Nat Holman

Athlete

• Born: October 19, 1896
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: February 12, 1995
• Place of death: Bronx, New York

Holman made his mark as a basketball coach, although he began his sports career as a strong basketball player, leading the Original Celtics, a barnstorming team, to several winning seasons.

Early Life

Nat Holman (HOHL-mihn) was one of ten children born to a family of Russian immigrants who had been uprooted from Germany. Holman’s brother Jacob was a large influence on Holman and convinced the family to change their name from Helmanowich to something more American sounding to improve their economic prospects.

Growing up in the inner city, Holman spent much of his leisure time at settlement houses created to provide a safe place for Jewish youth. It was there that Holman discovered basketball, invented only five years before he was born.

A natural athlete, Holman excelled in many sports, including baseball and soccer, which he began to play at age eight. While he was attending Commerce High School, he was persuaded to take up football as well. Participating in so many sports did not spread Holman’s talent too thin; in fact, his basketball team won the Public School Athletic League title, and he was president of the student council his senior year. As an adolescent, he was noted for his focus on technical skills. This practical concern would be the specialty that would bolster his later career.

After graduating from high school, Holman went to the Savage School for Physical Education and continued to play basketball, remaining highly successful. Although his love for other sports continued, he chose basketball because of its popularity and because playing basketball, which was invented in America, was a way to be American without rejecting his Jewish heritage.

Life’s Work

One of Holman’s distinctions is that he was a professional basketball player and a college coach at the same time. Holman began playing professionally for the New York Knickerbockers, in 1917, while he was still in school. Upon graduation, he was hired by City College of New York (CCNY) to coach soccer. Holman was a successful soccer coach, but after a brief stint in the Navy, coaching there as well, he returned to coach basketball in 1919 and baseball in 1920. In 1921, while still working for CCNY, he played professionally for the Original Celtics. The Celtics were another example of how playing sports helped to Americanize immigrants. The team had consisted of Germans, Irish, and Jews brought together by pre-World War I tensions. When the team re-formed after the war, Holman was the only Jew on the team. As such, he wanted to uphold the reputation of his heritage.

Holman’s career with both the Original Celtics and CCNY was enormously successful. The Original Celtics, during Holman’s time, popularized professional basketball. Even while playing between 150 and 200 games per season, the team did much traveling, cementing Holman in the national consciousness. The Celtics disbanded in 1928, but Holman continued playing professionally until 1933.

Although Holman’s professional career presented unusual challenges in coaching, CCNY’s team did not suffer. Holman’s main challenge at CCNY was that the school required no tuition. Consequently, the best high school basketball players were recruited to other schools and offered scholarships. Nonetheless, Holman used his evolving knowledge of the game to teach his team the technical skills he believed were the key to winning.

After more than thirty years of coaching, Holman saw results in the 1949-1950 season. The CCNY team won both major titles in basketball: the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Invitation Tournament (NIT). Holman deserves much of the credit for this, but that season would cripple his career. Within months, four of his players were found to have been shaving points. Suspicion was cast on Holman; though he was not found guilty of wrongdoing, CCNY basketball was downgraded in college basketball. Never again was it considered a major team. Holman retired in 1960 and died of natural causes in 1995.

Significance

Holman was one of the people responsible for raising basketball to a worldwide sport, with his promotional work and his playing and coaching. Holman wrote a number of books instructing new coaches on the importance of ball-handling and shooting techniques. To make athletics a positive experience for future generations, Holman founded Camp Scatico in New York. Many foreign countries trace their basketball traditions back to Holman’s visits, in which he established training clinics. Chief among these is Israel, whose athletics Holman promoted even after his retirement. In recognition of his efforts, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1964.

Bibliography

Gibbons, William C. “Is Basketball’s Future Its Past?” Encounter 19, no. 3 (Fall, 2006): 32-38. This article discusses Holman’s coaching style in the context of a modern team.

Holman, Nat. Holman on Basketball. New York: Crown, 1950. One of Holman’s detailed treatises on coaching. It contains almost no biographical information, but it does show his expertise.

Nelson, Murry R. “Basketball as Cultural Capital.” In Sporting Nationalisms: Identity, Ethnicity, Immigration, and Assimilation, edited by Mike Cronin and David Mayall. Portland, Oreg.: Frank Cass, 1998. This sociological analysis of sports details how American immigrants related to athletics and how Jews were associated with basketball early in the twentieth century.