Dolph Schayes, a Jewish basketball player who was voted one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history, died Dec. 10 in Syracuse, New York, the New York Times reported. He was 87.
According to a 2014 article in the New York Jewish Week, the 12-time All-Star was “arguably, to professional basketball, what Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg were to baseball — the most prominent professional Jewish athlete to ever play his sport.”
The first player in the National Basketball Association to score 15,000 points, Schayes led the Syracuse Nationals to the championship in 1955. In 1966, as coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, he was named NBA coach of the year. He also coached the U.S. to gold at the Maccabiah Games in Israel in 1977.
Born in the Bronx to Romanian Jewish immigrants, Schayes in 2014 was presented with the Hank Greenberg Award from the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame of Northern California. At age 85, he traveled across the country to attend the San Francisco ceremony with his son Danny, also an NBA star.
Schayes is survived by his wife, four children and nine grandchildren. — jta