The Big Dance by Barry Wilner & Ken Rappoport

Author:Barry Wilner & Ken Rappoport [Wilner, Barry & Rappoport, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
Published: 2011-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

He was absolutely right: the Hoosiers were simply perfect, a feat no team since has managed.

8.

Grand Slam Kids

It was late at night when the train pulled into the station. Nat Holman and his City College of New York (CCNY) basketball team, in the midst of the grinding 1950–51 season, were happy to be back in New York. Exhilarated and exhausted after a victory over Temple in Philadelphia, they were ready for some shut-eye.

As the team stepped off the train, Holman immediately knew something was wrong. A grim-looking welcoming committee stood on the platform.

In their hands, police detectives held arrest warrants for some of Holman’s players.

The charges? Point-shaving.

Three of his players were taken “downtown” to the station house for questioning: Ed Roman, Ed Warner, and Al Roth.

Roman, Warner, and Roth were questioned all night. Exhausted from their trip to Philadelphia and the hot lights of the interview room, the trio finally broke down and confessed they had each received $1,500 for “fixing” three games at Madison Square Garden during the 1949–50 season.

The players were so good they had been able to control the games so the final score favored gamblers. In return for their illegal activity, they had received cash rewards.

A scandal erupted.

In just one year, the City College of New York basketball team had gone from fabulous to frauds.

In 1950, CCNY had pulled off the unique feat of winning both the NIT and NCAA tournaments. Unlike today, both tournaments then shared equal billing as crowning a national champion, the NIT pre-dating the NCAAs by one year. The double victories, both over Bradley, earned the Beavers the nickname “Grand Slam Kids.”

Now it was the 1950–51 season. The investigation of point-shaving continued. Surprise after surprise followed, and more “Grand Slam Kids” were implicated. Norman Mager, Floyd Lane, Irwin Dambrot, and Herb Cohen admitted to taking bribes from gamblers.

The basketball world was shocked. So was the unsuspecting Holman. Though only college kids, his players were the personification of modern-day rock stars. They challenged the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers for public relations supremacy in New York City. At the time, Holman himself was a high-profile sportsman, as popular as any of the famed national sports figures in America.

Holman had been well respected and idolized in college basketball circles for many years. He drove his players unmercifully while establishing the “City Game,” a highly disciplined style of play built on guile, finesse, and smart passing.

Dambrot described the “City Game” as “constant ball movement, screens, backdoors, pick-and-rolls. We got a lot of easy shots.”

Holman’s teams were usually all homegrown. Their talent was a sublime mixture of black and white, unlike most all-white basketball teams at major colleges around the country at the time.

There was plenty of talent to go around in New York, and such schools as CCNY, Fordham, Long Island University, Manhattan, New York University (NYU), St. John’s, and Brooklyn College took advantage of the rich local pool. Players had their choices of top college programs, all within a subway stop.

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