Long Island University’s Epic 1939-40 Basketball Team (Autographed)
We recently acquired this very rare original photograph of Long Island University‘s epic 1939-40 basketball team. A remarkable artifact, it is autographed by all but one of the players on the Blackbirds squad that season, as well as by head coach Clair Bee. And it includes trailblazing African American basketball star William “Dolly” King, known as “Bill” while he was in college. LIU’s basketball team is known as the Sharks today.
Posing in this photo were Irv Zeitlin, Louis Simon, Max Sharf, Joe Shelly, Ossie Schechtman, Allie Goldberg, Alfred Schneider, Sol Schwartz, Ken Ehlers, Al Walterson, Bill King, Sid Peck, Si Lobello, and Hank Beenders. The missing autograph is Shelly’s.
The Blackbirds were reigning collegiate basketball champions, coming off of an undefeated 1938-9 season in which they had won 24 straight games and captured the second annual Basketball Writers’ National Invitational Tournament title. Following a 21-0 regular season, LIU defeated New Mexico A&M and Bradley Tech to set up the March 22, 1939 championship game against previously-unbeaten Chicago Loyola at Madison Square Garden. Long Island won 44-32 to capture the NIT crown in front of more than 18,000 fans.
Meeting in Chicago recently, the national basketball coaches Association for a time considered recommending some note in the rules to take care of the situation which arose recently in the basketball writers tournament in New York. Nowak of Loyola was so tall that he was able to knock some shots out of the basket, and some of the coaches thought that the rule should be adopted, preventing such men from interfering with the ball. Idea was dropped, however.
– Gene F. Hampson, Plainfield Courier-News
Interestingly, the inaugural World’s Championship of Pro Basketball tipped off in Chicago three days later in a tournament that was won by the New York Rens, the first fully-professional, Black-owned, African American team, for which King would eventually play.
King played two sports at LIU, sometimes on the same day, as he did on Saturday, November 25, 1939, when Dolly “played 60 minutes of bruising football against Catholic U., then grabbed a sandwich and played thru an entire game of basketball,” the Asbury Park Press reported on December 1, 1939. Described by the Medford Mail Tribune as “the muscular negro veteran of the Blackbird courtsters,” King was just one of several stars on the Blackbirds roster.
Oscar “Ossie” Schechtman was at right guard. After college, he played professionally for the Philadelphia SPHAS and would be drafted in 1946 by the New York Knicks of the newly founded Basketball Association of America, where he is credited as having scored that league’s first basket. The BAA would merge with the National Basketball League in 1949 to form the National Basketball Association.
Simon “Si” Lobello played left forward. Considered a “set shot marvel,” Lobello was the team’s leading scorer. Henry “Hank” Beenders played center along with King. Irving Zeitlin was a forward. He was “the smallest man on the squad but a speedy and shifty player,” according to the Brooklyn Citizen newspaper.
Allie Goldberg, who had been a star quarterback at Erasmus Hall High School, suffered a broken nose in a November 1939 football game with Bradley Tech that required surgery and sidelined him for the rest of the season. Sydney “Sid” Peck was a veteran reserve who had been out of action during most of the prior season due to a leg injury. Louis Simon was at right forward. Maxwell “Max” Sharf was a guard. Joe Shelly was at left guard. Alfred Schneider played left guard. Solomon “Butch” Schwartz played right forward. Ken Ehlers played left guard. Alexander Walterson was at left forward.
The Blackbirds were coached by Professor Clair Bee, who was also LIU’s football coach and its director of athletics.
King would be elected captain for the 1940-1 team, which would win the NIT title with a 25-2 record. That’s the year he left LIU to play professionally with the New York Rens.
King, Beenders, and Schechtman are members of the Long Island University Sports Hall of Fame and the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame. Schechtman is also a member of the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Bee is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
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