Jon Scheyer

University of Tennessee Volunteers coach Bruce Pearl will guide the team, with Harris Adler of Lasalle University and Doug Gottlieb, ESPN college basketball analyst and former Oklahoma State University and Notre Dame player, named as assistants.

Jon Scheyer of Duke University is perhaps the biggest name on the roster.

The 21-year-old is in his third season in Duke University and is one of the team’s best players, averaging 14.3 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game this season.

Other players to make the team include Derek Glasser of Arizona State University, Steven Gruber from Brown University, Zachary Rosen of University of Pennsylvania and the head coach’s son from Tennessee, Steven Pearl.

Scheyer just received the ACC Tournament MVP award.

Sure the dude that invented basketball was Canadian, but there was a time when Jews dominated basketball the way they now dominate media and finance. And world governments. OK, I’m kidding about world Jew domination, but I’m not kidding about basketball. In fact, the first basket scored in the NBA was on November 1, 1946 by Ossie Schectman of the New York Knickerbockers against the Toronto Huskies. Schectman and his teammates Sonny Hertzberg, Stan Stutz, Hank Rosenstein, Ralph Kaplowitz, Jake Weber, and Leo “Ace” Gottlieb went on to win the opening game 68 – 66.

Now Jews traditionally have never been very athletic. But back in the early days of basketball, they verily dominated. Along with stickball, basketball was the game of choice for the little Jewish ragamuffins living in the tenements of the Lower East Side of New York and elsewhere in the US. The poor little yidden, first generation immigrant kids, freed from their shtetl yoke of religion, needed something to do with their spare time and for many, sports was their new religion.

New York Daily News sports editor Paul Gallico wrote in the mid 1930s that basketball “appeals to the Hebrew with his Oriental background [because] the game places a premium on an alert, scheming mind and flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smartalecness.” We see how qualities such as cunning and wiliness were posited as the keys to Jewish basketball success and how these kinds of statements were indicative of early 20th century America.

So now comes this great new documentary called “The First Basket” which in discussing the origins of the game of basketball and the Jews in it, is in a sense, recreating the Jewish immigrant experience in America and is no less an exposé of modern Jewish identity than it is the story of some sweaty ball playing Jews.

You can read more about this documentary and watch some clips at their Web site www.thefirstbasket.com or you can watch the film at a theater near you. “The First Basket” will be playing at the following venues and times:

New York
Opens October 29, 2008 for 10 Days!
(Special Events will be announced over the next two weeks)
The Village East Cinema
181 -189 2nd Ave. New York, NY 10003
212-529-6799

Los Angeles
Opens November 14th!
Laemmle’s Music Hall in Beverly Hills
310-274-6869
Laemmle’s Town Center in Encino
818-981-9811 www.laemmle.com

Tuesday, November 11, 7:30 pm
The Skirball Cultural Center
Los Angeles, CA

Monday October 20th – 7:00pm
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and JCCSF
San Francisco, CA

Click here to see clips from the film and visit the Web site for updates and special events.

From Sports Illustrated (when’s the last time we saw a story about Jews in this mag?):

State senators have taken up the cause of a Jewish boys basketball team whose playoff run may be halted because its players can’t play on the Jewish Sabbath.

The Herzl/Rocky Mountain Hebrew Academy team could be headed for a regional championship on Saturday, March 8, if it wins one more game. But the Denver team’s religious beliefs prohibit students from playing on the Jewish Sabbath between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday.

If Herzl/RMHA makes it to the regional championship and refuses to play a Saturday game, another school would be chosen to take its place, CHSAA commissioner Bill Reader said.

Earlier this month, the Colorado High School Activities Association, which governs sports and other high school activities, rejected the team’s request for a schedule change.

At the end of morning debate in the state Senate on Wednesday, Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, called on the CHSAA to be more flexible.

Senate President Peter Groff, D-Denver, said the CHSAA’s decision was ironic because it has a rule barring games from being played on Sunday for religious reasons.

Sen. Tom Wiens, R-Sedalia, said there must be a way for the CHSAA to accommodate the team.

“It just seems like the bureaucracy has run amok here,” Wiens said.

Bruce H. DeBoskey, mountain states regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, said the group was disappointed by CHSAA’s decision.