Billy Cunningham still scoring big
By Mark Scheinbaum
DELRAY BEACH, Florida )—A gawky Billy Cunningham from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn stepped off his first plane trip at Raleigh-Durham, NC “…and when I looked for a bathroom, I was pointed to two doors…one said ‘White’ and one said ‘Colored’.”
Honored Dec. 14 at the Boca Raton Polo Club by the South Florida Basketball Foundation for more than 50 years of sports, business, and personal leadership, Cunningham talked about being sheltered from lots of news, racism, and hatred growing up in an integrated neighborhood in New York.
At his first North Carolina practice, he said “I saw everyone coming out of the locker room and asked one guy, ‘Where are the Black players?’ I was told there were no black players. My dad, when he talked about what college I should go to, never thought about segregation. Back in New York at schools like St. John’s, many of the students and players were black.”
An NBA Hall of Famer, a member of the Philadelphia Sixers team 50 years ago that might be the greatest team in history, champion coach, and co-founder and owner of the Miami Heat, Cunningham saluted his high school teammates who were among the 530 guests in the room. He talked about luck which sent him away from Saint Frances Prep where he had been promised a scholarship, which he was later told did not exist, and asked his father what they were going to do. “My dad turned me around and led me out the door and said ‘We are going to Erasmus.’” (The public high school.)
Under Coach Bernie Kirsner, Erasmus was a powerful New York and national entry in scholastic basketball, city champs and home of celebrities from Barbra Streisand to Bobby Fisher, in other areas of endeavor. Sadly, when I was a student manager and “go-fer” for Kirsner and longtime Athletic Director Al Badain, Cunningham had already graduated. But it was clear then, as now, that for many folks Billy Cunningham was our most famous alumnus.
Imagine being in a room where iconic Celtic Hall of Famer Bob Cousy applauds when Billy Cunningham is introduced!
When Cunningham was drafted by the Wilt Chamberlain era Sixers, they had never even seen him play. When CBS Sports asked him to do commentary, he had never been an announcer. When Philadelphia, after the start of a season, asked him to come down from New York and be an NBA coach, he almost thought it was a joke. But the joke became serious when he ended up as mentor to dozens of great players and future coaches and was one of the winningest coaches in NBA history.
When the NBA expanded and there was a chance for a Miami franchise, he gave it a shot with a Brooklyn childhood buddy. He needed lots of help. They needed lots of money. But “We had a passion, and a passion means everything, which is what I tell kids asking for advice.”
Sometimes Cunningham’s passion meant going the extra mile, “The old Miami Arena was at the edge of Overtown, not the best neighborhood then, with profane graffiti on the walls. The night before the NBA sent an inspection team down to evaluate our application for an expansion team, we were out all night with black paint and brushes covering up the graffiti on walls.”
The Miami Heat became a reality. As he celebrates the 50th anniversary of the historic Sixers and his 50th wedding anniversary, in a way the slim frame and straight posture, sports jacket and open button-down collar is the original package of the kid from Brooklyn. No entourage, no driver, no PR people, just Billy Cunningham chatting with the old farts after an awards luncheon and waiting for the valet kids to find his car like everyone else.
As I left I thought of one great line from Cunningham’s extemporaneous acceptance speech. It was the day before Erasmus was going to head to Madison Square Garden to play for the city championship. As background, you need to understand that two blocks from school was our unofficial “school”: Spinelli’s basement pool hall, where my tennis buddy and lifelong friend Bobby Lempert, a Romanian refugee would earn his spending money each day.
“For sure we wanted to concentrate on basketball and that big game, “ Cunningham smirked “So I went to every single class that day, on time, paid attention and didn’t even go to Spinelli’s!”
Mark Scheinbaum, is managing director of Shearson Financial LLC in Boca Raton. His opinions are his own. A former UPI newsman and a passionate basketball fan he was a student manager for Erasmus Hall H.S. a few years after Cunningham played.
