Tag Archives: Basketball

Jew of the Week: Dolph Schayes

Dolph Schayes - Basketball Superstar

Dolph Schayes – Basketball Superstar

Adolph Schayes (b. 1928) was born in New York to Romanian-Jewish immigrants. Growing up playing basketball, he led his high school team to the championships, then earned an engineering degree while playing college basketball. Schayes was drafted by both the New York Knicks and Tri-City Blackhawks in 1948, though he ended up playing in Syracuse, winning the 1949 NBA Rookie of the Year. His height (6’8″) and high-arcing shot (nicknamed “Sputnik”) made him a powerful player. Most amazingly, Schayes once broke his arm, but continued to play the entire season in a cast! He learned to play with his weaker arm, making him even more deadly on the court. Year after year, Schayes dominated the league stats, set records, and led his team to be NBA Champions in 1955. In 1961 he became the first player to reach 30,000 PRA (points, rebounds and assists). He retired having been a twelve-time All-Star, with records for number of games played, both attempted and successful foul shots, and second overall in scoring. He is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame and Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, and was ranked one of the 50 best NBA players of all time. He also won an NBA Coach of the Year award in 1966, and strangely, once served as both a coach and a player in the same season. Patriarch of a talented sports family, Dolph’s son Danny Schayes played 18 seasons in the NBA, while his granddaughters won silver medals on the U.S. Volleyball team, and his grandson is a gold medalist relay sprinter. Schayes now works as a real estate developer in the Syracuse area.

UPDATE: Sadly, Dolph Schayes passed away on December 10, 2015.

 

Words of the Week

…a scattered people, dispersed over the world, enslaved, persecuted, scorned by all nations, nonetheless preserving its characteristics, its laws, its customs, its patriotic love of the early social union, when all ties with it seem broken. The Jews provide us with an astonishing spectacle: the laws of Numa, Lycurgus, Solon are dead; the very much older laws of Moses are still alive. Athens, Sparta, Rome have perished and no longer have children left on earth; Zion, destroyed, has not lost its children.
– Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jew of the Week: Howard Schultz

Starbucks

Howard Schultz, Mr. Starbucks

Howard Schultz was born to a poor Jewish-German family in Brooklyn. A phenomenal athlete, he paid his way through higher education on sports scholarships. After working as a salesperson for Xerox, he became the general manager of Swedish coffee machine maker Hammarplast. In this role, he paid a visit to one of the company’s clients – a tiny café in Seattle called Starbucks. Having traveled through Italy and seen the importance of café-socials in Italian society, Schultz was inspired to create the same for America. Unfortunately the three Starbucks founders (two of whom are fellow Jews Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegl) didn’t share his vision. So in 1985 Howard Schultz started his own café called Il Giornale. Hugely successful, by 1988 Schultz was able to buy out the original Starbucks and adopted it as his own brand name! Schultz quickly became a billionaire, went on to own the Seattle Supersonics basketball team, wrote two books, and received multiple awards, including one from Aish HaTorah for his Israel advocacy work. Today, Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse in the world, with 19,435 locations in 58 countries. The company continues to run under the direction of Schultz, and has become well-known for its humanitarianism: their Ethos brand raises money for water development projects, while Product Red delivers AIDS medication to Africa. The Starbucks Foundation works to develop youth literacy and leadership, sponsoring volunteer work and providing millions of dollars in grants every year.

 

Words of the Week

Leave Israel alone, for even if they are not themselves prophets, they are still the children of prophets.

The very first Starbucks in Seattle, 1971

– Hillel