The Sphas Did Some Fancy Stepping Down At The Broadwood Ballroom

Back in 1918, when residents of South Philadelphia's lower-middle-class ethnic pocket were loath to spend their hard-earned dimes on anything beyond sustenance, three recent high school graduates decided to start a semipro basketball team. Eddie Gottlieb, Harry Passon and Hughie Black wanted to go on playing their favorite game while casting about for their true careers. They proposed the idea to the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association's board of directors, and when the board agreed to spring for uniforms, the young basketball entrepreneurs were on their way.

"We split receipts just like kids who have bands today do," says Gottlieb, whose Philadelphia Warriors were one of the early teams in the National Basketball Association and who, at 77 plus, still makes up the NBA schedules each year. "We got maybe five bucks apiece each game, but we were all working besides. We were going to be lawyers and doctors or whatever young Jewish boys were going to be in those days, not basketball players. We were just having fun."

By 1921 the fun had become lucrative enough for Gottlieb, Passon and Black to take over sponsorship of the team from the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association and to supply the team uniforms. Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter Bill Scheffer nicknamed the club the SPHAs (pronounced "spahs") for the association's initials that the players still wore on their shirts.

"There were a lot of Catholic teams around for us to play," says Gottlieb. "The SPHAs represented the Jewish community. It was a togetherness thing."

The SPHAs added Babe Klotz from Girard College, a school for fatherless boys, and Manny Davidson, who later manufactured foam-rubber cushions, and in 1921-22 won 32 of their 36 home games. That was good enough to get them admitted to the Philadelphia League, a newly formed pro conference. Then they imported a 5'6" guard named Davey Banks from New York, paying him a whopping $50 a game.

Banks led the SPHAs to league championships in 1924, 1925 and 1926, with his finest effort coming in a best-two-of-three series with the Original Celtics in 1926. The SPHAs lost the first game, but Banks' 30-footer with 30 seconds remaining in the second game beat the supposedly unbeatable Celtics 26-25. Banks scored a game-high 11 in the final game as the SPHAs won again, 36-27. When the Celtics signed Banks for the 1926-27 season, the SPHAs had to regroup.

"It wasn't all that hard," says Gottlieb. "At that time, Jewish players dominated the game the way blacks do today. Basketball was their big game."

In 1929, after combing the Philadelphia YMHA Jewish Amateur League for new young talent, Gottlieb came up with two gems. One was Harry Litwack, a 5'8" All-America guard from Temple with hands so lively he could, according to one old SPHA rooter named Albert Wahl, steal the pants off an opponent and discount them three times on the way to the basket. Litwack went on to coach Temple basketball for 21 years.

The other find was David (Cy) Kaselman, a 5'11" forward who is still acclaimed by SPHA experts as the best all-round basketball player to come off Philadelphia courts.

"Cy was the best," says Dave Zinkoff, the frog-voiced P.A. announcer for the Philadelphia 76ers who started his career writing the SPHAs Sparks program. "There was nothing like him in shooting those rainbow set shots or grabbing rebounds from men eight inches taller. Cy could dribble past the big men and score over the small. The greatest."