The First Basket

This movie is about how the immigrant Jewish community in New York helped make basketball so popular here. And it is still popular in Israel. Very interesting piece of our country's history. DP

Immigrant Hoop Dreams

By NATHAN LEE, NYTimes.com

For those who grew up thinking basketball was the sport of Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, it may come as a surprise to learn that it all began with people like Nat Holman, Sammy Kaplan and Red Auerbach. There hasn’t been a Jewish basketball star in the National Basketball Association for half a century, but when the sport was young, it was the children of European Jewish immigrants who took it up and dominated it.

“The First Basket,” a functional (if narrowly interesting) history lesson by the filmmaker David Vyorst, recollects the rich history of Jewish participation in basketball, starting with its embrace in the thriving immigrant community on the Lower East Side of New York and ending with a look at the continuing popularity of the game in Israel.

Using a wealth of archival material, as well as testaments from former players and coaches, Mr. Vyorst shows how basketball functioned among Jews as both a vehicle for cultural assimilation and a means of reformulating Jewish identity, which prized the scholar, not the athlete, as the masculine ideal.

THE FIRST BASKET Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Produced and directed by David Vyorst; narrated by Peter Riegert; director of photography, Gary Griffin; edited by Carol Slatkin; music by Roberto Juan Rodriguez; released by Laemmle/Zeller Films.