SWC75
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The Season
October
Unreasonable and beyond the limits
The Nat’s major concern as the beginning of the 1954-55 season approached was securing the services of the team’s main star. Dolph Schayes had the temerity to hold out for more money. Leo Ferris, the Nat’s General Manger pronounced Schayes’ demands “unreasonable and beyond the limits of the financial structure of the Nationals organization as well as beyond the limits in comparison with other teams in the NBA.” Dolph wanted a raise from a salary of $12,500/yr all the way to $15,000! In today’s money, that would be the equivalent of going from $82,000/yr to $98,000. That’s pretty good money compared to what most of us make but I wonder how much of Ron Artest’s fine that would pay. There was talk of selling the ungrateful star’s contact to Boston or Milwaukee. Walter Brown, the Boston owner said he couldn’t afford Schayes: he had just cut the salaries of his own stars, Bob Cousy and Ed McCauley. Dolph got his $15 grand, the paper reported on October 12th and, due to the hold out, “huffed and puffed through the team’s inaugural workout…he twice asked for breathing spells”.
Red Rocha, who had retired for a year to see if he liked selling spice for the McCormack Spice Company in Baltimore more than he liked basketball. He made more money doing it but he missed the camaraderie and the competition so he came back to Syracuse, even though he loathed the weather, so different from what it was in Hawaii where he grew up.
Billy Gabor played only the first three games before he came down with hepatitis. He played in no more games. They had a day for him later in the season in which he was given gifts ranging from an expensive car to a pair of socks. He also got a handshake from Vic Hansen. But his career was over, except for posing for the team picture in his civvies.
Early in the season, in a game against Philadelphia, Wally Osterkorn took a knee to his thigh. After the game, his thigh turned black and blue and hurt so much he couldn’t get up without assistance. “In those days the trainer didn’t know very much. He was giving me message and stretching the muscle, which was the worst thing. Every time he did it, he tore the muscle some more and the hemorrhage would just go on.” A calcium deposit “about the size of a cigar” formed on his bone and muscle and his season and career were virtually over. He made a brief comeback at the end of the year but that was it. He played in only 19 games.
Perfect Exhibitions
The Nats began with a perfect 6-0 exhibition season, beating Joe Lapchick’s Knicks, 80-69 in Poughkeepsie on 10/18 and again 102-93 in Oneida on 10/22, the game in which the new 24 second clock was used for the first time. It met with the approval of most fans but one wrote into Jack Slattery of the Herald that it will “eliminate the adroitly executed play” from the game. Jack replied that that had already been eliminated by the jump shot.
On October 24, the Nats played an exhibition at the War Memorial against a college all-star team that included Johnny Kerr who would shortly be joining them and Larry Costello, a Minoa native who, after a successful career at Niagara, would play for the Warriors for two years before moving to the Nats for the next six seasons. Kerr, due to his beer and pizza training regime had grown from the 6-9 210 pound collegian Danny Biasone had drafted to a jolly looking 248 pounder with a bouncing spare tire around his waist. He would work his way back down to 210 by the end of the season and be a key man in the title run. Kerr scored 17 points against his soon to be teammates but the All-Stars lost, 104-93.
Other newcomers would be Dick Farley, a 6-4 swingman and Jim Tucker, the team’s second black, a 6-7 forward who insisted on completing the fall semester at Duquesne so he could graduate before joining the team.
The Nats went on to beat the Warriors, 107-102 in Williamsport and the Knickerbockers, 84-78 in White Plains before the exhibition season ended with a 103-87 blow-out of the not long for this earth Baltimore Bullets in Spartansburg, South Carolina. The NBA seemed to like to hold exhibitions away from their usual arenas, perhaps to create more interest in other locations. The high scores the teams were rolling up announced a new era for the league as well. The Nats had averaged 97 points a game in the exhibitions. They would go on to average 91 points a game in the regular season. Yet that was only 6th in an 8 team league. The Nats were considered more of a defensive team, leading the league with an 89.7 defensive average. As a matter of fact it was the two best defensive teams, (Fort Wayne averaged 90.0) that met for the title at the end of the year. That year the league average per team per game was 93.1 points: the previous year it was 79.5.
And so it begins
The regular season opened on the road in Baltimore, Saturday 10/30/54, in a game that, it turned out, would not count. The game itself looked more like a game from the previous season, as the teams struggled to a 69-67 final, the Nats overcoming a 25 point performance by the Bullets sensational rookie, Frank Selvy, who had scored four times that in a college game at Furman the previous season. The Nats led 40-25 at halftime but went cold in the second half while Selvy caught fire. Baltimore led by 2 with three minutes to go with Selvy at the line but Frank must have been getting tired, as he missed. George King got a foul shot on the other end to tie it and Schayes put the Nats ahead for good with one of his long set shots, 66-65. Schayes led the Nats, as he usually did, with 17 points.
The Nats boarded a train, (Fred Zollner’s Pistons were the only team to travel by air in those days), in time for a Sunday game vs. the Lakers at the War Memorial. Minneapolis for the first time did not have George Mikan but thought they might have a suitable replacement in 6-9 Clyde Lovelette, who had led Kansas to the NCAA title in 1952 and back to the finals the next year. Clyde would average 18.7 points and 11.5 rebounds that year, compared to Mikan’s 18.1/14.3 the previous year. The Lakers, still a formidable team, would finish second in the western division with a 40-32 record and would “own” the Nats this year, winning 6 of 9 games against them. This was the first, 94-97 before 3,787 fans, considered a large crowd for Syracuse in those days. The Herald Journal reported that the Nats simply “missed too many free throws and rebounds and threw the ball away too much to win”. Paul Seymour had 25 points and Schayes another 17 but they couldn’t overcome Lovelette’ 22 points and 14 rebounds or Vern Mikkelsen’s 19 points and 23 boards.
The Nats thus finished the month of October with a 1-1 record, which was soon to become 0-1.
October
Unreasonable and beyond the limits
The Nat’s major concern as the beginning of the 1954-55 season approached was securing the services of the team’s main star. Dolph Schayes had the temerity to hold out for more money. Leo Ferris, the Nat’s General Manger pronounced Schayes’ demands “unreasonable and beyond the limits of the financial structure of the Nationals organization as well as beyond the limits in comparison with other teams in the NBA.” Dolph wanted a raise from a salary of $12,500/yr all the way to $15,000! In today’s money, that would be the equivalent of going from $82,000/yr to $98,000. That’s pretty good money compared to what most of us make but I wonder how much of Ron Artest’s fine that would pay. There was talk of selling the ungrateful star’s contact to Boston or Milwaukee. Walter Brown, the Boston owner said he couldn’t afford Schayes: he had just cut the salaries of his own stars, Bob Cousy and Ed McCauley. Dolph got his $15 grand, the paper reported on October 12th and, due to the hold out, “huffed and puffed through the team’s inaugural workout…he twice asked for breathing spells”.
Red Rocha, who had retired for a year to see if he liked selling spice for the McCormack Spice Company in Baltimore more than he liked basketball. He made more money doing it but he missed the camaraderie and the competition so he came back to Syracuse, even though he loathed the weather, so different from what it was in Hawaii where he grew up.
Billy Gabor played only the first three games before he came down with hepatitis. He played in no more games. They had a day for him later in the season in which he was given gifts ranging from an expensive car to a pair of socks. He also got a handshake from Vic Hansen. But his career was over, except for posing for the team picture in his civvies.
Early in the season, in a game against Philadelphia, Wally Osterkorn took a knee to his thigh. After the game, his thigh turned black and blue and hurt so much he couldn’t get up without assistance. “In those days the trainer didn’t know very much. He was giving me message and stretching the muscle, which was the worst thing. Every time he did it, he tore the muscle some more and the hemorrhage would just go on.” A calcium deposit “about the size of a cigar” formed on his bone and muscle and his season and career were virtually over. He made a brief comeback at the end of the year but that was it. He played in only 19 games.
Perfect Exhibitions
The Nats began with a perfect 6-0 exhibition season, beating Joe Lapchick’s Knicks, 80-69 in Poughkeepsie on 10/18 and again 102-93 in Oneida on 10/22, the game in which the new 24 second clock was used for the first time. It met with the approval of most fans but one wrote into Jack Slattery of the Herald that it will “eliminate the adroitly executed play” from the game. Jack replied that that had already been eliminated by the jump shot.
On October 24, the Nats played an exhibition at the War Memorial against a college all-star team that included Johnny Kerr who would shortly be joining them and Larry Costello, a Minoa native who, after a successful career at Niagara, would play for the Warriors for two years before moving to the Nats for the next six seasons. Kerr, due to his beer and pizza training regime had grown from the 6-9 210 pound collegian Danny Biasone had drafted to a jolly looking 248 pounder with a bouncing spare tire around his waist. He would work his way back down to 210 by the end of the season and be a key man in the title run. Kerr scored 17 points against his soon to be teammates but the All-Stars lost, 104-93.
Other newcomers would be Dick Farley, a 6-4 swingman and Jim Tucker, the team’s second black, a 6-7 forward who insisted on completing the fall semester at Duquesne so he could graduate before joining the team.
The Nats went on to beat the Warriors, 107-102 in Williamsport and the Knickerbockers, 84-78 in White Plains before the exhibition season ended with a 103-87 blow-out of the not long for this earth Baltimore Bullets in Spartansburg, South Carolina. The NBA seemed to like to hold exhibitions away from their usual arenas, perhaps to create more interest in other locations. The high scores the teams were rolling up announced a new era for the league as well. The Nats had averaged 97 points a game in the exhibitions. They would go on to average 91 points a game in the regular season. Yet that was only 6th in an 8 team league. The Nats were considered more of a defensive team, leading the league with an 89.7 defensive average. As a matter of fact it was the two best defensive teams, (Fort Wayne averaged 90.0) that met for the title at the end of the year. That year the league average per team per game was 93.1 points: the previous year it was 79.5.
And so it begins
The regular season opened on the road in Baltimore, Saturday 10/30/54, in a game that, it turned out, would not count. The game itself looked more like a game from the previous season, as the teams struggled to a 69-67 final, the Nats overcoming a 25 point performance by the Bullets sensational rookie, Frank Selvy, who had scored four times that in a college game at Furman the previous season. The Nats led 40-25 at halftime but went cold in the second half while Selvy caught fire. Baltimore led by 2 with three minutes to go with Selvy at the line but Frank must have been getting tired, as he missed. George King got a foul shot on the other end to tie it and Schayes put the Nats ahead for good with one of his long set shots, 66-65. Schayes led the Nats, as he usually did, with 17 points.
The Nats boarded a train, (Fred Zollner’s Pistons were the only team to travel by air in those days), in time for a Sunday game vs. the Lakers at the War Memorial. Minneapolis for the first time did not have George Mikan but thought they might have a suitable replacement in 6-9 Clyde Lovelette, who had led Kansas to the NCAA title in 1952 and back to the finals the next year. Clyde would average 18.7 points and 11.5 rebounds that year, compared to Mikan’s 18.1/14.3 the previous year. The Lakers, still a formidable team, would finish second in the western division with a 40-32 record and would “own” the Nats this year, winning 6 of 9 games against them. This was the first, 94-97 before 3,787 fans, considered a large crowd for Syracuse in those days. The Herald Journal reported that the Nats simply “missed too many free throws and rebounds and threw the ball away too much to win”. Paul Seymour had 25 points and Schayes another 17 but they couldn’t overcome Lovelette’ 22 points and 14 rebounds or Vern Mikkelsen’s 19 points and 23 boards.
The Nats thus finished the month of October with a 1-1 record, which was soon to become 0-1.
