Chrystal played indifferently. The old pro was obviously worried about his team.

Lapchick was familiar with how the horror show started in February of 1951, when the scandal ripped the foundation from under college basketball and reduced Garden crowds to 3,000 or 4,000. Clair Bee and Nat Holman, well-known New York coaches, were destroyed. Holman and Bee didn’t fix games but it happened on their watch, and now they were gone. How far was Lapchick from meeting their fate?

Lapchick had no one to discuss his dilemma with, and he was confused. He loved sportswriters, including Gellis and Murray Janoff, but could he be sure they wouldn’t whistle? The president of St. John’s, Father Flynn, should be told, and Walter McLaughlin, the athletic director, but Lapchick feared being blamed. If he benched starters there would be questions. The press would want to know, “Why Parenti and Chrystal? Weren’t they the hub of the team and its best players?” Sportswriter questions never end.

Lapchick had a family, was in his fifties, and pondered what to do. He was a man of character who backed his word. Everything that was good in Lapchick’s life came from the sport. All his friends and honors, challenges and fond memories, are rooted in basketball. He had the pleasure of being a pioneer when the game was in its infancy. He was a sportswriter’s dream with good stories about the inception of round ball that helped them meet deadlines. He was proud of his accomplishments, but was now mired in the greatest worry a coach has - a team dumping games. But even when a fix is suspected, it’s difficult to substantiate.

As he walked and struggled with the agony and frustration of not being able to freely discuss what he knew, he couldn’t help drifting back to early happier days when as a ten year-old in Yonkers he was introduced to a new game that had worked its way down from New England.

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