When the Garden Was Eden (4 page)

Stunned by the self-assuredness of this country kid, Podesta made eye contact with Donovan, a look that said, Can you believe this guy? He turned back to Reed and said, “I like that.” They shook hands, and Willis Reed was officially part of the worst team in the NBA.

Growing up in his small-town culture of once punitive inequity had prepared him for that challenge. His days in Bernice had taught him to look past limitations, to imagine what was possible if people could just band together. The man who would soon be captain of the Knicks would make the best of the situation in the big city until he had the right firepower—the right teammates—to change their losing ways.

RED HOLZMAN DIED ON FRIDAY THE 13TH, OF LEUKEMIA AND MAYBE OF
heartbreak, too. It was November 1998. Months earlier, Red had lost his wife and beloved sidekick, Selma. The last time he appeared in public had been soon after she died, at the second wedding of George Kalinsky, the longtime Madison Square Garden photographer. Holzman kept worrying aloud about whether his monetary gift was sufficient. Selma had always known about such things. He seemed, to the Knicks extended family around him, unmoored and defeated. He was 78.

Two days after Holzman’s death, on a brisk Sunday morning, a funeral service was held in his honor at the Parkside Memorial Chapels on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills.

Not surprisingly, the chapel overflowed with a who’s who of New York basketball. I chose a pew in the back, having arrived early enough to watch the procession of the Madison Square Garden executives, along with the most celebrated and famous players in the history of the franchise, take their seats.

Reed… Frazier… DeBusschere… Bradley… Barnett… Monroe: a lineup that needed no introduction, even after three decades. It was a strange, poignant scene: seeing in mourning players who had collectively caused so much joy—for each other, for New York, for Red Holzman himself. They were solemn in their realization that their basketball family would never again be whole, but Holzman would have been the first to tell any weepers in the congregation to knock it off already. He’d lived the life he wanted to live, and it had turned out a hell of a lot better than he could ever have envisioned. His own idea for a memorial would probably have meant cracking open a bottle of his beloved scotch and raising a glass to the players who had won him those two cherished titles.

But I also wondered what Holzman—not a man disposed to being publicly fussed over—would have said to the tall white-haired gentleman who stiffly entered the chapel, accompanied by his wife and looking as if he hadn’t slept in the days since he’d heard the news. Noticing the man’s unmistakable grief, a reporter from another newspaper, younger and apparently unfamiliar with the old Garden crowd, leaned into me and asked, “Who’s that?”

“That,” I said, “is Fuzzy.” And even in the saddest of moments, I found myself smiling at the sight of one of pro basketball’s most likable lifers, one of the sport’s true characters: Andrew “Fuzzy” Levane. Seeing him had instantly triggered a long-dormant memory. Years before, with Fuzzy himself at death’s door, lingering in a coma, I had called Holzman to ask about his old teammate, someone Holzman had known longer than anyone else in the game.

Holzman told me: “You never heard anyone say, ‘Here comes that asshole Fuzzy.’ ”

Though he had a reputation for being perhaps the lousiest quote in the long, loquacious history of the coaching profession, it was classic Holzman: witty and wise and—due to the profanity—unprintable without alteration.

THE CHAIN OF EVENTS ULTIMATELY LEADING
to the creation of the most democratic team in professional basketball history began with a steamy shower scene in postwar Rochester, New York. Les Harrison, the owner and coach of the National Basketball League’s Royals, loitering in the locker room after a game, couldn’t help but take a peek as one of his new players lathered up. Harrison gave the unmistakably uncircumcised Fuzzy Levane a look as if to say: What the hell?

“I thought you were Jewish,” he said. “That’s why I signed you.”

“What are you talking about?” Levane said. “I’m Italian.”

“Christ,” Harrison swore, exasperated by his erroneous presumption and still anxious to have a player who would appeal to his team’s Semitic fans. “Get me a goddamn Jew.”

In 1945, this wasn’t such a tall order, by any means. Eager to please the boss, and knowing exactly where to look, Levane got Harrison two of Brooklyn’s finest Yids. From his home borough, Levane summoned Jack Garfinkel and William Holzman, who, not unlike Fuzzy Levane, were known to their friends as Dutch and Red, respectively. Both were guards, though Garfinkel was considered one of the more creative passers of the day, while Holzman was fancied a gritty and overachieving defender.

Harrison signed the two of them in 1945, and the assist by Levane wouldn’t be the last in a long symbiotic relationship between him and Holzman. “If it wasn’t for me,” Levane said with the sardonic license he and Holzman had granted each other for decades, “Red would’ve been selling insurance, or peanuts.”

Levane and Holzman became friends during their college careers, Levane playing for St. John’s and Holzman for City College of New York, where he was an All-American in 1942. They worked together at a resort in upstate New York for a couple of summers before the war, when Levane joined the Coast Guard and Holzman the Navy. Home again, Levane had an easier time launching his pro career as a Frank J. Haggerty Award winner, given annually by the New York writers to the college player voted best in the metropolitan area. Holzman was eager to play, too, despite his wife’s fears that basketball would lead to a financial dead end. But he needed his friend’s intervention. He sat on the bench as Levane badgered Harrison to let Holzman be more than a marketing ploy. Given a chance, Holzman became an eight-year backcourt fixture, winning two NBL championships and another in 1951 after the league merged with the Basketball Association of America to form the NBA.

For their NBA championship, the Royals had to defeat Joe Lapchick’s New York Knicks. The series was the first league final to go the distance: seven games, ending with Holzman dribbling out the dying seconds of a four-point win. Clever man: by helping to beat the Knicks, he kept the New York franchise and fans waiting for a title that wouldn’t come until 19 years later—when Holzman himself would deliver it, as coach.

That 1950–51 season is often regarded as the season that broke the pro basketball color line in Boston, Syracuse, and New York. But Holzman and Levane always scoffed at the imprecise historical reporting. Long before that, in 1946, they had welcomed William “Dolly” King to Rochester. King was a 6'4" swingman, a three-sport star out of Brooklyn’s Alexander Hamilton High School and Long Island University—and a black man. Levane insisted that it was Harrison, “that old son of a gun,” who deserved to be recognized as the Branch Rickey of professional basketball.

Given the meagerness of their paychecks, the three Brooklynites banded together, renting a small space at the downtown Seneca Hotel on Clinton Avenue. “Room 308,” said Levane, his memory astonishingly sharp. “Imagine that, in 1946: a Jewish guy, a black guy, and a
paisano
.”

On the road, the story did not always inspire, and the treatment of the team by locals was often far from royal. The three New Yorkers would walk into a restaurant, hoping for a late-night bite. “We had an agreement that if they wouldn’t serve all of us, then none of us would eat there,” Levane said. “We’d say screw you and walk out.” Most of the time, they wound up eating in their room.

IN THE EARLY
years of pro basketball, destinies and dynasties depended upon the enlightenment of a single individual, the willingness of an owner to risk a backlash of ignorance. In a world that refused to pander to hate and fear (or plain stupidity), a world that didn’t yet exist, Holzman’s coaching career might have been very different. Perhaps he would have been the long-reigning standard for NBA coaching greatness, rather than that other Brooklyn Red, the cigar-smoking pit bull named Auerbach.

Holzman got a call from Levane upon his release by Rochester in 1953. Levane had by then worked his way into the coaching ranks with the Milwaukee Hawks. “Come up here and be my tenth man,” Levane said. It wasn’t long before the rescue mission took a fateful turn: Levane was fired and was succeeded on the bench by his buddy.

Under Holzman, the Hawks’ losing continued, all the way to St. Louis, where the team moved in 1955. One year later, his 33-win team had the second pick in the college draft, behind the Rochester Royals. The most accomplished collegian, far and away, was an elusive, dominating big man named Bill Russell. “I had seen Russell,” Levane said, “and I thought he couldn’t shoot, but he would revolutionize the game with his defense and intimidation.”

To his everlasting credit, Auerbach also believed Russell was a game changer, the perfect player to ignite his fast-breaking offense, which already starred the ball-handling and passing magician Bob Cousy. According to Auerbachian legend, he conspired to have the Celtics’ owner, Walter Brown, send his popular Ice Capades show to Rochester if Harrison would conveniently draft someone else. Brown agreed and, hungry for the revenue on ice, so did Harrison, who took a forgettable guard named Sihugo Green.

That left St. Louis with the next pick, and the chance to grab the man who would become the winningest player in NBA history. But it was also common knowledge around the league that the Hawks’ owner, Ben Kerner, did not want to pay Russell the $25,000 in bonus money that he had demanded upon signing. Nor was Kerner eager to risk a convulsive reaction in St. Louis by making an African American (one whom he perceived as having a combative personality) the centerpiece of his team.

Auerbach made it easy for Kerner with a trade offer for Russell that he couldn’t refuse: St. Louis native and six-time All-Star Ed Macauley—who had requested a move to his hometown to be with his ailing young son—and giving in to Kerner’s demand for another touted player, Cliff Hagan, who was returning to basketball after military service. The deal didn’t immediately look as lopsided as it would in the ensuing decade: the Hawks made the Finals in four of the next five seasons, losing to the Celtics in 1957 and reversing the result a year later when Russell was injured. Unfortunately for Holzman, the Hawks’ success came too late. Before the team could mesh, he was fired after a 14–19 start.

“Imagine if Red had gotten Russell and not that asshole Auerbach,” Levane said. Unlike Holzman—who privately referred to Auerbach as Oyerbach but was a model of circumspection publicly—Levane was never too reticent with his feelings about the other Red and his trademark victory cigar. Every time he saw Auerbach chomping on one, Fuzzy was overcome with the desire to “shove it up his ass.”

Levane offered another intriguing hypothetical: Imagine if the Knicks had gotten Russell! By 1956, after being dismissed in Milwaukee, Levane had drifted home to New York and joined the Knicks as a scout. That spring, he went to his boss, Ned Irish, and told him that Kerner didn’t want Russell in the upcoming draft—the very thing Auerbach had done in Boston.

“He asked me what it would take to get him,” Levane said. “I told him it would take a player, draft picks, and cash. He said, ‘How much?’ I said $15,000. He said, ‘I’m not paying that.’ That schmuck—we had a chance to bring Bill Russell to New York, and didn’t even try because of $15,000.”

EDWARD S. “NED” IRISH
was one of the 11 founders of the Basketball Association of America in 1946 and was instrumental in its merger with the National Basketball League three years later. He had founded the Knickerbockers (named for a pseudonym of Washington Irving) simultaneously, after quitting his job as a sportswriter for the
New York World-Telegram
. Under his stewardship, Madison Square Garden transformed into the so-called Mecca of Basketball (a name derived from the Shriners’ Mecca Temple, a depression-era boxing venue) as Irish promoted college basketball games at the event-starved arena, where previously the largest crowds had assembled to watch hockey.

Though the Garden technically owned the Knicks, Irish was virtually a one-man executive office, using the leverage of New York and the Garden, along with his blustery personality, to create a bully pulpit. In the early days of pro basketball, Irish was arguably more powerful than the league commissioner, whose office was in the Garden. When difficult decisions had to be made—should big markets share home gate receipts with teams less financially endowed?—Irish typically got his way.

“He was a dour man, never seemed happy,” said David Stern, who would replace Larry O’Brien as commissioner in 1984 but who knew Irish from his time as a league counsel dating back to the seventies. Stern theorized that Irish had never recovered from the death of one of his two sons. Others said he always came across as arrogant, aloof, and humorless. The journalist and author Roger Kahn interviewed Irish for a 1967 profile in
Sports Illustrated
and found it difficult to believe that Irish had been a newspaper reporter. His answers were mostly gibberish, although Kahn took special note when Irish let slip, “I don’t care what they say about me as long as they buy tickets.” Kahn described Irish as so obsessed with the Garden’s business that he would occasionally lurk in the shadows and pounce when he spotted an usher moving a patron into a better seat in exchange for a fifty-cent tip.

As with James Dolan years later—the current owner of the Knicks and scourge of their twenty-first-century fans—the front office and coaches had to put up with his moods and his meddling. After early success under Joe Lapchick, when they reached the Finals three straight years, the Knicks became one of the worst teams in the NBA, a franchise with a knack for picking losers in the draft and firing coaches. Fuzzy Levane got his chance in 1958 and actually led the team into the playoffs, something that wouldn’t be repeated for nearly a decade. But Irish could never leave alone the people he hired long enough for them to do their job. Nor was he above forcing his own discriminatory and ultimately self-defeating practices upon his team.