SWC75
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Aftermath
There is a picture on page 22 of the next day’s Post Standard of George King, having gained control of the ball, heading downcourt with his head up and looking in command of the situation. It’s the sort of photo they make statues of. It’s too bad we didn’t have Johnny Most available to shout “KING STOLE THE BALL!!! KING STOLE THE BALL!!!” Another photo on page 14 shows Al Cervi bolting off the bench next to Red Rocha, who is jumping for joy as Sid Borgia blows his whistle signifying the end of the game. One the front page was a picture captioned “Little Man, Big Hero”, showing George King on his teammate’s shoulders after the game, for once looking down on everybody, with a big grin on his face.
“The most joyous scene”
“The most joyous scene in pro basketball history here then unfolded as teammates and spectators poured onto the court to vent their happy hysteria on the squad’s smallest performer. When the cops and ushers were able to clear the floor, first captain Paul Seymour and the crumpled and overwhelmed Cervi were called out onto the floor by Commissioner Maurice Podoloff amid a quaking uproar from the stands”. The ovation was repeated when the entire squad came on. Podoloff said “There has never been one like this…it came the hard way- from 17 points down, a rare accomplishment”. He then handed the championship trophy to Cervi. You can compare the Nat’s 1955 title to SU’s 2003 triumph on a number of levels but one thing in favor of the ’55 win was that it happened here.
The players carried Cervi off the court on their shoulders. David Ramsey: “Biasone couldn’t believe what had unfolded before him. He walked into the dressing room, sat down in the corner with the title trophy and began to weep….Babe Cranfield, one of the world’s greatest billiard players, watched the game at the War Memorial. He lived in the university district and had followed the Nats since they arrived in Syracuse He stepped out of the War Memorial and saw hundreds of fans yelling and dancing in the streets. Oh, why not, he thought to himself. He danced and yelled, too.” In the locker room, the team sang a champagne-induced version of “Back Home in Indiana” that celebrated the fact that the Nationals had sent the Pistons home losers. Johnny Kerr announced “This team had more guts than the Chicago stockyards”. Not too many minds would have come up with such a comparison.
One voice in the background was heard saying “That’s one title, now let’s root for Basilio”. Carmen was scheduled to face Tony DeMarco for the title in the same building. In the book “‘59” about Ben Schwartzwalder’s 1959 NCAA football champions, Basilio is quoted as saying that he loved going to Archbold stadium to see Ben’s teams play. It’s nice to know that Syracuse’s sports heroes in our period of greatest glory stuck together. There was a genuine feeling of brotherhood and of the need to do something to put the community on the map.
Ramsey: “The Nats began hours of drinking and rejoicing. King, the hero, went to a victory party, sat down and asked for a ‘Seven and Seven’- Seagram’s mixed with 7-UP. While waiting for his drink, someone offered a glass of Scotch. King had never drank Scotch in his life but, then again, he had never won a world title either. He took the glass and gulped it dry. It tasted mighty nice and he tried another and another and another…King remembers stealing the ball and feeling awfully happy and he remembers drinking Scotch and feeling mighty bad. He has never drank another Scotch since title day.”
The “Uncrowned Champions”
Al Cervi was gracious enough to go to the Piston’s locker room and tell Charley Eckman “We were lucky”. Eckman thanked him and asked him to “tell the boys they have a good team.” He then told the boys in the press, “We have no apologies to make. We played tremendous ball. I don’t mind losing but I don’t like the way we did it. Syracuse had luck with them all the way. Considering we went through the series without the advantage of a home game I must admit this Ft. Wayne team is great”. Andy Phillip was more succinct: “We were a better team and they know it. We’re the uncrowned champs of the world!” Don Meinke announced “We outplayed them all the way!”
These statements failed to consider that Syracuse had won 11 of the 16 games between the teams in 1954-55 and that Fort Wayne won all the games played in Indianapolis and were thus not very disadvantaged by the venue. However they might have had cause for complain that they had 33 field goals to 26 for the Nats in the final game. They outshot the champs, 33%-42%. Syracuse won it by going 40 of 49 from the free throw line, compared to the Piston’s 25 of 34. Then there was that no-call on Seymour’s harassment of Phillip. One thing in the box score that tells you a lot about how this team became champions is that seven Syracuse Nationals scored in double figures- all between 11-15 points. I’ve never seen such balance or unselfishness as shown by the final statistics of a game. It really didn’t matter to these guys who scored as long as they won. Harry Truman is quoted as saying “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” That was the 1955 Syracuse Nationals.
It’s also amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who wins. There were hints of an ugly underside to this game. Wikipedia:
“There are suggestions that Pistons players conspired with gamblers to shave points and throw various games during the 1953–54 and 1954–55 seasons. In particular, there are accusations that the team may
have intentionally lost the 1955 NBA Finals to the Syracuse Nationals. In the decisive Game 7, the Pistons led Syracuse 41–24 early in the second quarter, then the Nationals rallied to win the game. Syracuse won on a free throw by George King with twelve seconds left in the game. The closing moments included a palming turnover by the Pistons' George Yardley with 18 seconds left, a foul by Frankie Brian with 12 seconds left that enabled King's winning free throw, and a turnover by the Pistons' Andy Phillip with three seconds left which cost Fort Wayne a chance to attempt the game-winning shot….Andy Phillip, who turned the ball over with three seconds left in the game, was believed by at least one of his teammates, George Yardley, to have thrown the game. "There were always unwholesome implications about that ball game," Yardley told the author Charley Rosen. However, Phillip may not have acted alone. Other Pistons players were strongly believed to have thrown games during the 1954 and 1955 NBA seasons.”
Rosen’s book is called “The Wizard of Odds: How Jack Molinas Almost Destroyed the Game of Basketball.” I’ve never read it but I know Jack Molinas was a major figure in the point shaving scams in college basketball at the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Molinas
It’s easy now to dismiss this and the Pistons certainly aren’t the only basketball team to have blown a big lead in a big game. But that was a different era, one where gambling at arenas was done openly and player salaries were, as we have seen, a pittance, (although the Pistons were the best paid team in the league, thanks to Fred Zollner). But the players were playing in a corrupted environment. Marty Glickman, in his book “The Fastest Kid on the Block”:
“I broadcast from a seat in the midst of the spectators at the mid-court line, about 6-7 rows up from the court. Before the game and during the halftime while I was on the air, bookmakers would go along the sidelines in front of the stands and call out the odds on bets. During the half, they’d pay off bets for points scored, shooting percentage, whatever. They would pass the dollars up along the rows of seats, the way you might pass a soda or hot dog to a person sitting in the stands. There were bad things in the air and it seemed as if everyone had blinders on. There was booing and catcalling that had little to do with winning and losing, but a lot to do with the point spread of the game- in many arenas, not just the Garden.”
It should be noted that gamblers were mostly concerned with the point spread, not the winner of the game. They’d learned their lesson with the Black Sox. They wouldn’t have paid the Pistons to lose the series. That would have attracted too much attention. And can you shave points when the two best teams in the league are playing? Maybe they tried and it backfired. It would certainly be disappointing if the Nat’s championship was handed to us by the Pistons but if it was, they certainly aren’t the “Uncrowned Champions”. We deserved it a heck of a lot more than they did, any way you cut it.
The Optimists
The next day there was a parade from City Hall to the Hotel Syracuse, (virtually the opposite of the route Jim Boeheim and his crew took 48 years later), where a banquet was held by the Optimists club. And there was plenty of optimism. Dolph Schayes was only 27, as were Seymour and Lloyd. King was 26, Kenvile 25 and Kerr 23, (the “K” boys?). Then there were the other rookies, Farley and Tucker. The team seemed, for once, to be on solid financial footing with the city and their fans fully behind them. George Mikan was gone and no one like him seemed to be on the horizon, although the University of San Francisco had just won the NCAA title with some skinny kid named Bill Russell playing center. There was no reason to think there weren’t going to be other parades.
Al Cervi said “I want to say this to the fellows: when you’re in some other kind of business and things get tough, remember when you came back from a 17 point deficit. You’ll never have any trouble”. Danny Biasone said that he had named the team the Nationals in 1946 because he intended for them to win the “national” championship and he thanked the players for making his dream come true. Reverend William Walsh, a close friend of Biasone’s, recalled a time in 1948 when Danny flew to Chicago to “turn in his suit”, (by which I presume he meant to tell the league he was folding the franchise). But he changed in mind on the flight out. Each player got a championship plaque. They didn’t use rings in those days although Wally Osterkorn said he later saw Schayes sporting one. There was also an engraved water bucket saying “Optimist Club Congratulates You on Your NBA Championship, 1954-55”. Awards were presented at the same luncheon to the local high school and the “biddy” league champions. It was very much a 1950’s style celebration.
As the winning team in the NBA finals the team got a purse of $15,000, very much a 1950’s style compensation. Cervi, Schayes, Seymour, King, Kenville, Lloyd, Rocha, Kerr and Farley got full shares. Osterkorn, Tucker, Simmons, Gabor and trainer Art Van Auken got partial shares.
Then everybody went home. For Dick Farley, that was, ironically, Ft. Wayne Indiana, where he hoped to postpone military service until he could play another season. He also had “some schoolwork to finish”. So did Jim Tucker who returned to Duquense to complete his education, having learned what it took to win championships. Earl Lloyd returned to Washington, DC, where he took a physical education course, Johnny Kerr to Chicago where he had a job with the city, (and it’s new mayor, Richard Daley), and George King to his sporting goods store in Charleston, W. Va., where he no doubt found a place for the newspaper clipping of him stealing the ball from Andy Phillip. Billy Kenville went back to his offseason sales job with a construction equipment company. Red Rocha didn’t return to his spicey sales job with McCormick but instead got a job in Syracuse selling tape. Sounds delicious. Paul Seymour was building a new home in Liverpool and spent his time supervising that project, just like you’d expect a point guard to do. He wound up owning a liquor store and a hardware store. Dolph Schayes was putting his money into apartment houses. He wound up managing over 200 units. Al Cervi and his wife went to Florida for a vacation. Danny Biasone went to New York for the league meetings. Biasone received a lot of ribbing that his team won the title in the first year of the 24 second clock, which was his idea. Ironically, they won it with the best defense in the league. The team that probably enjoyed the shot clock the most was the team they most despised, the Celtics.
A picture was taken of the team posing with the trophy and plans were made to make it a permanent exhibit at the War Memorial, along with a picture of Carmen Basilio.
http://sportige.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/1955-Syracuse-Nationals.jpg
There is a picture on page 22 of the next day’s Post Standard of George King, having gained control of the ball, heading downcourt with his head up and looking in command of the situation. It’s the sort of photo they make statues of. It’s too bad we didn’t have Johnny Most available to shout “KING STOLE THE BALL!!! KING STOLE THE BALL!!!” Another photo on page 14 shows Al Cervi bolting off the bench next to Red Rocha, who is jumping for joy as Sid Borgia blows his whistle signifying the end of the game. One the front page was a picture captioned “Little Man, Big Hero”, showing George King on his teammate’s shoulders after the game, for once looking down on everybody, with a big grin on his face.
“The most joyous scene”
“The most joyous scene in pro basketball history here then unfolded as teammates and spectators poured onto the court to vent their happy hysteria on the squad’s smallest performer. When the cops and ushers were able to clear the floor, first captain Paul Seymour and the crumpled and overwhelmed Cervi were called out onto the floor by Commissioner Maurice Podoloff amid a quaking uproar from the stands”. The ovation was repeated when the entire squad came on. Podoloff said “There has never been one like this…it came the hard way- from 17 points down, a rare accomplishment”. He then handed the championship trophy to Cervi. You can compare the Nat’s 1955 title to SU’s 2003 triumph on a number of levels but one thing in favor of the ’55 win was that it happened here.
The players carried Cervi off the court on their shoulders. David Ramsey: “Biasone couldn’t believe what had unfolded before him. He walked into the dressing room, sat down in the corner with the title trophy and began to weep….Babe Cranfield, one of the world’s greatest billiard players, watched the game at the War Memorial. He lived in the university district and had followed the Nats since they arrived in Syracuse He stepped out of the War Memorial and saw hundreds of fans yelling and dancing in the streets. Oh, why not, he thought to himself. He danced and yelled, too.” In the locker room, the team sang a champagne-induced version of “Back Home in Indiana” that celebrated the fact that the Nationals had sent the Pistons home losers. Johnny Kerr announced “This team had more guts than the Chicago stockyards”. Not too many minds would have come up with such a comparison.
One voice in the background was heard saying “That’s one title, now let’s root for Basilio”. Carmen was scheduled to face Tony DeMarco for the title in the same building. In the book “‘59” about Ben Schwartzwalder’s 1959 NCAA football champions, Basilio is quoted as saying that he loved going to Archbold stadium to see Ben’s teams play. It’s nice to know that Syracuse’s sports heroes in our period of greatest glory stuck together. There was a genuine feeling of brotherhood and of the need to do something to put the community on the map.
Ramsey: “The Nats began hours of drinking and rejoicing. King, the hero, went to a victory party, sat down and asked for a ‘Seven and Seven’- Seagram’s mixed with 7-UP. While waiting for his drink, someone offered a glass of Scotch. King had never drank Scotch in his life but, then again, he had never won a world title either. He took the glass and gulped it dry. It tasted mighty nice and he tried another and another and another…King remembers stealing the ball and feeling awfully happy and he remembers drinking Scotch and feeling mighty bad. He has never drank another Scotch since title day.”
The “Uncrowned Champions”
Al Cervi was gracious enough to go to the Piston’s locker room and tell Charley Eckman “We were lucky”. Eckman thanked him and asked him to “tell the boys they have a good team.” He then told the boys in the press, “We have no apologies to make. We played tremendous ball. I don’t mind losing but I don’t like the way we did it. Syracuse had luck with them all the way. Considering we went through the series without the advantage of a home game I must admit this Ft. Wayne team is great”. Andy Phillip was more succinct: “We were a better team and they know it. We’re the uncrowned champs of the world!” Don Meinke announced “We outplayed them all the way!”
These statements failed to consider that Syracuse had won 11 of the 16 games between the teams in 1954-55 and that Fort Wayne won all the games played in Indianapolis and were thus not very disadvantaged by the venue. However they might have had cause for complain that they had 33 field goals to 26 for the Nats in the final game. They outshot the champs, 33%-42%. Syracuse won it by going 40 of 49 from the free throw line, compared to the Piston’s 25 of 34. Then there was that no-call on Seymour’s harassment of Phillip. One thing in the box score that tells you a lot about how this team became champions is that seven Syracuse Nationals scored in double figures- all between 11-15 points. I’ve never seen such balance or unselfishness as shown by the final statistics of a game. It really didn’t matter to these guys who scored as long as they won. Harry Truman is quoted as saying “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” That was the 1955 Syracuse Nationals.
It’s also amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who wins. There were hints of an ugly underside to this game. Wikipedia:
“There are suggestions that Pistons players conspired with gamblers to shave points and throw various games during the 1953–54 and 1954–55 seasons. In particular, there are accusations that the team may
have intentionally lost the 1955 NBA Finals to the Syracuse Nationals. In the decisive Game 7, the Pistons led Syracuse 41–24 early in the second quarter, then the Nationals rallied to win the game. Syracuse won on a free throw by George King with twelve seconds left in the game. The closing moments included a palming turnover by the Pistons' George Yardley with 18 seconds left, a foul by Frankie Brian with 12 seconds left that enabled King's winning free throw, and a turnover by the Pistons' Andy Phillip with three seconds left which cost Fort Wayne a chance to attempt the game-winning shot….Andy Phillip, who turned the ball over with three seconds left in the game, was believed by at least one of his teammates, George Yardley, to have thrown the game. "There were always unwholesome implications about that ball game," Yardley told the author Charley Rosen. However, Phillip may not have acted alone. Other Pistons players were strongly believed to have thrown games during the 1954 and 1955 NBA seasons.”
Rosen’s book is called “The Wizard of Odds: How Jack Molinas Almost Destroyed the Game of Basketball.” I’ve never read it but I know Jack Molinas was a major figure in the point shaving scams in college basketball at the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Molinas
It’s easy now to dismiss this and the Pistons certainly aren’t the only basketball team to have blown a big lead in a big game. But that was a different era, one where gambling at arenas was done openly and player salaries were, as we have seen, a pittance, (although the Pistons were the best paid team in the league, thanks to Fred Zollner). But the players were playing in a corrupted environment. Marty Glickman, in his book “The Fastest Kid on the Block”:
“I broadcast from a seat in the midst of the spectators at the mid-court line, about 6-7 rows up from the court. Before the game and during the halftime while I was on the air, bookmakers would go along the sidelines in front of the stands and call out the odds on bets. During the half, they’d pay off bets for points scored, shooting percentage, whatever. They would pass the dollars up along the rows of seats, the way you might pass a soda or hot dog to a person sitting in the stands. There were bad things in the air and it seemed as if everyone had blinders on. There was booing and catcalling that had little to do with winning and losing, but a lot to do with the point spread of the game- in many arenas, not just the Garden.”
It should be noted that gamblers were mostly concerned with the point spread, not the winner of the game. They’d learned their lesson with the Black Sox. They wouldn’t have paid the Pistons to lose the series. That would have attracted too much attention. And can you shave points when the two best teams in the league are playing? Maybe they tried and it backfired. It would certainly be disappointing if the Nat’s championship was handed to us by the Pistons but if it was, they certainly aren’t the “Uncrowned Champions”. We deserved it a heck of a lot more than they did, any way you cut it.
The Optimists
The next day there was a parade from City Hall to the Hotel Syracuse, (virtually the opposite of the route Jim Boeheim and his crew took 48 years later), where a banquet was held by the Optimists club. And there was plenty of optimism. Dolph Schayes was only 27, as were Seymour and Lloyd. King was 26, Kenvile 25 and Kerr 23, (the “K” boys?). Then there were the other rookies, Farley and Tucker. The team seemed, for once, to be on solid financial footing with the city and their fans fully behind them. George Mikan was gone and no one like him seemed to be on the horizon, although the University of San Francisco had just won the NCAA title with some skinny kid named Bill Russell playing center. There was no reason to think there weren’t going to be other parades.
Al Cervi said “I want to say this to the fellows: when you’re in some other kind of business and things get tough, remember when you came back from a 17 point deficit. You’ll never have any trouble”. Danny Biasone said that he had named the team the Nationals in 1946 because he intended for them to win the “national” championship and he thanked the players for making his dream come true. Reverend William Walsh, a close friend of Biasone’s, recalled a time in 1948 when Danny flew to Chicago to “turn in his suit”, (by which I presume he meant to tell the league he was folding the franchise). But he changed in mind on the flight out. Each player got a championship plaque. They didn’t use rings in those days although Wally Osterkorn said he later saw Schayes sporting one. There was also an engraved water bucket saying “Optimist Club Congratulates You on Your NBA Championship, 1954-55”. Awards were presented at the same luncheon to the local high school and the “biddy” league champions. It was very much a 1950’s style celebration.
As the winning team in the NBA finals the team got a purse of $15,000, very much a 1950’s style compensation. Cervi, Schayes, Seymour, King, Kenville, Lloyd, Rocha, Kerr and Farley got full shares. Osterkorn, Tucker, Simmons, Gabor and trainer Art Van Auken got partial shares.
Then everybody went home. For Dick Farley, that was, ironically, Ft. Wayne Indiana, where he hoped to postpone military service until he could play another season. He also had “some schoolwork to finish”. So did Jim Tucker who returned to Duquense to complete his education, having learned what it took to win championships. Earl Lloyd returned to Washington, DC, where he took a physical education course, Johnny Kerr to Chicago where he had a job with the city, (and it’s new mayor, Richard Daley), and George King to his sporting goods store in Charleston, W. Va., where he no doubt found a place for the newspaper clipping of him stealing the ball from Andy Phillip. Billy Kenville went back to his offseason sales job with a construction equipment company. Red Rocha didn’t return to his spicey sales job with McCormick but instead got a job in Syracuse selling tape. Sounds delicious. Paul Seymour was building a new home in Liverpool and spent his time supervising that project, just like you’d expect a point guard to do. He wound up owning a liquor store and a hardware store. Dolph Schayes was putting his money into apartment houses. He wound up managing over 200 units. Al Cervi and his wife went to Florida for a vacation. Danny Biasone went to New York for the league meetings. Biasone received a lot of ribbing that his team won the title in the first year of the 24 second clock, which was his idea. Ironically, they won it with the best defense in the league. The team that probably enjoyed the shot clock the most was the team they most despised, the Celtics.
A picture was taken of the team posing with the trophy and plans were made to make it a permanent exhibit at the War Memorial, along with a picture of Carmen Basilio.
http://sportige.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/1955-Syracuse-Nationals.jpg
