The 6’0 former New York Knicks Heeb scored during the inaugural BAA game between New York and the Toronto Huskies
Benjamin ‘Ossie’ Schechtman, a Russian-born Jewish immigrant and former New York Knickerbockers point guard who scored the first ever basket during the inaugural game of the Basketball Association of America (the predecessor to the NBA) died yesterday.
He was 94.
The 6’0 Schechtman joined New York for the very first season of BAA in 1946, after leading his college team – LIU Blackbirds – to an undefeated season in 1938-39 winning him and the Blackbirds NIT and NCAA titles.
On November 1st, 1946, Schechtman and the Knicks faced off against the Toronto Huskies in the inaugural BAA game in front of 7,000 fans. Schectman scored the first two points of that game – the first basket of BAA (later NBA) history, via a well executed layup. The Knicks won that night, 68-66.
“It was a simple give-and-go,” Schectman told NPR in 1997. “It was one of those fast breaks, pass the ball, went to the basket, got a return pass.”
Alongside Schechtman’s was an excellent roster of Knickerbockers: Sonny Hertzberg, Stan Stutz, Hank Rosenstein, Ralph Kaplowitz, Jake Weber and Leo ‘Ace’ Gottlieb.
And they say Jews can’t play sports.
Though Schectman played only one season in the BAA, he made history with that first basket, and was later inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1998, the LIU Athletic hall of Fame in 2001 and was also the subject of The First Basket, a 2008 documentary about basketball’s Jewish heritage.
Schechtman went on to play 54 games with the Knicks. He averaged 8.1 points a game for the 1946-47 season, which made him the third-highest scorer after Bud Palmer and Sonny Hertzberg. He left the team the following season to become a salesman in the garment district. “I’m just proud to have been one of the NBA’s pioneers,” he once said.
The BAA was changed to the NBA in 1949.
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