Dolph Schayes

• 1. Introduction

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  Adolph Schayes practiced so relentlessly at New York University that his coach, Howard Cann, once said, "He was in the gym practicing every spare minute. We had to chase him out." That habit turned into a professional career spent entirely with one franchise, through a move from one city to another and a championship in between. Early in that career, an injury forced Schayes to relearn how to shoot, and the fix he found became one of his greatest strengths. His outside shot arced so high that his own teammates gave it a nickname borrowed from the space race. By the time he retired, he held NBA records in several categories, built up over a long career with a single franchise. What forced him to change his shooting hand, and why did rival teams pursue his rights across two different leagues before he ever set foot in the NBA? And what happened when the coach who built his team's championship roster later had to coach against it?

• 2. Early Life And NYU

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  Carl Schayes drove trucks for Consolidated Laundries, and his wife, Tina, born Michel, ran their household in the Bronx. Both parents had immigrated from Romania and were Jewish. Their son was born on the 19th of May, 1928, and the family lived on Davidson Avenue and 183rd Street, near Jerome Avenue in the University Heights section of the Bronx.

  At DeWitt Clinton High School, after starting out at Creston Junior High School 79, Schayes led the basketball team to a borough championship. Standing 6-foot-8 while still a teenager, he moved with unusual agility and finesse around the basket, a trait rare for a player his size.

  From 1944 to 1948, Schayes starred at New York University under Hall of Fame coach Howard Cann, helping popularize the fast-paced city game. In 1945, as a 16-year-old freshman, he helped NYU reach the NCAA final. He earned a degree in aeronautical engineering, was named a basketball All-American, and won the Haggerty Award in his final year.

  NYU's stardom made him a prospect for a league that, in 1948, was still called the BAA.

• 3. The Syracuse Decision

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  The New York Knicks selected Schayes in the first round of the 1948 BAA draft, fourth overall, while the Tri-Cities Blackhawks also claimed him in the NBL draft. The Blackhawks then traded his rights to the Syracuse Nationals, who offered a contract worth $7,500, fifty percent more than the Knicks had offered. That larger paycheck settled his decision, and Schayes signed with Syracuse instead of his hometown team.

  He spent his first season in the NBL and was named that league's Rookie of the Year. The following season, 1949-50, the Nationals became part of the newly formed National Basketball Association when the BAA and NBL merged.

  Schayes would go on to play for that same Syracuse franchise, and later its Philadelphia successor, for sixteen straight years.

• 4. The Sputnik Shot

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  Early in his career, Schayes broke his right arm and played almost an entire season with it in a cast. Rather than sit out, he learned to shoot with his off hand, an adjustment that made him unusually difficult to guard for the rest of his career.

  His outside shot arced so high that teammates nicknamed it "Sputnik." Defenders who tried to take away that outside shot instead faced a powerful drive to the basket.

  Those two weapons carried Schayes through an era when the NBA was shifting from the two-handed set-shot toward the one-handed jump shot. He became one of the best, and the last, to shoot with both feet planted on the floor before the game changed for good.

  That set-shot and drive combination started piling up rebounding and scoring numbers that would soon put his name atop the league's record books.

• 5. Records And Streaks

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  In the 1949-50 season, Schayes ranked sixth in the league in assists, with 259. The next year, he led the NBA in rebounding with 1,080 boards and a 16.4-per-game average, a season that included ten of the league's top fourteen individual rebounding games. He finished third in the league in rebounding in 1952-53, with 920, and his 12.3 rebounds per game in 1953-54 ranked fourth-best in the NBA. In 1954-55, Schayes led his team to the NBA championship.

  In 1956-57, he led the league in minutes per game, at 39.6, and in free throws made, with 625, while grabbing 1,008 rebounds, third in the league, and averaging 22.6 points, fourth in the NBA. That year he also set an NBA record for consecutive free throws in a single game, sinking 18 in a row in 1957. The following season he again led the league in minutes per game, at 40.5, and posted a career-high 24.9 points per game, second in the league, alongside 14.2 rebounds per game, fourth in the NBA.

  Schayes led the NBA in free throw percentage three separate times, at .904 in 1958, .892 in 1960, and .896 in 1962. In 1959, he scored a career-high 50 points in a game against the Celtics. Between the 17th of February, 1952, and the 26th of December, 1961, he did not miss a single game, an NBA-record streak of 706 consecutive games. He led the league in free throws once more in 1960-61, with 680, and in 1961 became the first player in NBA history to reach 30,000 career combined points, rebounds, and assists.

  Schayes was the first player in NBA history to surpass both 15,000 career points and 10,000 career rebounds. He was a 12-time NBA All-Star, a six-time All-NBA First Team selection, and a six-time All-NBA Second Team selection. He finished second in Most Valuable Player voting in 1958, and fifth in both 1956 and 1957. When he retired in 1964, he held NBA career records for games played, with 996, and for free throws made and attempted, with 6,712 and 7,904. He also held the career record for personal fouls, with 3,432. In career scoring he ranked second, behind Bob Pettit, with 18,438 points, and third in career rebounds, with 11,256.

  Across those years, Schayes led his team into the playoffs 15 times. That improbable playoff résumé set up the moment when he traded his jersey for a coach's clipboard.

• 6. Coach And Official

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  When the Nationals moved to Philadelphia in 1963 and became the 76ers, Schayes took over as player-coach. His playing career was nearly finished by then; he appeared in only 24 games that season, the fewest of his career, and did not play at all in the playoffs.

  Schayes retired as a player after that season but continued coaching the 76ers for several more seasons. In 1966, he was named NBA Coach of the Year after leading the Sixers to the Eastern Division regular-season title, ending a nine-year run by the Boston Celtics. The Celtics still eliminated Philadelphia in a five-game Eastern final, and Schayes was fired soon after. His replacement was Alex Hannum, the same man who had preceded him as coach of the Nationals; Hannum went on to lead the 76ers to the best record in league history at the time, and an NBA title.

  From 1966 to 1970, Schayes served as the NBA's supervisor of referees. In 1970 he became the first head coach of the expansion Buffalo Braves. He was fired just one game into his second season, after a 123-90 loss to the Seattle SuperSonics.

  Schayes' next coaching assignment took him to the Maccabiah Games.

• 7. Maccabiah Games And Family

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  In 1977, Schayes coached the United States Maccabiah Games basketball team to an upset win and a gold medal. He returned to coach the U.S. Masters team at the 1993 Maccabiah Games, and he also helped raise money for the Games over the years.

  Schayes had settled in Syracuse, New York, back in 1948, the city where he first played professional basketball, and he became a real estate developer there after his playing days ended. His son, Danny Schayes, played high school basketball at Jamesville-DeWitt in DeWitt, New York, then at Syracuse University, before a run of 18 seasons as an NBA center. The Maccabiah tradition carried into a third generation: granddaughters Abi, Carla, and Rachel Goettsch won silver medals with the United States volleyball team at the 2001 Maccabiah Games, and grandson Mickey Ferri won gold in the 4 x 100 metres relay at the 2005 Games.

  Schayes died of cancer on the 10th of December, 2015, at the age of 87. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Syracuse.

  Both franchises he had played for would later retire his jersey.

• 8. Legacy

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  In 1970, Schayes was elected to the NBA 25th Anniversary Team, one of just 12 retired players chosen. Two years later, in 1972, he was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, with formal induction following in 1973. He is also a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, the US National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, and the National Jewish American Sports Hall of Fame. In 1996, the NBA named him one of its 50 Greatest Players in League History.

  In May 2015, Schayes was inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame, and a street in the borough where he grew up was named Dolph Schayes Street in his honor. The 76ers retired his jersey on the 12th of March, 2016, and the Syracuse Crunch retired it two weeks later, on the 26th of March.

  In 2021, the NBA elected Schayes to its 75th Anniversary Team, and to mark the occasion, The Athletic ranked him the 61st greatest player in NBA history. That ranking placed him inside a list of names spanning more than seven decades of the league, one still being extended every season.