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6 MAY 5, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Philadelphia SPHAs,
Eddie Gottlieb Left
Basketball Legacy
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
T here is only one Jewish player
in the National Basketball
Association today, Washington
Wizards forward Deni Avdija. But if it
wasn’t for his Jewish predecessors in
professional basketball, the Israeli and
his non-Jewish contemporaries might
not even have a league.

In the 1920s, ’30s and early ’40s —
the decades predating the launch of the
NBA — Jewish players abounded in
leagues like the American Basketball
League, helping to establish pro basket-
ball in America.

One all-Jewish team, though, still
stands as the pinnacle of Jewish success
on the hardwood. The Philadelphia
SPHAs, who grew from the city’s Jewish
neighborhoods to the pro circuit, won
seven championships in 11 years in the
ABL and Eastern Basketball League.

The team was named after the South
Philadelphia Hebrew Association, an
early sponsor.

Now, the team that history keeps
forgetting is cemented in it ... at least in
Jewish circles.

On May 1 at Temple Israel in
Lawrence, New York, the Philadelphia
team and its Jewish coach/owner,
Eddie Gottlieb, one of the fathers of
the NBA, too, were inducted into the
Jewish Sports Heritage Association’s
Hall of Fame.

The Jewish Sports Heritage
Association is a national nonprofit that
educates Jews about their own history
in sport. Director Alan Freedman vis-
its synagogues and Jewish community
centers, among other locations, to talk
about Jewish sports legends and teams
to religious school students, men’s club
members and other groups.

Freedman has a memorabilia col-
lection, too, and while his hall of fame
does not have an official location, it
is official. Sportswriters vote on the
inductees, and family members of hon-
orees attend the annual ceremony.

Eddie Gottlieb
Gottlieb and the SPHAs joined
other Jewish luminaries, like former
New England Patriots receiver Julian
Edelman, in this year’s class.

“These guys had love of the game,”
Freedman said of the SPHAs. “They
weren’t doing it for any great amount
of money.”
That statement was especially true
of Gottlieb, who served as the team’s
coach, manager and promoter, accord-
ing to author Douglas Stark, who wrote
“The SPHAS,” a book about the team.

Gottlieb’s nickname was “the mogul”
long before Jay-Z made the concept
cool, and he is known as one of the
key figures behind the early NBA, even
writing the league’s schedules by hand.

But decades before the NBA even
started, Gottlieb was driving his
SPHAs around the Midwest to play
games. Players would ask the mogul
why they were doing that, Stark said.

He would answer that they were
trying to grow professional basketball.

“He understood the sport’s potential
as a business and as entertainment,”
Stark added.

Later, before Red Auerbach and Bill
Russell brought the fast break to the
NBA with the Boston Celtics, Gottlieb
pioneered it with his Jewish players.

“They would run,” the author said.

The SPHAs would get a rebound and
pass the ball up court before the oppo-
Courtesy of the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
P R E S E N T S