Dolph Schayes could do everything on a basketball court besides dunk. But players didn’t do that in his time anyway.

Schayes redefined what it meant to be a big man in the NBA, even as he persisted with a rooted-to-the-ground, two-handed set shot well into the era of the jumper. Yet after thinking about what it was that made him special, how he cemented his place among the greatest of all time, Schayes reduces his on-court brilliance to near nothingness.

“If you’re tall, you have a distinct advantage,” he said. “See, the basket’s 10 feet off the ground, so the closer you are to the basket, the easier to rebound and all that stuff.”

And so Schayes underlines the life outlook that produced his own legend. Basketball was always a game for Schayes, who was the franchise player for the Syracuse Nationals from 1948-1963 and is voted one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history.

The 12-time All-Star revolutionized the post position by moving beyond it. Men of his stature were expected to work the paint and the boards, and little else. But Schayes was constantly moving.

Growing up in the Bronx during the Great Depression, delivering laundry for change, the notion that he could be paid to play the sport was foreign.

His game was shaped by what he considers the purest form of basketball in the Bronx schoolyards of Public School 91 and Junior High 79 (Preston). Playing three-on-three each day allowed Schayes to transcend the pigeon-holing dimensions of his outsized body and the sport.

“When you’re 6 (feet) 5 (inches) and you’re 11 years old, you’re the same; just play center and stay inside,” he said. “But when we played basketball I did everything. I passed, I dribbled, I played outside.”

During his Hall of Fame career in Syracuse, the 6-foot-8-inch Schayes towered over any guards that could keep up with him on the perimeter.

“He would play the strong forward, what they call today — comparing with the terms that they use today and what they expect that particular position person to do,” former SU guard Manny Breland said. “And he was the personification of that particular position in terms of ability to shoot, to set and put the ball on the floor, and get to the hoop and those kinds of things. And also rebound.”

After winning Rookie of the Year in 1949, Schayes led the Nationals in scoring for 12 straight seasons. Yet Schayes was no distanced superstar. It was not becoming of the man or the era.

Schayes frequented the Onondaga War Memorial downtown for SU games, where he watched the collegiate players he occasionally scrimmaged with after Nationals practices.

“Those guys, particularly Dolph, would come,” Breland said. “And so there was that kind of camaraderie; the bond was kind of built because we were ballplayers, even though he was a pro and I was in college.”

It was at one such game in 1951 that he was introduced to Naomi Gross. She wore a fur-collared coat that day as did Schayes. And when they met, a static spark flew between the two.

They married later that year. It was “a whirlwind courtship.”

Schayes was a first-round draft pick twice. The New York Knicks chose him fourth in the 1948 Basketball Association of America draft and the Tri-Cities Blackhawks picked him first in the National Basketball League before trading his rights to Syracuse.

A representative from the Knicks called Schayes, who still lived at home and commuted to New York University’s Bronx campus. New York offered him a league-maximum contract worth $5,000.

The Nats sent their owner Danny Biasone and general manager Leo Ferris down to Manhattan, where they met Schayes and his father at the Paramount Hotel. They offered him a $7,500 contract. Then Ferris reached into his pocket for Schayes’ signing bonus.

He took out 500 $1 bills.

“To a guy who worked for nickels and dimes delivering dry cleaning, that looked like a lot of money,” Schayes said. “We decided since I’ll only play a year or two, because I have a college degree and so, we took the money.”

Two seasons was all it took for Schayes to become the team’s leading scorer. He led the league in scoring during the 1950s and became the first player in NBA history to 15,000 points.

Schayes retired from playing in 1964 after a legendary career, in which he led the Nationals to the 1954-55 NBA championship and saw the team become the Philadelphia 76ers in 1963. He then coached the 76ers through the winter, and owned and operated a camp on Lake George in the summer.

The camp needed a golf instructor, so he hired the recent SU graduate Jim Boeheim.

For six summers, Boeheim and Schayes teamed up in the Warren County summer camp league. Schayes would grab three other counselors and Boeheim. They never lost. Schayes was still a fierce competitor.

“Boeheim used to piss me off because he never passed me the ball; he kept shooting it,” Schayes joked.  “I’d say, ‘Jim, I’m the owner, you got to pass me the ball.’”

“Not true, not true,” Boeheim said with a chuckle. “But he did most of the rebounding, the hard dirty work, and I did most of the shooting on the team.”

Schayes did win NBA Coach of the Year in 1966, but he doesn’t take much credit for the honor.

“I had a very good team. I had a guy named Wilt Chamberlain. Did you ever hear of Wilt? And also Hal Greer, Billy Cunningham, pretty good players,” Schayes said of his fellow Hall of Famers. “So I would just say ‘All right guys, go out and play.’”

No matter how the voting sportswriters saw the season, for Schayes, it couldn’t be about him.

Nearly five decades after his playing career, Schayes hunches over to around 6 feet 2 inches in his otherwise plain real estate office. He is pointing and reminiscing in front of an “NBA 50th Anniversary All-Time Team” poster.

He’s on it with Jordan, Bird, Magic, all the greats, but his finger — and his memory — is fixed on the Celtics’ John Havlicek.

“He stole the ball you know,” Schayes said, referring to the immortalized play in which Havlicek stole Hal Greer’s inbounds pass and the 1966 Eastern Conference championship from Schayes and Philadelphia.

The secretary is tiring of Schayes’ ramblings. She wants him to point to his own image on the poster.

“Where are you, Dolph?” she says.

So he raises his hand from Havlicek for the first time since he inched his aging frame to the wall. He brings his right hand to chest height and turns his index finger on his own chest.

“I’m right here.”

Published on November 1, 2012 at 1:56 am

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