Sherman White, 6-foot-8, 210-pound first-team All-American superstar for coach Clair Bee’s renowned LIU powerhouse five, was the nation’s leading scorer in 1951, 77 points shy from becoming the all-time marksman in NCAA history. He could finish, go to the hoop, sky, hit the boards hard. He was the forerunner to Elgin, Connie Hawkins, Dr. J. He led his 28-0 Jersey high school to a state championship and was a poor student with a questionable attitude.
He was a child, prone to errors in judgment.
Recently married, White’s future, though, was glowing. He had much to celebrate: Freshly off being named the Sporting News Player of the Year, he was a surefire first-round selection and about to be the third-overall pick in the NBA draft by the New York Knicks. In late February, however, on a cold, windy city night, following the Blackbirds’ 80-53 destruction of a strong Duquesne team in the 49th Street Garden, his life fell apart.
After the contest, Sherm and his bride stopped at Nedick’s, the hot dog emporium adjacent to the Garden, to grab some franks on toasted buns before heading on the subway back to Brooklyn. His teammates, like White, were all part of a secretive but unified group of point-shaving wayward naive kids who had some concerns.
They had double-crossed the bad guys, the mob guys, made a decision to win big rather than keep the game close by not turning the ball over, blowing layups, committing stupid fouls, as they had done repeatedly throughout the season. Not coincidentally, a peeved Salvatore Sollazzo bumped into Sherm, who had pocketed at least $10,000 throughout the season.
Sollazzo, a squat, pock-faced, Genovese crime family associate, had masterminded a nationwide scam, getting seven teams and 35 players to participate in his mission to shave points, award the gambling thieves the all-important edge of insider information, thereby enrich themselves. Sollazzo and his two henchmen were, to put it mildly, upset. He himself lost $30,000, and that did not include his crime syndicate bosses, who he would regularly tip off about all his new ingenious fixes. As he escorted White to his parked limo and ushered him inside, after giving his newlywed a fifty “to buy as many franks as she wanted,” he asked simply, “What the f–k did you do?”
Before any reply, Salvatore, who had a pathological nature, added, “You doubled-crossed me. You’re a dead man.” Seated between the two associates, Sherman then felt a gun in each ear, was driven to the West Side docks, threatened more and more with a painful death and then walked the planks of the waterfront piers, his escorts at his side.
Ordered to his knees, Sherman begged, pleaded, cried to stay alive. He was hysterical. He offered quite graciously to return the $5,500 he had left to his executioners. He was a child, a dupe, he didn’t understand who he was in business with: a man with so few boundaries, he would often use his gorgeous brunette wife to perform sexual favors to targeted college boys. The media would label him “a jeweler turned gambler.” What they meant to say was he was a “fence” and a pimp, with no conscience. The wife was bait, Sollazzo was the ship’s captain.
White continued to beg, defecating in his pants. For a moment, Sollazzo morphed into Groucho Marx. He took a deep breath while his two imbecile mobster friends sniffed too, and pronounced: “Sauerkraut.”
He then told the first-team, All-American, the Haggerty player of the year, Bee’s greatest player ever, “Don’t ever f–k me again.” He walked to the parked limo, leaving an emotionally spent, bewildered youngster to wallow in the cesspool he agreed to swim in.
Two days later, White’s nightmares got even worse; he was arrested by NYPD detectives, upon the orders of a reserved and ambitious Manhattan DA, Frank Hogan.
White was sentenced to one year, went to Rikers for eight months. The City College champs, the Kentucky University champions, the NYU kids, the remaining LIU kids, all the others, depending upon the depths of their corruption, fate, luck, juries, rat or not, received a wide variety of humiliating penalties and permanent reputations with lifelong reputations and humiliations of “dumpers,” “fixers,” “crooks,” “outcasts.”
Sollazzo was convicted for his rigging schemes, sentenced to eight to 16 years in prison, serving 12.
He reappeared, however, in the form of a taller, younger, better-looking, infinitely more erudite Ivy League All-American and 6-foot-7 former NBA player, Jack Molinas. They did, however, have something in common. Both were degenerate gamblers, liars, con men, hustlers.
Molinas, brought up in Brooklyn, where his father owned a bar in Coney Island, was reported to possess an IQ of 175. He had a love for numbers, so he took the exam to attend the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan for “smart kids.” He was a fierce rebounder, shot hook shots from the deep corners, loved convertibles, women and shortcuts. He was first-team All-Ivy League, and to this day still holds the rebounding records at Columbia. He was selected in the first round of the NBA draft by the Fort Wayne Pistons in 1953. The following season, he was picked for the All-Star game, but was thrown out of the league before the festivities, permanently, for guess what? Gambling. He ended up getting a law degree.
Molinas found new partners: the Genovese Crime Family. His day-to-day contact: Vincent Gigante.
By 1959, Molinas was in full swing. He was creating a military-industrial complex of nationwide point shavers. And it was here, at home, his master plan of grooming the younger great ones in order to ensure his system had legs and sustainability would stand out. Now, there were to be two opposing forces: one led by Hogan, the other Molinas. Mano a Mano, two Columbia graduates, an Ivy League playoff.
Molinas had his eyes, ears, charm focused on “the best,” schoolboy NYC legends Connie Hawkins, Roger Brown, Doug Moe and Tony Jackson, all from Brooklyn, all certain pros, if one was to add any “decent” center to this starting five they’d win the NBA title. Instead, they were “accused,” their head shots splashed all over the countless NYC tabloids, J’Accuse, and were to be banned for life. Separated from their love for the crimes of being young, poor, susceptible, naive, sheltered, kind of stupid teenagers, who happened to be tall and gifted at one thing — playing ball.
Molinas would befriend them for a few years. He’d pick ’em up at home in his red Cadillac convertible, drive his boys to Manhattan Beach Park, where many of the city’s most celebrated collegians and pros would play on its famed “first court.” The 10-deep crowd would ooh and ahh. He would introduce them to sexy white girls, drive them to Nathan’s for post-game hot dogs and fries, allow them “to keep the change,” give them a few here and there, I mean “they got expenses, you know,” as the bard Paul Simon would write, and in return, because their upcoming freshmen year was in purgatory of no point spreads, ask for “introductions” to other kids with game.
“Nobody,” Hawkins said to me, “had ever told me I was ever good at anything other than basketball.” He was a sap, but didn’t know it.
Hogan went to work. He had dozens of investigators and newspaper pals. He would begin to call college kids from around the country, demand they get to One Police Plaza in lower Manhattan, keep them in town sometimes for as long as a week, walking door-to-door, one cop, one DA, one detective after another to get to “the truth.” Or a version of it. Hawkins came back, never once playing in a college game. No lawyer, five days of interrogation. Brown, too. Moe, a year older, a stud player, admitted he met with gamblers at a Jersey diner at the urging of his UNC roommate and teammate, Lou Brown, turned down their offers, but didn’t rat out his friend at the time. He was expelled and banned from playing in the NBA.
”I was expelled, so was Roger,” Hawkins said. “No lawyer, no arrests, no mug shot, no fingerprints, no charges, no jail time, no trial, no more friend. Nobody would even play ball with me in the park. I’d sit home and cry all day. I got an ulcer.”
A new professional league opened its doors, the ABL, in the early ’60s, thinking it could compete with the NBA. It was a land of opportunity for the disgraced and banned, for Black players due to the continued quota systems, to owners unafraid of risks, such as Pittsburgh-based lawyer David Litman and his genius wife, Roz, ironically from Erasmus Hall in Brooklyn.
Hawkins became the league’s MVP. More importantly, Roz, who would later head the local ACLU and argue twice in front of the Supreme Court, befriended Connie. She took his case, fighting the ban by the NBA, and for seven tireless years battled the league and their outside super-heavyweight counsel from Proskauer Rose in New York. A young associate, David Stern, was brought in, and pushed for a righteous settlement. He smelled injustice when he saw it.
Litman beat all the big boys by a TKO. Hawkins went on to a Hall of Fame career with the Phoenix Suns and Lakers. Brown went to the Indiana Pacers of the ABA, leading them to three championships in four years. Moe, his knees shot, nevertheless dominated foes in the same league, before becoming one of the most innovative head coaches in NBA history.
There were financial settlements awarded to Hawkins and Brown. Who can measure the costs of seven years, heartache, exclusion?
The recent “gambling scandal”?
I know a few things: More and more and more young kids are sitting in their rooms, betting day and night on props, entering rehab in their late teens. Parents aren’t educated.
Congressional hearings are political B.S. grandstanding, celebrity endorsements for FanDuel and DraftKings should not be allowed, nor should any sports team owner, players, executive be allowed to have any financial interest in any gaming entity including casinos. Parents are not educated, did I say that already? And having warning labels on social media, packaging, TV spots, billboards is anti-common sense.
And I know, if there is one leader in the nation that is more calm, judicious, smart, thorough, proven, decisive and firm than Adam Silver, stand up. The guy should be president, not a mere commissioner. He will lead the charge.
Oh, did I say it’s time for parents to open the bedroom doors of their children, shut off their phones, tell them how great and loved they are? Gotta start now.
Dan Klores is a Peabody Award-winning filmmaker and playwright, and is currently developing a miniseries on Jack Molinas.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
