Inspired by the book Boxed Out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League, by Scranton natives and diehard Eastern League fans Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein.
About the Film
During the 1950s and early ‘60s, the National Basketball Association (NBA) had ten or fewer teams. Roster spots were hard to get, especially for African Americans restricted by the NBA's unwritten quotas. Players who didn’t make the NBA played in the Eastern League for $50-100 a game on weekend nights in small, blue-collar towns like Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Hazleton. These were some of the best players of their generation who you've never heard about -- until now.
Listen to Original Radio Broadcast of an EBL Game from 1968!
About the Book
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Featuring interviews with some 40 former Eastern League coaches, referees, fans, and players—including Syracuse University coach Jim Boeheim, former Temple University coach John Chaney, former Detroit Pistons player and coach Ray Scott, former NBA coach and ESPN analyst Hubie Brown, and former NBA player and coach Bob Weiss—this book provides an intimate, first-hand account of small-town professional basketball at its best.
In Boxed out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League, Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein tell the fascinating story of a league that was a pro basketball institution for over 30 years, showcasing top players from around the country. During the early years of professional basketball, the Eastern League was the next-best professional league in the world after the NBA. It was home to big-name players such as Sherman White, Jack Molinas, and Bill Spivey, who were implicated in college gambling scandals in the 1950s and were barred from the NBA, and top Black players such as Hal “King” Lear, Julius McCoy, and Wally Choice, who could not make the NBA into the early 1960s due to unwritten team quotas on African-American players.
Boxed Out of the NBA is an outstanding story on an unheralded era of professional basketball. Kudos to Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein for shining a light on the Eastern League and its many talented players.
JOHN CHANEY
Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2001, former coach at Temple University, and former Eastern Leaguer