It was a warm, overcast and drizzly August day in Syracuse. As Paul Seymour, in a fresh crew cut and with eyes so bright and blue they seemed a life force of their own, stepped off the train onto the platform of the New York Central Station on Washington Street, he was quite a ways from his hometown of Toledo, Ohio. Seymour had come to the Salt City after agreeing to a non-guaranteed deal with the Syracuse Nationals to continue to do something that, at least in 1948, for most young male athletes was less a career choice than a paid hobby.
Across the land, the game of basketball was relatively healthy at the collegiate level. As a professional endeavor, however, it ranked on par with quasi-sports like roller derby and professional wrestling. In the late 1940’s, pro basketball was still being operated on the thinnest of budgets and in two independent yet largely patchwork circuits that, between them, trumpeted such exotic ports-of-call as Sheboygan, Michigan, Anderson and Ft. Wayne, Indiana, Waterloo, Iowa and the Illinois/Iowa Quad Cities of Moline, Davenport, Bettendorf and Rock Island.
The teams comprising these two leagues generally had a handful of beat writers and small pockets of die-hard fans. The vast majority of sports pages across the country, as a result, rarely reported on any pro games, running only the occasional box score, and sometimes not even that.
For players and teams in post-war America, basketball at the professional level was more a hand-to-mouth, vagabond existence than it was a commercial enterprise. In fact, Nats GM, Leo Ferris, had been able to secure the rights to Seymour for the princely sum of just one dollar – and, even then, only agreed to give the kid a tryout on the condition that he get to Syracuse on his own dime.
Paul Seymour was no different than any other aspiring pro in 1948, caught between the proverbial rock and hard place; a young man forced to choose between the prospects of 9-to-5 drudgery and the far-off hope that he might be good enough, and certainly lucky enough, to earn a paycheck, even a nominal one, playing the game he knew best and loved most.
Having been released by the Baltimore Bullets of the larger of the two pro leagues, the Basketball Association of America, following the 1946-47 season, Seymour quickly set out in search of a new club. Time and again he came up empty and, as a result, was forced to sit out the entire 1947-48 season. Nevertheless, he kept himself fit by playing pickup, rec league and exhibition games, and when the opportunity arose to play for Syracuse of the BAA’s parallel universe, the NBL, he jumped at it.
It was that opportunity that brought Seymour to Central New York, a place from which he would make another of what would become a long line of heroic stands, a place where he'd spend the next decade going toe-to-toe with dozens of taller, faster, more talented young men than he, finding himself in a constant battle for not just victories, but a paycheck.
While it may seem odd to tell the story of one overachieving pro in a tale about a bunch of kids and a high school basketball game, even one in that pro’s hometown, in this particular case, to know Paul Seymour as a player, teammate and man is to better understand the essence of Syracuse’s Parochial League.
Because if Gene Fisch was the godfather of Sacred Heart basketball, a man whose impact would be felt long after he’d moved on, Paul Seymour set the emotional and physical tone for the entire Parochial League. For his savage, balls-to-the-wall style of play, combined with his almost feral loyalty to friends and teammates, almost overnight and as if by magic, became the standard by which players, coaches and fans throughout the league would measure a young man’s heart, both on and off a basketball court.
Make no mistake, though, the Parochial League’s style of play would eventually become so physical and so intense, and one so proudly placing toughness and hustle on the same exalted plane as talent, that for years the mere mention of its name served as verbal shorthand in Syracuse for a punishing, physical brand of basketball, regardless of the level or arena; everything from Big East games in Madison Square Garden to Lakers-Celtics wars on the parquet floor of the old Boston Garden.
In fact, longtime sports columnist, Bud Poliquin, who didn’t start banging out stories for the local Post-Standard until 1975 – or, in other words, after the Parochial League had dissolved, and who, when he first started covering Syracuse University sports, knew little of the league – would soon be peppering his news stories with descriptors like “Parochial League game” or “Parochial League intensity” as a way of giving readers an idea of the tone and texture of an unusually physical or hard-fought contest.
Poliquin recalled sitting on press row in Manley Field House in the early days of the Big East, covering a SU/Georgetown matchup. The game turned out to be what would soon become a trademark Orangemen/Hoya war; brutally physical, mentally draining and, of course, ear-splitting loud. At one point, as the tired, bruised, and in a few cases bloodied, players trudged back to their benches for a timeout, one reporter who’d covered the local scene for years leaned back, ran his fingers through his hair, and shouted above the roar to no one in particular, “Holy (expletive), can you believe it? This is like a (expletive) Parochial League game!!!”
But Paul Seymour merits his own chapter in this story because his fingerprints, if not his determination, courage and character, would end up all over the game at its core. And his influence would end up being felt, and felt deeply, not just in the Hearts huddle, but the Corcoran one as well.
For that reason, it is impossible to tell the story of the 1967 Syracuse All City Game without also telling, at least in part, the story of Paul Seymour – a largely untold tale of heart, soul and willpower, one that will unfold as the tale of the showdown between Sacred Heart and Corcoran itself plays out.
* * * * *
Tough doesn’t begin to describe Paul Seymour. At times, he seemed part galvanized steel, part $2 steak, and part roadside gravel, all masked by a boyish, well-scrubbed countenance that constantly seemed to bear ever-so-faint traces of a sly, knowing grin – and, of course, two of the steeliest blue eyes to ever glisten in Central New York.
A lean but deceptively strong backcourt man, the 6"1' Ohioan had been a pretty good but otherwise workman-like player for the University of Toledo before he dropped out to join his hometown Jeeps of the NBL. The following year, in 1946, Seymour moved from to Baltimore to play for the Bullets of the rival BAA. And two years after that, following his release, he found himself auditioning for a job with New Orleans of the fledgling Southern League, an ill-conceived pro circuit that lasted barely a year.
While in New Orleans, he was pulled aside one day by his general manager who informed him that his contract had been sold to Syracuse GM Leo Ferris, a bird dog of a scout from the small Upstate New York town of Elmira, who'd made inquiries as to his availability. Ferris, who decades later would become known to many historians as the real architect of the NBA’s 24-second clock, apparently had heard enough about Seymour to believe he might be the exact type of player he needed for his squad and, more important, the exact type of player he knew his Nats required to get to take the next step as a team.
The fact that Seymour had been sold by New Orleans for just eight bits, or the fact he’d have to pay for his own train ticket to Central New York, did not deter him one iota. All he cared was that he had a job for the 1948-49 season, a year that would end up being the final one during which the country’s two biggest pro circuits, the BAA and the NBL, operated independently, and just months before they would merge to form the National Basketball Association.
Once in Syracuse, Seymour found himself embraced by the locals in a way he’d never been embraced in his basketball-playing life. Hardcore fans in his new hometown loved him, and he soon began to feel the same way. They’d watch their all-new boy-next-door and eat up how the kid constantly dove for loose balls, hounded opponents from end to end, and regularly took elbows to the most vulnerable parts of his body with barely a flinch. They simply couldn’t get enough, perhaps because his style of play and attitude spoke to something deep within them.
That’s not to say Seymour was only hustle and grit. He could score when called upon, too. In fact, Seymour would eventually make three NBA All Star teams and gain respect throughout the league for both his defensive intensity and his offensive prowess. To the passionate Syracuse fans – fans who, already had one of the most talented players to ever come down the pike, forward Dolph Schayes – it wasn't just what Paul Seymour did with the ball that made them love him, it was the seemingly endless, selfless and ultimately self-defining things he did without it.
Seymour's coach that first year was, himself, something of a tough guy’s tough guy. Alfred Nicholas Cervi, the Nats’ thirty-something player-coach in their inaugural NBA season, was a roundball nut from down Route 5 in Buffalo, a tried-and-true gym rat who’d long advocated a coaching philosophy later co-opted and made famous (or infamous) by Hall of Fame coaches Pat Riley and Chuck Daly; namely, keep a contest as low-scoring as possible by playing a physically intimidating, punishing brand of defense, and never, ever, give an opponent an uncontested basket.
Until Seymour arrived, no Nat had been able to embrace, much less embody, Cervi’s take-no-prisoners approach to the game. In fact, until Seymour, the Nats were more Schayes' team; a graceful, elegant collection of college boys more likely to try to out-finesse an opponent than exact a measure of revenge by burying his face in the floor. Until Seymour, Syracuse’s toughness was more a product of the chip on their coach’s shoulder, or maybe their fans' attitude, than it was the team’s makeup or style of play.
Until Seymour, the Nats were a good team, they just weren't a great one.
But that all changed when the 21-year old kid showed up one day in the summer of 1948 and Al Cervi slipped off his muzzle, stepped back, and unleashed him on an unsuspecting basketball world. Appearing at both guard and forward for Syracuse that first season, and instilling his contagious brand of defensive fire into virtually every one of mates, Seymour helped turn the Syracuse Nationals into a great team and league power.
The Nats were especially tough in their frigid and often snow-bound hometown, where the team rode Central New York’s brutal winters, the NBA’s most intimidating fans, and its new-found defensive fire to the best record in the league, including an almost unfathomable 31-1 mark at home.
At the core of Syracuse's home court advantage was, of course, its fans. And, while it’s hard to say whether they inspired Seymour to even greater levels of physicality or he bought out their feral nature, the simple fact is the union of Seymour and those thousands of Syracuse basketball nuts was a marriage made in heaven. And the two, indeed, seemed to feed off one another.
Typical of the Salt City crazies during that time was a street-smart, twenty-something Jew named Eli Roth, a season ticket holder whose family ran Herman's, a successful grocery store in the 15th Ward, just across the Harrison Street apartment out of which underworld kingpin Percy Harris ran his illegal numbers operation.
Roth, who'd become good friends with Seymour, and who’d end up holding front-row seats for every home game the Nats ever played, was a relentless and wildly imaginative heckler. In fact, his verbal taunts could get so vicious, so specific, and so deeply personal that during one playoff game he was cold-cocked by the dean of NBA officials, Sid Borgia, a man who’d become so enraged that he sprinted toward Roth and belted him in the chops – even as the game he was being paid to officiate continued behind him.
In the ensuing melee, Borgia was himself laid out by a second fan who’d been seated near Roth. Things eventually got so out of hand, in fact, Borgia had to be escorted to his locker room by two cops in uniform. Unfortunately for the ref, those policemen left him at that point, and on his way to the hotel a short time later he had the misfortune of running into yet a third over-served Syracusan who decked him again, just in case he hadn’t gotten the two earlier messages.
Another veteran referee, John Nucatola – the NBA's Supervisor of Officials, a gentleman in every sense of the word, a future Hall of Famer, and a referee dubbed the "game’s greatest official" by legendary coach and author Clair Bee – once so outraged Roth and his fellow Nats fans that they, quite literally, heckled him into retirement.
During a nip-and-tuck battle against New York’s Knickerbockers at the Syracuse Armory, with his team trailing by three and just fifteen ticks remaining, Schayes made a slashing move to the basket against Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton. There was a collision, some hard contact, and both men went crashing to the floor as the ball kissed off the glass and fell through for an apparent two points. The Syracuse crowd roared its delight, thinking the game was about to be tied.
But even before their cheers reached a crescendo, Nucatola sprinted toward the scorer's table and indicated an offensive foul on Schayes. The ref determined Clifton had established position and that the Nat forward bowled him over before releasing his shot. Nucatola's call stunned the locals. It also triggered a storm of protest so raucous it was noteworthy even by Syracuse's lofty standards for fan outrage.
Cervi, himself, was so incensed that he charged Nucatola, waving his arms wildly and howling a streak of what might have sounded to the untrained ear like every curse word known to man – including some, perhaps, invented on the spot. And when the ref tried to calm the Nats’ coach down and tell him the game needed to resume, Cervi called a timeout just so he could curse him more. Then when that time out ended, Cervi called another one. Then another after that. In fact, the Nats' coach kept calling timeouts until he'd used his full allotment, just so he could continue cursing out Nucatola.
And even then he didn't stop.
According to Terry Pluto, author of "Tall Tales," an oral history of the NBA's early days, after the game it only got worse for Nucatola. He and his refereeing partner that night (who, ironically, was Sid Borgia) had to hole up for a full two hours in the visitors' locker room because some fans had barricaded the hall leading from the court to the refs' locker room and were waiting there, a few dozen deep, in hopes of getting a piece of John Nucatola.
Eventually, the police had to disguise the two officials and escort them out a side door. Unfortunately, when they arrived at the Yates Hotel a few blocks away they were informed by the manager he was sorry but the gentlemen would not be permitted to stay that evening. There were, he explained, a number of irate fans waiting in the lobby and he simply could not guarantee their safety, nor did the hotel wish to assume any responsibility for what fate might befall them. As a result, Nucatola and Borgia were quietly secreted away in the hotel kitchen, where they waited while a bellhop retrieved their belongings. The refs were then surreptitiously escorted across Washington Street to the train station, a vantage point from which they hopped the eastbound New York Central and headed out of town beneath a carpet of stars, a puff of smoke and a cloud of secrecy.
As the two men rode through the cold and brittle Central New York night toward Manhattan, Nucatola was so shaken by some of the things screamed at him by the Syracuse fans that he turned to his partner and swore to Borgia he’d never work another NBA game for as long as he lived – and, true to his word, he never did.
But Eli Roth was only one of fans who immersed himself in the full-throated (and occasionally full-bodied) support of their beloved Nats. There were the dozens of regulars at the State Fair Coliseum, one of the club’s three arenas its first few seasons, who always bought tickets under one of the two goals, about halfway up. These die-hards would then – depending on which basket the opponents were using that half – take it upon themselves to turn the goal into a moving target by gently, and in unison, pushing and pulling the guy wires supporting it.
There was also the sturdy yet elegant North Side woman, a second-generation Italian war widow, who regularly bought one floor seat directly across from the Nats bench, who rain or shine carried an umbrella with her to the game, and who was known to use that umbrella to swat the shins of opposing players and referees as they ran by, if for no other reason than they had made a play or call she found objectionable.
Even the local public address announcer got into the act. When the Nats were playing, for example, the Philadelphia Warriors, the PA announcer would always introduce the Pottstown-born referee Earl Strom, as being from Philly – even though Pottstown was closer to Reading and was a good hour's drive from Philadelphia. As soon as the announcement of Strom's hometown was made, the murmurs in the stands would kick in, increasing as the game wore on and the number of calls that Strom made against the Nats grew.
Strom later told Pluto that the Syracuse public address guy would often make matters worse by offering side comments on game events, even as he announced them. He'd say things like, "For Syracuse, that's six team fouls...Philadelphia, on the other hand, ladies and gentlemen, has only one." And when he did that, of course, the fans' howls only got longer, louder and edgier.
In addition to the fans, there was also the chicken wire that during their first two seasons the Nats’ brass had strung around the Coliseum's hardwood floor; a feeble attempt to prevent the city's basketball nuts from achieving even greater levels of in-game participation; a barrier designed less to keep people off the court than to minimize the size and number of objects they could throw at (a) all those dirty, underhanded players who somehow continued to earn a paycheck by waltzing into town and doing despicable things to their beloved Nats, (b) the seemingly non-stop parade of blind, dishonest and/or incompetent officials the league kept insisting on dispatching to Syracuse, or (c) both of the above.
Even a humble, decent man like the Minneapolis Lakers' George Mikan was not immune from the ire of Syracuse’s rabid attack dogs. Mikan was a towering 6'10" center who grew up a shy Croatian kid just outside Chicago. As a young man he told people he hoped to one day become a priest. He wore thick eyeglasses, spoke softly, and spent his first 18 years as a studious, pious non-athlete. But as soon as he got to DePaul, head coach Ray Meyer took one look at his height and wingspan and turned Mikan into a basketball player, teaching the young man how to shoot hook shots with either hand and swing his elbows so as to dissuade smaller, would-be ball thieves from taking liberties.
The game’s first great big man, Mikan soon became a force in both college and the pros, where his Lakers won the National Basketball League title in 1948, the year prior to the NBL and BAA merger. Then, during his first NBA season, Mikan teamed with rookies Slater Martin, Vern Mikkelsen and Bob Harrison (a boyhood friend of Seymour's), all of whom won spots in the team’s starting lineup that year and all of whom helped turn Minneapolis, like Syracuse, into an NBA power. So each time the Lakers came to the Salt City that first year to face Seymour and his Nats, it was war.
One time in 1950, Mikan was playing his typical dominating game, making hook shot after hook shot and, of course, throwing his share of elbows, many of which found their mark. At one point, Seymour decided he’d been on the receiving end of one too many of those elbows. So when the next one came – and it was a sweetheart; a sharp one that caught him flush on the side of the head and made him see stars – Seymour popped up and charged the big Laker, even as his teammates tried to hold him back.
Despite towering over the 22-year old Nat by some ten inches, Mikan saw the rage in Seymour's face and how ineffective the other Nats’ were at holding back their teammate. Some combination of survival instinct and sound judgment descended upon him and he and his thick glasses turned tail and ran up into the stands, Seymour in pursuit. Unfortunately for Mikan, those stands weren't just any stands. They were stands in the State Fair Coliseum during a Syracuse Nationals home game, and it only took the big center the briefest of moments to look around and realize he'd be better served taking his medicine from Seymour than rolling the dice in a section of bleachers chock full of wild-eyed, hard-drinking Syracusans.
A month later, Mikan and his Lakers were back in town again, this time for the biggest game in league history – the first NBA Finals contest ever played. It took place on April 8, 1950, again at the State Fair Coliseum. The game was a fiercely fought affair, but in the end, Mikan and his Lakers stunned the Nats when Seymour's old buddy from Toledo, Harrison, sank a forty-foot prayer at the buzzer. Afterward, an excited and ever-candid Mikan innocently detailed how he’d been having trouble breathing in the second half due to all the smoke in the arena, since he had a strong allergy to cigarette smoke.
The following day, the story made the papers and word quickly spread about George Mikan's “allergy.” As a result, during pre-game warm-ups the next night Mikan began to look around and realize he was having trouble seeing not just the top of the backboard, but the scoreboard above his head; both of which had all-but disappeared in what appeared to be a patch of pea soup-like fog. At that point that the Lakers' center peered through the haze and saw hundreds, if not thousands, of Syracuse fans with lit cigars and cigarettes dangling from their lips; including women, teenagers, and even a few kids.
In his book "The New York Knicks: The Official 50th Anniversary Celebration," George Kalinsky quotes Knick guard Carl Braun on what is was like to be an opponent in Syracuse during those early days, especially at playoff time. "In the winter, for the people of Syracuse, basketball was their life," said Braun. "Those fans were merciless. I can remember running down the court and having cigarette butts flipped at me as I went by. Live ash got me in the legs and it smarted."
But of all the fans in Syracuse, none embodied the city's passion for basketball more than one known around the NBA simply as the “Strangler," a squat, rock-solid man of indeterminate years who liked to sit behind the opposing bench and heckle visiting players and coaches from the moment he took his seat. No one really knew the guy's name, or what part of Syracuse he called home; most said years later they sensed he was some sort of factory worker or laborer, given how he always dressed, and was possibly an ex-Marine because of his haircut and the fact he was built a little like a storage shed. And, oh yes, the Strangler seemed to enjoy his beer.
The Strangler's nickname was bestowed upon him by opposing players because of his nagging tendency to get so carried away during games that he'd invariably run up behind the opposing bench, grab an unsuspecting opponent in a military style choke-hold, and start squeezing, while at the same time launching into a profanity-laced verbal assault inches from the poor sap's ear.
In the earliest days of the NBA, there may have, indeed, been pockets of lunatics as intense as those at Syracuse Nats games. But, at least according to many who played, coached, and covered those early days of the NBA, there were none anywhere more emotional, vocal, or willing to express themselves physically as the hard-edged and hard-drinking men and women who lived, loved, worked and worshiped in a certain unassuming little crossroads town in the heart of Central New York.
* * * * *
As with most legends, even local ones, the notion of Paul Seymour as Syracuse folk hero and Parochial League role model didn’t just happen. It grew slowly, one skinned knee, one floor burn, and one bloody lip at a time, and it developed over years of Seymour diving on loose balls and throwing himself in harm’s way in the pursuit of victory.
It also spread much the same way; one smoky tavern, one schoolyard court, and one dinner table at a time, across the city, day after day, week after week, month after month, for the run of two or three seasons.
Yet, if there was a single moment during which that legend became cemented forever in the hearts and minds of fans throughout Syracuse, it came during a March 21, 1953 playoff game between the Nats and their dreaded rivals, the Boston Celtics of Red Auerbach. History would end up remembering the game somewhat differently than many Syracusans would, especially those unfortunate enough to have who lived (and mostly died) through it on the radio.
History, for example, would remember the game’s noteworthy and occasionally jaw-dropping numbers, and for good reason. Four overtimes. 106 personal fouls. Two players ejected. Twelve men fouled out. Two teammates logging a still-playoff record 67 minutes of playing time. The winning team shooting just 41% from the field, yet still managing to sink thirty-seven straight free throws. One player, who’d been held to seven points in the first half, finishing the game with fifty, the vast majority of them from what was then affectionately (and, perhaps, accurately) called the “charity stripe.” Even the fact that one Boston front office exec had been so overcome with emotion that he fainted and had to be given smelling salts while sprawled on the floor.
History would remember also that the Celtics beat the Nats, 111-105, and in the process eliminated Syracuse from the 1953 NBA playoffs. It would remember as well that that one game, perhaps more than any other, would be the impetus the lords of the league would use to adopt, at long last, a radical and game-changing concept that had been conceived two years prior by Ferris, one then pitched to his peers ad nauseam by Nats owner and advocate, Danny Baisone: the 24-second clock.
In Syracuse, however, many would remember that game less for its array of numbers and more for the character and gallantry it revealed in a handful of young men who, in the process of losing, emerged as heroes back in their hometown.
They’d remember the continued (and blatant) “goon” tactics Auerbach applied to their brightest light, Dolph Schayes, a strategy that ultimately led to the Nats’ perennial All Star getting ejected in the first half.
They’d remember how Bob Cousy got star treatment from the refs in font of his hometown fans, drawing foul after foul on Nats defenders while he had the ball, yet getting a virtual blank check while on defense.
Likewise, they’d remember how at the end of one of the first overtimes with Earl Lloyd, the first African American in NBA history, ahead of the field and about to go up for a game-winning layup with two seconds left, Cousy raced up behind and grabbed the lanky Nat so he couldn’t even jump, much less get a shot off; and how, after the younger of the two the refs called a foul on Cousy, his senior partner pulled him aside and, out of earshot and with his finger pointing sternly, abruptly turned and raced to the scorer’s table, overturning the call and ruling instead – to the shock and delight of even the most cynical hometown patron – that the clock had expired before Lloyd’s attempt and Cousy’s desperation grab.
Mostly, however, Syracusans would remember how the undersized and undermanned warriors, Seymour, Cervi, Lloyd, Red Rocha and Billy Gabor, fought valiantly in the face of monumental odds and the most hostile of environments. In fact, an entire book could probably be written on that one game alone, yet, in the interest of moving this story along, while at the same time providing texture to the time and place that served as the backdrop of the ‘67 All City Championship, let us instead focus a few key moments in that playoff war; anecdotal shards of grit, tenacity and human desire that over the years have slowly managed to slip through the cracks of public consciousness.
Keep in mind, that in Game One, a game played two days prior in the all-new U.S. Veterans War Memorial, on the fringes of the 15th Ward, the Celts had rolled into town and, employing a tactic Auerbach would use time and time again over the next decade during his team’s historic run of NBA titles, stole both Game One and the upper hand from the Nats, something that put their opponents’ backs squarely against the wall.
In that first game, a big, slow backup forward named Bob Brannum had been sent into the game in the second period with the instructions to initiate as much hard contact as possible with Schayes. The strategy ultimately resulted in Brannum fouling out midway through the fourth quarter without having attempted even a single field goal or free throw, much less scoring a point. But it did something that would prove critical to the outcome of the brief, opening-round best-of-three series; it forced the graceful Schayes into the worst shooting performance of his life, a fact that, arguably, was the main reason the underdog Celts were able to steal Game One.
The manhandling of Schayes had so enraged the heart-on-their-sleeves denizens of the Onondaga County War Memorial that many would contend for years that the tons of poured concrete that comprised the walls of the new deco-style arena visibly shook from the cascading, throbbing and full-throated boos that rained down on Brannum as he headed to the bench after his 6th and final foul for body slamming of Schayes who'd been in the act of going up for what, by all rights, should have been an easy two.
The Strangler, in turn, had been so wild-eyed and outraged in his subsequent assault, not to mention requisite chokehold, that it took three of Syracuse’s finest to extract him from Brannum and forcibly remove him from the State Street entrance, writhing and screaming at the top of his lungs the entire time at both Auerbach and his pet goon.
As for Seymour, his impact on the game had only been hinted at in the radio broadcast on WNDR (a ticker-tape recreation, compliments of play-by-play man, Jim McKechnie, his always-vivid imagination, and a tape machine queued up with various canned crowd noises) or the subsequent box score in the following day's paper.
The real birth of the legend of Paul Seymour turned out to be a more anecdotal, story-by-story phenomenon; a living, breathing phenomenon that, following that loss, spread like a brushfire through the city’s network of corner saloons, playgrounds and neighborhood restaurants. A big reason for this was a front-page, above-the-fold, and just-this-side-of-incredulous story by Bill Reddy of the Sunday Herald-American.
Because there was no live television then and, quite often, because there was also no courtside play-by-play broadcasts on many flagship stations, particularly during road games, basketball fans across the country, including many in NBA cities, were forced to rely on their morning newspaper for recaps and analyses of games and a chance to read about the exploits of their favorite players.
Syracuse was no different. The morning following the game, even before Sunday mass, Reddy took his readers beyond the numbers and told them the real story that had unfolded the day prior in Boston. For all the specifics that Reddy provided that morning, what wasn’t there, or perhaps what might have been sketchy, was quickly supplied, often in exaggerated detail, by thousands of Nats fans in the days that followed.
Seymour’s reputation grew exponentially with each retelling of how the young man had battled and the extent to which he'd refused to quit, and his exploits became even more selfless and more heroic. In time, his performance verged on the mythic.
Even so, according to many who would know, including a number of Nats who were there, a great deal of what was said about Paul Seymour’s performance that day was not merely the stuff of myth, it was true.
Early in the contest, for example, after the Nats raced out to a quick 8-0 lead, Auerbach angrily signaled for a time out so his team could collect itself. At that point, Seymour – still seething from the mugging edict Auerbach had issued on Schayes in Game One – jogged back to his huddle, but not before making eye contact and giving the Boston coach an extended and pointed look that said in no uncertain terms, “Take that, you little son of a bitch.”
Again, according to many in the know, that penetrating stare was a mere warm up to the fireworks to come.
Boston eventually battled back to trail the Nats by one at the end of the first quarter, 22-21. At that point, just as he’d done in the first game, Auerbach signaled to Brannum at the end of his bench.
And sure enough, just as he’d done two days earlier, the Celtic enforcer immediately went to work on Syracuse’s best player. In the opening minutes of the second period, Schayes took a swing pass on the left side of the lane and blew by the lumbering Celtic for what should have been an easy lay-up.
But as Schayes went up, from behind Brannum clasped both hands above his head, as though preparing to swing a ten-pound hammer at a county fair. Then, just as Schayes planted his left foot, with a loud grunt the big Celt came down full force across his neck and shoulders. The blow sent the Nat sprawling into the basket support. Brannum then raced over and stood above him with his arm cocked, glaring down menacingly, as if daring Schayes to stand up and do something.
Somebody did, indeed, do something, only it wasn't Schayes. From out of nowhere, the Nats’ backcourt duo, Seymour and Gabor, barreled into Brannum, knocking the big goon backward. There was a brief, tension-filled standoff between the three men, the powerful Celt sizing up the two little sawed-off Nats standing before him. He clearly could have swept the floor with Gabor, and seemed to briefly smile at the prospect of doing so.
Seymour was another story. The big Celt outweighed Seymour by fifty pounds, and had a good five inches on him, yet he didn't move. He just stood there staring at the Nats’ crew-cut-sporting junkyard dog who faced him openly, boldly, fists clenched and lip curled, his eyes both burning and smiling ever-so-slightly. It was almost as though Seymour was urging, even begging the taller, thicker and slower Brannum to try something.
And just like that, poof, Brannum’s grin dimmed and his fists melted. Seconds later, a handful of cops began scrambling to take positions around the outer edge of the court on the chance some fans might take it upon themselves to let the Nats know just how welcome they were that afternoon in Boston.
Before things got a chance to escalate further, the officials, their whistles bleating madly, stepped in and restored order. Head referee, Arnie Hoeft, strode to the scorer’s table and announced Schayes would receive one free throw for the infraction on Brannum. He and his partner had ruled that Schayes had not been fouled in the act of shooting and, therefore, earned just a single free throw, a call that so infuriated Cervi he let out a howl from near center court and flung his arms upward toward the smoke-filled rafters. The Nats’ coach was seething because it was clear to anyone that Brannum had deliberately body-slammed Schayes to the ground.
The refs didn’t see it that way. In fact, they determined that not only did Brannum not foul Schayes while shooting, he didn’t foul him intentionally either. At that point, Cervi accented his howl by ripping off his warm-up jacket and slamming it to the ground.
It was a huge call (or non-call, as it turned out), because if the officials had declared the foul intentional, Syracuse would have been awarded a regular free throw, a technical free throw, and the ball out of bounds. What's more, an intentional foul call in that spot would have sent a clear message to both Brannum and his coach, and the rest of the game might have been played differently.
As it turned out, Brannum’s hammering of Schayes carried no greater penalty than had he reached in and inadvertently slapped his wrist. Moreover, by not calling the intentional foul, the refs took what already promised to be a physical contest and assured it would become all that and a bag of donuts.
Which, of course, is exactly what happened.
Right call. Wrong call. It didn't matter to Paul Seymour. All he knew was that he was not about to let the moment pass without drawing a line in the sand for a certain little prick in a cheap gabardine suit. So at the next time-out, as nine of the ten players jogged to their respective benches, Seymour made a beeline toward Boston’s. To the amazement of just about everyone, including his own teammates, he strode directly into the mass of large bodies surrounding Auerbach, pointed a finger at the Celtic coach, looked him straight into his eye, and said, "Next guy touches Dolph, I'm coming after Cousy." Seymour then took a step toward Auerbach and leaned in, inches from his suddenly ashen face, asking with a mix of menace and steely calm, "You hear me?"
For an extended moment, no one said a word, not even Auerbach. Everyone in the Celtic huddle simply stared at the 25-year old in the traveling red jersey as though he might be insane. And given the size and number of those hovering over him, including Brannum, one might argue, that was, indeed, the case. Seymour then punctuated his threat by shifting his gaze to Cousy as he shoved his way out of the Boston huddle and back toward his own.
One might assume Seymour had every intention of carrying out his vow, too, but for a stunning turn of events that would unfold just moments later.
The unprecedented threat to Cousy in his own huddle notwithstanding, Brannum still had a job to do, and knew it. As a result, when play resumed, and moments after Schayes scored by giving him a quick head fake and driving the baseline for a magnificent reverse lay-up, the big Celtic ran up alongside the Syracuse star as both men loped downcourt and, with a closed fist, drilled him flush in the side, like a boxer delivering a sharp jab to his opponent's mid-section.
At that moment Schayes, quite simply, had had enough, and in a flash lost all sense of rhyme or reason. It had been two straight games, and he’d taken more than he cared to take. He was twice the player Brannum was. He knew it. Hell, everyone knew it. What's more, he played basketball the way he’d been taught to play as a kid in the Bronx; hard, perhaps even ferociously, but with dignity, class and an abiding respect for both his opponent and the game. Dolph Schayes was not merely a great player, he was a gentleman. And on top of that, he was fair, almost to a fault.
Brannum, on the other hand, played the game the only way a man of such limited skills could play it at the professional level and hold a job – like a thug. Brannum was an enforcer, plain and simple, someone paid good money not to outperform his opponent, but to neutralize him.
Dolph Schayes was never sure why he did what he did next, because it was so out of character. He was, after all, the NBA’s poster child for turning the other cheek. But when Bob Brannum, the hulking, corn-fed farm boy from Kansas, lumbered past and buried a fist in his ribs, momentarily robbing him of breath, he snapped. Schayes immediately turned and reflexively swung in the direction of the big Celt and caught his massive coconut with a glancing blow.
Unfortunately, as is usually the case when a player retaliates for a perceived slight, no one actually saw the trigger. They saw only the retaliation. All that most in Boston saw that day was Dolph Schayes, Syracuse's most talented and gentlemanly player, taking a wild swing at bench jockey Bob Brannum as he lumbered past, grazing him on the side of his oversized head.
At that point, the levee broke and a wave of turgid, muddy water spewed forth. The fans in the seats immediately launched into a chorus that seemed a vicious mix of boos and cheers. Brannum, shaking his head as if to say “Sorry, pal. Not good enough,” spun and advanced on Schayes, his fists clenched, eyes wide and full of fury. Both benches emptied, and players, coaches, trainers and even a few fans sprinted toward the two men as they squared off and began swapping punches.
Those members of Boston’s finest who’d just moments ago had circled the court were now sprinting toward center court, and as they did a shower of small objects and cups of beer rained down on them, along with a deluge of throaty jeers.
By the time the cops reached Brannum and Schayes, the melee had blossomed into a full-blown riot. Punches got thrown violently and at random, barroom style. With each punch thrown, those most apt to brawl, like Cervi and Seymour, seemed to care less about playing peacemaker and more about finding some shamrock-sporting bastard to drill between the eyes.
Unfortunately for the Nats, as Reddy pointed out the next day, when those police officers ran onto the court and started grabbing uniformed players, the only ones they seemed to grab had "Syracuse" written across their chest. Anyone in green and white remained conspicuously free to punch away at will.
That injustice vaulted an already furious Seymour to an even greater degree of rage. Even as three cops grabbed him and tried to hold him down, the kid twisted and tried to yank free, screaming, "Let me go, you hear me? Let me go, you sons of bitches!" Pretty soon all three officers were kneeling on Seymour's back, twisting his arms behind him and holding his left cheek firmly against the Garden's parquet floor. Finally, after a few more moments of struggle, the young Nat resigned himself to his fate and just lay there, sweating, panting, and cursing under his breath.
As it turned out, the three cops did the Nats a giant (and unexpected) favor. Just as the dust began to settle, and a sense of order began to return, Hoeft bounded in the direction of the scorer's table and stated boldly (and with more than a touch of gusto) a ruling that hit Cervi and the Nats like the proverbial haymaker. Dolph Schayes, All Star, gentleman and quiet leader, had been ejected, along with his thug of an assailant.
Never before in history had any player, much less a first team All Star, been thrown out of an NBA playoff game. There had been plenty of fights in playoff games, including a bigger and more violent one a year prior in Madison Square Garden, but never had any combatant been ejected.
Schayes just stood there, eyes wide, mouth agape. He couldn't believe it. Cervi, on the other hand, went ballistic. In the second quarter of the Nats’ most important game of the season, his best player – hell, one of the best players in the league – had been tossed for finally standing up to a goon who'd been treating him like a piñata for two straight games. The Nats coach was nearly choking on his rage. He had just lost his top scorer, leading rebounder, and maybe best passer. All Auerbach had lost was some knuckle-dragging goon worth a measly six points a game.
With fire in his eyes, Cervi sprinted toward Hoeft at the scorer’s table, stopping inches away from him, his toes touching the ref’s, his face so close that, from a certain angle, the two almost seemed joined at the nose. "How can you make that call?" he screamed. "Seriously, how the (expletive) can you make that call?"
As Hoeft tried to create some distance, and turned to walk away, the Buffalo street fighter Cervi had always been boiled up inside him and he amped up his rage even higher. "Don’t you walk away! Don’t you dare walk away, you (expletive)!!! My guy was getting (expletive) mugged out there!" howled Cervi. Spit flew from the Nats' coach mouth as he doggedly pursued Hoeft. "He was getting (expletive) killed! For chrissake, all he was doing was trying to protect himself! Are you really that (expletive) blind, Arnie? God al-(expletive)-mighty! How the (expletive) can you make that (expletive) call???"
It was no use. Cervi could rant and rave all he wanted, curse until the cows came home. Dolph Schayes was gone, and with him the Nats best hope for keeping their season alive.
After that, at least for Syracuse fans, the contest devolved into a gut wrenching and slow-motion train wreck. Not only did the game become aesthetically ugly – without a 24-second clock, and given that the only way to get the ball from a great dribbler like Cousy was to foul him and hope he missed his free throw, it turned into little more than an orchestrated foul shooting contest – but it grew more and more defined by a number of questionable, even suspicious calls, the bulk of which, according to Reddy and many of the Nats, clearly benefitted Boston.
For those Syracuse players not sent to the showers, if losing that game had become a near fait accompli, they apparently hadn't gotten the memo. The injustice seemed to energize them and give them something to rally around. More than ever, the remaining Nats just flat-out refused to surrender.
Seymour, in particular, became intensely vocal, soon exhorting his teammates on play after play. He began covering Cousy from baseline to baseline, at times refusing to let the Celtic take a single step forward, whether or not he had the ball. His fiery defense was so suffocating that the Celts’ star at times seemed a spare part in his own team's offense, an observer who for stretches of time would stand to one side, with Seymour panting heavily inches from him, his palm on his opponent’s stomach, one eye on the action behind him, and the other fixed on Cousy like a dog guarding a bone.
In fact, Seymour’s defense on Cousy was so legal and so by-the-books that at one point late in the fourth quarter, with four of his fellow Nats already dispatched to the bench with six fouls, and others playing cautiously with five, Seymour (who along with teammate Red Rocha had logged more minutes than any player on either squad) had committed just three personals.
But what elevated Seymour’s performance for the Syracuse faithful that day wasn’t his smothering defense. It wasn’t his vocal leadership or his playmaking. It was the fact he played the final 15 minutes with an ankle so badly injured that it was initially feared broken. Cervi tried to remove Seymour after he violently turned his ankle, but the kid refused to even acknowledge him. Seymour simply grunted, struggled painfully to his feet and, because all but four of his teammates had either fouled out or been ejected, barked at Hoeft for a moment or two so he could walk it off.
What Seymour ended up “walking off” that day was an ankle so badly sprained he was hobbled to the point he couldn’t even join his teammates on offense, so they were forced to play four-on-five; an ankle so badly sprained that on defense he could no longer guard Cousy, but was forced to softly shadow him, playing instead a modified one-man zone; an ankle so badly sprained that following the loss he’d find himself on crutches for almost a full month.
Yet, even with that, even with him being a shell of himself, Paul Seymour continued to make his presence felt. It was Seymour, for example, who after Cousy’s majestic thirty five foot rainbow miraculously tied the score with just a few ticks left in the first overtime, grabbed the ball as it fell through the net and immediately spun, cat-like, as though he had eyes in the back of his head, and hit teammate Lloyd in perfect stride as he bolted toward his own goal. The lightning-quick snatch, pivot and full court strike by the otherwise crippled Seymour should have resulted in the game-winning basket, but for Hoeft’s curious reversal and his ruling that the clock expired before Cousy’s desperation foul.
Syracuse would lose that game, yes. But they would come back and, led by Schayes and Seymour, eliminate the Celts in the following year’s playoff series, and in the one after that, and the one after that. In fact, just two seasons later, that same core of Nats, led by Cervi and buoyed by the addition of big, tough rookie, Johnny “Red” Kerr, a powerful center out of Illinois, would capture their first and only NBA Championship, after sweeping the Celtics aside in the opening round.
The year following that ugly loss and playoff game the NBA would go on to adopt the rule change that most historians now agree saved pro basketball – Leo Ferris’ and Danny Baisone’s landmark 24-second clock.
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There’s no way to quantify Paul Seymour’s impact on how high school basketball was played during his heyday, particularly in the Syracuse Parochial League. It would be similarly impossible to draw parallels between, say, Jerry West, Magic Johnson or Kobe Bryant and how teenagers in and around Los Angeles modeled their games in the years those three stars reigned.
Make no mistake, though, Seymour profoundly changed the relationship Syracuse had with the game it loved. And he changed, too, how the game was played in the Salt City. Until the graceful, silky smooth and telegenic Dave Bing took up residence on the campus of Syracuse University a decade or so later, no single player had a greater impact on Syracuse basketball than Paul Seymour.
Seymour’s impact was deep and wide, and it influenced the style of play of many of the Parochial League’s most talented and celebrated players of his era – gritty young men and future All Stars with names like Bobby Kallfelz, Jackie Underwood and Gene Fisch.
But it was also an impact that resonated further down league rosters during the golden age of parish-based basketball; Parochial League role players, benchwarmers and seldom-used spare parts, young men with such long-forgotten and yet melodic and wonderfully ethnic names like Freddy Wilhelm, Biagio Russo, and Mickey O'Shea.
Paul Seymour proved to young men in Syracuse – and not only the stars, but the scrubs – that, while talent was nice, it was not essential.
What was essential was giving your all each and every minute you were on the court. It was about heart and soul, drive and ambition. It was about reaching inside you and finding something that maybe you didn’t even know you had, whatever it took to out-hustle, out-work, out-run, out-dive, out-grab, out-bang, out-defend, out-anticipate, outlast and, most of all, out-will your opponent.
The game above the rim might be spectacular, and it might make headlines, Paul Seymour and his hard-nosed style seemed to be saying to those thousands of young Syracusans, but it’s the game below the rim that can often make the difference between a team winning or losing. And any boy, regardless of who he is, and regardless of his gifts, can make his mark on a court with sheer effort.
Yes, it's true, the Parochial League played rough-and-tumble basketball even before Paul Seymour stepped off that train that rainy August day in 1948. But once he came to town and once he started lacing them up for the hometown Nats, there's no denying the league’s intensity level found an even higher gear, becoming so brutally physical that in the 1950’s it became virtually synonymous with hard-nosed, rough-and-tumble play. From that point forward, in fact, and forevermore, it would conjure up for Syracuse basketball fans of a certain age mental pictures of young men with skinned knees, black eyes and chipped teeth.
Paul Seymour’s impact on Syracuse as a player, however, is only part of this story and part of the reason for this chapter. Another part – and one yet to tell – is his impact as a man. Because following his retirement, Seymour would go into coaching. And once there, he would become so successful that in his very first season as full-time head man with the Hawks of St. Louis he’d be named the NBA's Coach of the Year.
Yet despite that success, in the first few weeks of the following season he’d once again find himself compelled to draw a big, fat line in the sand for someone. Once again, Paul Seymour would take an unsparing, uncompromising, and highly courageous stand against a force more powerful than himself, one not only based on his steely sense of right and wrong, but one taken at great personal expense.
Seymour's stand as a coach, in fact, would lead to a series of events that would ultimately cost him his job just 14 games into the 1961-62 season, and those events will, indeed, be told in greater detail in the pages ahead.
Until then, however, suffice to say that late in 1961 Paul Seymour returned home to Syracuse to start a new life after a 16-year journey as a basketball gypsy. Back in town, at least in his spare time, he’d continue to both play and coach basketball; the game he loved so well and a game to which he’d given so much, spilled so much blood, dripped so much sweat, and cried so many tears.
For Paul Seymour, it was never about the money. It was always about the love.
Among the many young men he’d mentor his very first year back in Syracuse would be three prodigies with the names, Collins, Reddick and Harlow, three African American boys from the South Side whose physical skills were undeniable, but whose physical skills, however great, were far more developed than the mental aspect of their games.
Which is where Paul Seymour would come into this story yet again. Thanks in no small measure to the streetwise father of one of those three boys, the former Nat's legacy and spirit would come to be felt in the 1967 Syracuse All City game, and felt deeply – on both benches, in the stands, and in the hearts and minds of every last kid who ever dove on a ball in the pursuit of victory.
* * * * *
