Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Ossie Schechtman, Jewish Basketball Star, Dies at 94

Ossie Schectman, who scored the first basket in the league that would become the NBA, has died.

Schectman, a New York native who made the historic layup while playing for his hometown Knicks, died Tuesday. He was 94.

The Knicks were playing the Toronto Huskies on Nov. 1, 1946 in the first game of the Basketball Association of America, a forerunner of the National Basketball Association, when Schechtman scored on a fast break.

“It was a simple give-and-go,” Schectman recalled in a 1997 NPR story, according to Deadspin. “It was one of those fast breaks, pass the ball, went to the basket, got a return pass.” Schechtman, a 6-foot guard from Kew Gardens in Queens, starred at Long Island University, guiding the Blackbirds to an undefeated 1938-39 season and titles in the NIT and NCAA tournaments.

In 1998, Shechtman was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. He was the subject of the 2008 documentary film “The First Basket,” which chronicles the Jewish roots of basketball.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.