{"id":21732,"date":"2019-11-08T12:43:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T12:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2019\/11\/08\/scandal-brings-down-a-remarkable-college-basketball-team-in-the-city-game\/"},"modified":"2019-11-08T12:43:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T12:43:00","slug":"scandal-brings-down-a-remarkable-college-basketball-team-in-the-city-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/scandal-brings-down-a-remarkable-college-basketball-team-in-the-city-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Scandal Brings Down A Remarkable College Basketball Team In &#8216;The City Game&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-style:italic;font-size:16px\">By  <a class=\"colorbox\" href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2019\/11\/08\/777189246\/a-remarkable-college-basketball-team-falls-from-grace-in-the-city-game?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=sports\">Michael Schaub<\/a><\/span>  <\/p>\n<div class=\"ftpimagefix\" style=\"float:left\"><a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2019\/11\/08\/777189246\/a-remarkable-college-basketball-team-falls-from-grace-in-the-city-game?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=sports\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/media.npr.org\/assets\/img\/2019\/11\/07\/game_wide-9425f1b1c7a10c0e7330d449ede3ad7d94f8cf17.jpg?s=1400\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>If you ask a college basketball fan to name the best squads of all time, chances are you&#8217;ll hear some of the same names: the 1975-76 Indiana Hoosiers, the 1990-91 Duke Blue Devils, the 1966-67 UCLA Bruins.<\/p>\n<p>Somewhat forgotten to younger basketball aficionados, though, are the 1949-50 City College of New York Beavers, who became the first and only team to win both the National Invitation Tournament and the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n<p>As Matthew Goodman writes in his wonderful new book, <em>The City Game<\/em>, there&#8217;s a reason for that: The team&#8217;s championships were overshadowed by a point-shaving scandal that engulfed not just CCNY but also several other schools across the nation in the early 1950s. Goodman&#8217;s book is a fascinating look at a team full of talented young men who torpedoed their careers because they were unable to resist the lure of easy money.<\/p>\n<p>The CCNY Beavers were, by all accounts, a remarkable team. They &#8220;operated something like a five-man jazz combo, with each player improvising off a few basic patterns &#8230; together creating something fast and complex and unpredictable,&#8221; Goodman writes, benefitting from the coaching of basketball legend Nat Holman and assistant coach Bobby Sand. They were also a diverse team in an era when racism and anti-Semitism ran rampant: The team was composed of 11 Jewish players and four African Americans; all of them were the children of immigrants.<\/p>\n<aside>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>While the players were unquestionably thrilled to get the chance to play for &#8220;the working-class Harvard,&#8221; there was still an air of resentment on the part of the students. Many chafed against Holman, an &#8220;arrogant and aloof&#8221; man who routinely verbally abused his players, Goodman writes. And the students weren&#8217;t happy that they were made to do their own laundry on road trips while their coaches opted for dry-cleaning and fancy steak dinners.<\/p>\n<p>So it wasn&#8217;t surprising when some of the team&#8217;s players were lured into a point-shaving operation. Point-shaving involves players deliberately missing shots and blocks in order to keep the point margin below the spread; basketball, where the scores are typically high and the pace of the game is fast, is more prone to point-shaving than other sports. &#8220;An athlete whose long-honed competitive nature would recoil at the prospect of intentionally losing a game might have less resistance to creating a smaller margin of victory,&#8221; Goodman notes.<\/p>\n<p>For some of the players \u2014 &#8220;not all of them poor but none of them rich&#8221; \u2014 it proved irresistible. Some longed to support their families living in overcrowded tenements; others were drawn into the scheme by peer pressure: &#8220;I wanted the guys to like me,&#8221; explained Irwin Dambrot, a small forward on the team.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately for the Beavers, the point-shaving plot happened to occur at the same time as another gambling scandal, one that would eventually bring down New York Mayor William O&#8217;Dwyer. The city&#8217;s district attorneys became obsessed with finding and prosecuting bookmakers, and it wasn&#8217;t long before they discovered that college players were routinely shaving points. CCNY got hit particularly hard: &#8220;The entire starting five of the City College double-championship squad had now been arrested, along with the top two reserves,&#8221; Goodman writes. &#8220;The shame of the team was complete.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Goodman&#8217;s book is at once a history of the CCNY team&#8217;s remarkable championship season (and the less remarkable one after that) as well as a close look at organized crime and police corruption in post-WWII New York. Goodman does a wonderful job recounting the Beavers&#8217; games \u2014 fans of the game will find much to love in his play-by-play descriptions of CCNY&#8217;s march to the championships, but you don&#8217;t need to be a hardcore basketball fan to keep up.<\/p>\n<p>He also proves to be excellent at providing historical context for the scandal. College basketball was huge in post-war New York; CCNY regularly played their games at Madison Square Garden, selling out the venue routinely. The background makes the fallout from the players&#8217; arrests all the more heartbreaking: Students, Goodman writes, &#8220;would no longer flock to the Garden to watch their team play; everyone understood that this portion of their lives, and of the life of their school, had come to an end.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Goodman follows the students in the years after the scandal: &#8220;They lived with dignity but also with a lingering sense of shame and anger and frustration. Their story, they always believed, was far larger than they were.&#8221; Some did end up finding deliverance: Floyd Layne, the Beavers&#8217; remarkable shooting guard, never got to play in the NBA, but did eventually become the first African American to serve as CCNY&#8217;s head basketball coach. Goodman doesn&#8217;t let the players off the hook, but writes about them with a real sympathy: They were essentially kids who paid a harsh price for making admittedly poor decisions, he argues.<\/p>\n<p>The CCNY point-shaving scandal remains, decades after it happened, a heartbreaking story of venality, and Goodman turns out to be the perfect author to tell it. <em>The City Game <\/em>is a gripping history of one of college basketball&#8217;s darkest moments, an all too human tale of young people blowing up their futures in a misguided attempt to make good.<\/p>\n<p><!-- END ID=\"RES777304422\" CLASS=\"BUCKETWRAP INTERNALLINK BOOKEXCERPT READEXCERPT\" --><\/p>\n<p><strong><a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/blockads.fivefilters.org\/\">Let&#8217;s block ads!<\/a><\/strong> <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/blockads.fivefilters.org\/acceptable.html\">(Why?)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source:: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2019\/11\/08\/777189246\/a-remarkable-college-basketball-team-falls-from-grace-in-the-city-game?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=sports\" class=\"colorbox\" title=\"Scandal Brings Down A Remarkable College Basketball Team In 'The City Game'\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2019\/11\/08\/777189246\/a-remarkable-college-basketball-team-falls-from-grace-in-the-city-game?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=sports<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"ftpimagefix\" style=\"float:left\"><a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2019\/11\/08\/777189246\/a-remarkable-college-basketball-team-falls-from-grace-in-the-city-game?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=sports\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/media.npr.org\/assets\/img\/2019\/11\/07\/game_wide-9425f1b1c7a10c0e7330d449ede3ad7d94f8cf17.jpg?s=1400\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>If you ask a college basketball fan to name the best squads of all time, chances are you&#8217;ll hear some of the same names: the 1975-76 Indiana Hoosiers, the 1990-91 Duke Blue Devils, the 1966-67 UCLA Bruins.<\/p>\n<p>Somewhat forgotten to younger basketball aficionados, though, are the 1949-50 City College of New York Beavers, who became the first and only team to win both the National Invitation Tournament and the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n<p>As Matthew Goodman writes in his wonderful new book, <em>The City Game<\/em>, there&#8217;s a reason for that: The team&#8217;s championships were overshadowed by a point-shaving scandal that engulfed not just CCNY but also several other schools across the nation in the early 1950s. Goodman&#8217;s book is a fascinating look at a team full of talented young men who torpedoed their careers because they were unable to resist the lure of easy money.<\/p>\n<p>The CCNY Beavers were, by all accounts, a remarkable team. They &#8220;operated something like a five-man jazz combo, with each player improvising off a few basic patterns &#8230; together creating something fast and complex and unpredictable,&#8221; Goodman writes, benefitting from the coaching of basketball legend Nat Holman and assistant coach Bobby Sand. They were also a diverse team in an era when racism and anti-Semitism ran rampant: The team was composed of 11 Jewish players and four African Americans; all of them were the children of immigrants.<\/p>\n<aside>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>While the players were unquestionably thrilled to get the chance to play for &#8220;the working-class Harvard,&#8221; there was still an air of resentment on the part of the students. Many chafed against Holman, an &#8220;arrogant and aloof&#8221; man who routinely verbally abused his players, Goodman writes. And the students weren&#8217;t happy that they were made to do their own laundry on road trips while their coaches opted for dry-cleaning and fancy steak dinners.<\/p>\n<p>So it wasn&#8217;t surprising when some of the team&#8217;s players were lured into a point-shaving operation. Point-shaving involves players deliberately missing shots and blocks in order to keep the point margin below the spread; basketball, where the scores are typically high and the pace of the game is fast, is more prone to point-shaving than other sports. &#8220;An athlete whose long-honed competitive nature would recoil at the prospect of intentionally losing a game might have less resistance to creating a smaller margin of victory,&#8221; Goodman notes.<\/p>\n<p>For some of the players \u2014 &#8220;not all of them poor but none of them rich&#8221; \u2014 it proved irresistible. Some longed to support their families living in overcrowded tenements; others were drawn into the scheme by peer pressure: &#8220;I wanted the guys to like me,&#8221; explained Irwin Dambrot, a small forward on the team.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately for the Beavers, the point-shaving plot happened to occur at the same time as another gambling scandal, one that would eventually bring down New York Mayor William O&#8217;Dwyer. The city&#8217;s district attorneys became obsessed with finding and prosecuting bookmakers, and it wasn&#8217;t long before they discovered that college players were routinely shaving points. CCNY got hit particularly hard: &#8220;The entire starting five of the City College double-championship squad had now been arrested, along with the top two reserves,&#8221; Goodman writes. &#8220;The shame of the team was complete.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Goodman&#8217;s book is at once a history of the CCNY team&#8217;s remarkable championship season (and the less remarkable one after that) as well as a close look at organized crime and police corruption in post-WWII New York. Goodman does a wonderful job recounting the Beavers&#8217; games \u2014 fans of the game will find much to love in his play-by-play descriptions of CCNY&#8217;s march to the championships, but you don&#8217;t need to be a hardcore basketball fan to keep up.<\/p>\n<p>He also proves to be excellent at providing historical context for the scandal. College basketball was huge in post-war New York; CCNY regularly played their games at Madison Square Garden, selling out the venue routinely. The background makes the fallout from the players&#8217; arrests all the more heartbreaking: Students, Goodman writes, &#8220;would no longer flock to the Garden to watch their team play; everyone understood that this portion of their lives, and of the life of their school, had come to an end.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Goodman follows the students in the years after the scandal: &#8220;They lived with dignity but also with a lingering sense of shame and anger and frustration. Their story, they always believed, was far larger than they were.&#8221; Some did end up finding deliverance: Floyd Layne, the Beavers&#8217; remarkable shooting guard, never got to play in the NBA, but did eventually become the first African American to serve as CCNY&#8217;s head basketball coach. Goodman doesn&#8217;t let the players off the hook, but writes about them with a real sympathy: They were essentially kids who paid a harsh price for making admittedly poor decisions, he argues.<\/p>\n<p>The CCNY point-shaving scandal remains, decades after it happened, a heartbreaking story of venality, and Goodman turns out to be the perfect author to tell it. <em>The City Game <\/em>is a gripping history of one of college basketball&#8217;s darkest moments, an all too human tale of young people blowing up their futures in a misguided attempt to make good.<\/p>\n<p><!-- END ID=\"RES777304422\" CLASS=\"BUCKETWRAP INTERNALLINK BOOKEXCERPT READEXCERPT\" --><\/p>\n<p><strong><a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/blockads.fivefilters.org\/\">Let&#8217;s block ads!<\/a><\/strong> <a class=\"colorbox\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/blockads.fivefilters.org\/acceptable.html\">(Why?)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[221],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}