“The first Basket” scores.

Posted by Lucio Maurizi on October 30, 2008 under Documentary, Uncategorized | Comments are off for this article

On November 1, 1946, in the opening game of the fledgling Basketball Association of America (BAA), Ossie Schectman scored the opening basket for the New York Knickerbockers against the Toronto Huskies. Schectman and his teammates Sonny Hertzberg, Stan Stutz, Hank Rosenstein, Ralph Kaplowitz, Jake Weber, and Leo “Ace” Gottlieb went on to win the opening game 68 – 66 and finish the season with a 33 – 27 record. In 1949, the BAA became the National Basketball Association (NBA), and Schectman’s shot is considered the first basket in the NBA.

In fact, several of the BAA and NBA teams had evolved out of the semi-pro teams, settlement houses, playgrounds, schoolyard and community center leagues, and college teams that sprung from the Jewish inner-city neighborhoods of the early 20th century. While the era of Jewish professional basketball players has passed, the story of these sports pioneers illustrates how the American 20th Century was shaped by the experiences of many immigrant groups.

The First Basket, produced and created by David Vyorst and released tomorrow, follows these Jewish basketball experiences, from ash cans placed on the stoops of brownstones, to the bright lights of Madison Square Garden.

The movie shows Basketball as a reflection of the inner city and examines its social factors that led urban Jewish youths to basketball, and their notable success in basketball from the 1920s through the early 1950s. This sport had a big role as a middle ground for second-generation eastern European immigrants as they established their own American identities, and the corresponding conflicts between old world tradition and American culture.

This documentary also brings some light on the Anti-Semitism and Jewish stereotypes in the face of Jewish success in basketball from the 1920s through the early 1950s and, eventually, the declining presence of Jews in professional basketball from the early 1950s onwards and the CCNY point shaving scandals of 1951, both against the backdrop of 1950s America, the globalization of basketball, and its immense popularity in Israel.

 

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