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Sunday, September 14, 2025

Charley Rosen: Basketball Bard

Charley Rosen, author of more than two dozen books and confidant to Hall of Fame basketball coach Phil Jackson, passed away on September 13 at the age of 84. Last year, Rosen was inducted in the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame. Few people embodied the essence of being a basketball lifer more than Rosen. The 6-8 Rosen earned team MVP honors in each of his three seasons at Hunter College (1959-62) while setting school records for scoring and rebounding. In 1961, he played on the gold-medal winning U.S. squad in the Maccabiah Games, along with future pros Larry Brown and Art Heyman. Rosen never played in the NBA or ABA, but he spent some time with the Scranton Miners of the Eastern Basketball League (EBL) before teaching English at Hofstra. 

Rosen wrote many articles for a variety of magazines, including  "Dr. J Makes the Whole World Feel Good" for the March 1973 issue of Sport, which was then edited by the incomparable Dick Schaap. Rosen had high praise for Julius Erving, who was in the middle of his second pro season: "By the time he finishes his career, the people who care about basketball history may look back and say there were two doctors who shaped the sport. The first was Dr. James Naismith--and all he did was invent the game. Dr. J made it an art."

In 1975, Rosen published his first book, Maverick, which he co-wrote with Jackson, who then played for the New York Knicks. Stan Love, who played five NBA/ABA seasons with the Baltimore Bullets, L.A. Lakers, and San Antonio Spurs, introduced his friend Rosen to Jackson, and the rest is basketball (and writing) history. Stan Love, who passed away on April 27, 2025, is the father of current NBA player Kevin Love, and the younger brother of Beach Boys singer Mike Love. 

In 1979-80, Rosen coached the men's team at Bard College; he described his experiences at Bard in his book Players and Pretenders. Rosen served as Phil Jackson's assistant with the CBA's Albany Patroons from 1983-86 before becoming a CBA head coach with Albany, Rockford, Oklahoma City, and Savannah. Rosen's experiences in the CBA formed the basis of his hilarious 1992 novel The Cockroach Basketball League. Rosen coached the SUNY New Paltz women's team from 1993-95, and subsequently became a regular contributor to a variety of websites, including ESPN.com, FoxSports.com, and HoopsHype.com. For the past 30 years or so, he typically produced a new book every other year. 

Rosen was an engaging storyteller in addition to being a shrewd observer of basketball strategy and tactics. Overall, I found his work to be entertaining and informative, but it must be noted that Rosen could be sloppy with his research, and some of his writing contains egregious errors. I won't give him a pass in life or death for errors that are inexcusable, but I will say that I generally found his skill set analysis of players and teams to be on target. For example, Rosen understood that Kobe Bryant was better than Dwyane Wade at a time when many media members who were biased in favor of Shaquille O'Neal--and thus against O'Neal's former teammate Bryant--could not bring themselves to acknowledge Bryant's greatness. Rosen also displayed an astute understanding of the differences between NBA basketball and FIBA basketball, and he explained why statistics can be very misleading. It is popular in many quarters to assert that college basketball is somehow a purer or more fundamentally sound form of basketball than NBA basketball, but Rosen cut through that nonsense nearly two decades ago with words that are still relevant today: "The NBA game has a huge advantage in player talent, offensive and defensive prowess, coaching, officiating and the overall quality of performance in every aspect but one. The only advantage the college game enjoys is the consistent enthusiasm of its players. And this is true only because some veteran NBA players on basement-dwelling teams will take an occasional game off late in the season. The worst NBA team would trounce the NCAA champs by upwards of 30 points." 

Rosen's death caused me to think back to my formative years as a basketball fan. I have enjoyed watching, playing, reading about, and writing about basketball since I was a very young child. Basketball is a lifelong passion for me just as it was for Rosen. Basketball books that I read before the age of 15 that significantly impacted and influenced me include Basketball's Biggest Stars by Angelo Resciniti, many editions of The Complete Handbook of Pro Basketball edited by Zander Hollander, A Loose Game by Lewis Cole, The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam, Daniel Rudman's 1980 anthology Take it to the Hoop, Stuff Good Players Should Know by Dick DeVenzio, The Legend of Dr. J by Marty Bell, and The Lonely Heroes by Merv Harris--but that list would not be complete without Rosen's God, Man and Basketball Jones, a book that crackles with memorable phrases and keen insights; it was published in 1979, and I read it from cover to cover some time in the early 1980s when I was 10 or 11. An important concept from that book that stuck with me ever since is that you cannot fully understand what is happening in a basketball game if you are only watching the ball, because there are nine players who do not have the ball whose movements (or lack of movement) are significant. A funny line from that book that still makes me chuckle is Rosen's description of Elvin Hayes after delineating the different ways that various forwards play and after noting Hayes' propensity to shoot fadeaway jumpers: "If there are small forwards, power forwards, defensive forwards, and penetrating forwards, then Elvin Hayes is the only backwards-forward in the NBA."

At the end of the first chapter of God, Man, and Basketball Jones, Rosen waxed poetic about his love for basketball:

Basketball is one-on-one and burn-on-burn.

Basketball is ballet with defense.

Basketball is a blur of acrobatic giants, perilous abandon, and ram-slam-in-your-mother's-eyes dunk shots.

And for even the most casual fan, basketball can also be a dribbling, leaping, flowing salvation. 

He concluded the book with this thought: "He who lives by the jump shot dies. But a true vision of Basketball Jones releases the selfless energy that sustains the game, sustains life, and brings them both to victory." 

If heaven is a playground--to borrow the title of Rick Telander's classic 1976 book about basketball in New York City that I read a few years after my first exposure to Rosen's work--then Rosen is hooping now without having to worry about bad knees or bad calls, and he is enjoying the full glory of the selfless energy of Basketball Jones.

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posted by David Friedman @ 4:05 AM

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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Coaching Legend Pete Newell Passes Away at the Age of 93

Most basketball fans under the age of 40 probably only know of Pete Newell as a mentor of post players at his renowned annual "Big Man" camp but during his Hall of Fame coaching career Newell won an NIT title (1949, University of San Francisco), an NCAA title (1959, California) and an Olympic championship (1960, Team USA), a coaching "triple crown" matched by only Bob Knight and Dean Smith. Newell, who passed away on Tuesday at the age of 93, quit being a bench coach at the age of 44 because his doctors said that the stress was too much for him; the last game that he coached was Team USA's 90-63 gold medal game victory over Brazil in 1960. Prior to the 1992 Dream Team that featured 11 NBA stars, it could be argued that the 1960 squad was the greatest U.S. Olympic basketball team ever: Hall of Famers Walt Bellamy, Jerry Lucas, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West were on the roster. One interesting tidbit about Newell's career is that his teams beat John Wooden's teams the last eight times that they played; Wooden did not become known as the Wizard of Westwood until after Newell retired.

I first heard of Newell when I read David Halberstam's outstanding 1981 book "The Breaks of the Game." I was just a child trying to soak up as much information as I could about the history and strategies of the sport. Halberstam described how Kermit Washington--who later became infamous for throwing the punch that almost killed Rudy Tomjanovich--approached Newell and asked him to help him to become a better player, at the time an almost unheard of request from someone who had already made it to the NBA. Halberstam wrote about how ardently Washington wanted to improve his skill set and he described the thought process Washington went through before seeking help from Newell, who at the time worked in the Lakers organization (for whom Washington played at that time). Here is Halberstam's account of Newell's initial reaction to Washington's request ("The Breaks of the Game," pp. 267-268):

Newell in turn was astonished. In recent experience, no player in the league seemed willing to admit that he still had something to learn. Washington had picked the right time to approach Newell. He had left college coaching (where his teams, with less material, had regularly beaten John Wooden's UCLA teams) because he did not like the direction the game was taking--too much emphasis on recruiting, too little on coaching, too much on selling the school to the young men and too little on the young men selling themselves to the school. He did not like his job at the Lakers; when he talked basketball to Jack Kent Cooke, the owner, he was always being challenged by one of Cooke's cronies who knew nothing about basketball..."Why do you want to take lessons?" he had asked Washington. "Because I want to play like Paul Silas," Washington had answered, which was good enough; Paul Silas was an example of the best of the NBA players, a triumph of character and intelligence over pure athletic skill.

The individual big man skills tutoring that Newell did with Washington eventually evolved into an annual "Big Man" camp that attracted more and more players each summer until it got to the point that virtually every promising post player in the country received coaching from Newell.

When Washington's NBA career was in limbo in the aftermath of Washington's devastating punch that seriously injured Tomjanovich, Newell was one of the few people in the basketball world who maintained contact with him. Halberstam wrote ("Breaks," p. 275):

One day Washington showed up at Newell's door with a huge color television set. With it was a small plaque that said, FOR COACH PETE NEWELL, THANK YOU FOR MAKING ME A BETTER BASKETBALL PLAYER, KERMIT WASHINGTON. Pete Newell tried to turn down the gift but Washington insisted he keep it. He eventually relented and accepted it, partially because Washington seemed the loneliest young man he had seen in a long time.

Newell's reluctance to accept the TV was very typical; he ran his "Big Man" camp for more than three decades without receiving any compensation, explaining simply, "I owe it to the game. I can never repay what the game has given me." Many coaches speak wistfully of leaving the bench to simply be a teacher and an ambassador for the sport but then they are lured back into the fray either by love of competition or by a big dollar contract but it can be honestly said of Newell that he aspired to nothing more than to contribute to the sport by teaching the game to anyone who had the burning desire to improve--and there can be no higher calling than to so tirelessly and willingly share the gift of one's knowledge. The basketball world will miss Pete Newell but it will never forget him.

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posted by David Friedman @ 5:14 AM

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