schayes

Update….

Syracuse, N.Y. (Syracuse Post-Standard)  Former Syracuse Nationals legend Dolph Schayes died Thursday morning at the age of 87, said his son Danny.

The New York Times reported….Playing for 16 professional seasons, Dolph Schayes was among the N.B.A.’s leading scorers, best known for his two-handed set shots at a time when jump-shooting came into vogue, and was a top rebounder. The NBA Encyclopedia called him “a bridge between the old game and the new one.”

The first N.B.A. player to score 15,000 points, Schayes was a 12-time All-Star, never missed a game between February 1952 and December 1961, and led the Nationals to the championship in 1955.

He was named the N.B.A. coach of the year in 1966 for taking the Philadelphia 76ers, the successor to the Syracuse franchise, to a 55-25 regular-season record and the Eastern Division title, only to be fired after they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the powerful Celtics in a series in which the two dominant centers of that era, Boston’s Bill Russell and Philadelphia’s Wilt Chamberlain, went head-to-head.

Schayes was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1973 and was named among the top N.B.A. players when the league celebrated its 25th and 50th anniversaries.

Although he was an outstanding shooter from long range (and superb at the free-throw line), Schayes was hardly content to stand around waiting for a pass.

“People remember Dolph’s long set shots,” Al Bianchi, a former Nationals teammate, recalled in Terry Pluto’s oral history “Tall Tales” (1992). “But what made him great was that he could shoot running one-handers — and make them with either hand. His left was as good as his right.”

A broken right arm early in his career had led Schayes to develop a left-handed shot as well.

The Hall of Fame coach Alex Hannum said Schayes, who at 6 feet 8 inches was a forerunner of the power forward of today’s game, epitomized the “New York style” of basketball in his day: “few set plays, nothing but constant movement.”

The Knicks selected Schayes as their No. 1 pick in the 1948 draft of the Basketball Association of America, a precursor to the N.B.A. As he recalled, they offered him $5,000, the league limit for rookies, but he signed instead for $7,000 and a $500 bonus with Syracuse, then part of the National Basketball League.

“I figured out that $2,500 was a lot of money, and professional basketball might not have a long life,” Schayes told The New York Times in June. “So I figured I might as well take the best offer.”

Adolph Schayes was born in the Bronx on May 19, 1928, a son of Jewish immigrants from Romania. His father, Carl, drove a truck for a laundry company. His mother, Tina, was a homemaker.

After taking up basketball on Bronx playgrounds, he played for DeWitt Clinton High School in the borough, then played four seasons at N.Y.U. under the longtime coach Howard Cann.

In 1945, as a 16-year-old freshman, Schayes helped N.Y.U. reach the N.C.A.A. final, where it lost to Oklahoma A&M at Madison Square Garden. At a time when college basketball was relatively low scoring, he averaged 13.7 points a game as a senior and received all-American mention from The Associated Press. He graduated with a degree in aeronautical engineering.

Schayes led the N.B.A. in rebounds in the 1950-51 season. He led the Nationals — coached by Al Cervi and also featuring Johnny Kerr, Red Rocha and Earl Lloyd in the frontcourt and Paul Seymour at guard — to the only N.B.A. championship in their history in 1955, when they defeated the Fort Wayne Pistons in a seven-game final. That was also the first season for the 24-second shot clock, which had been proposed by the Nationals’ owner, Danny Biasone, in an effort to turn a plodding game into a crowd attraction.

Schayes was named the 76ers’ player-coach in 1963 and retired as a player at the end of the 1963-64 season. He had scored 18,438 points, an average of 18.5 a game, while averaging 12.1 rebounds in 15 N.B.A. seasons after one season in the N.B.L.

Remaining as coach, he took Philadelphia to the Eastern Division finals the next year against the Celtics, only to see Boston’s John Havlicek famously steal an inbounds pass in the final seconds to preserve a 110-109 Celtics victory in Game 7.

Schayes was the N.B.A.’s supervisor of referees after coaching the 76ers. He was named the coach of the expansion Buffalo Braves in 1970 but was fired one game into his second season.

In 1977 he coached the United States team to the gold medal at the Maccabiah Games, the Jewish Olympics, in Israel. He was a real estate developer in Syracuse after leaving basketball.

In addition to his son Danny, who played 18 N.B.A. seasons, he is survived by his wife, Naomi; another son, David; his daughters, Carrie Goettsch and Debra Ferri; and nine grandchildren.

In the N.B.A. of the 1950s, a thousand dollars or so could be a big deal, as the Knicks learned to their regret. But though the Nationals outbid the Knicks for Schayes, they did not part with money so easily.

Schayes recalled that once in the mid-’50s, after he was an All-Star as usual, Biasone, the team owner, told him: “I know it’s not fair, but I have to cut your salary $1,000. I have to cut everybody or else we can’t operate.”

“I took the cut,” Schayes remembered, but “at the end of that season, he gave me a check for that thousand dollars.”

Previously…

The NBA star and Central New York was diagnosed with terminal cancer six months ago.

A 6-foot-7 forward out of the Bronx, Schayes famously led New York University to the NCAA Final Four as a 16-year-old freshman center. He then helped the Nats to their only NBA title al back in 1955.

He played his entire 16-season career with the Syracuse franchise, scoring 18,438 points and grabbing 11,256 rebounds along the way. Only one of his 16 Nats teams failed to qualify for the NBA playoffs.

Schayes’ playing career, which spanned from 1949 to 1964, included 996 games and landed him in 12 All-Star Games, onto the NBA’s All-Time 50th Anniversary Team and into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

In addition to his playing career, Schayes also coached both the Philadelphia 76ers (and Wilt Chamberlain) and the Buffalo Braves.

Danny Schayes, who played at both Jamesville-DeWitt High School and Syracuse University, followed his father into the NBA, playing 18 seasons for a variety of teams.

Funeral arrangements for Dolph Schayes are pending.