College basketball scandal of 1951

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GardenCity62

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I just read a new book on the above topic and would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. I have read other books on the scandal but this is the first one that the author actually interviewed some of the players involved.
It is four hundred pages with about eighty per cent covering the scandal and twenty per cent on the simultaneous NYC police department / Harry Gross bookie scandal which resulted in the resignation of Mayor O'Dwyer.
It has a twenty nine dollar price but I picked it up at the Garden City library. But
 
Thought you might be interested in knowing that our own Joe Lapchick used to keep a scrapbook regarding the 1951 scandal and he used to require every St. John's player to read it in it's entirety.
 
[quote="Enright" post=363666]The book is titled "The City Game " by Matthew Goodman.[/quote]

Weird that it would be named the same as the iconic pete axthelm book on nyc playground basketball
 
I was there for many of those games. LIU was undefeated when they went on their western trip to Kansas, Arizona , etc. Players shaving points broke Clair Bee heart. Bee invented 1 3 1 half court press. Has the winningest won lost pct in history. Not Wooden.
CCNY won the NIT and NCAA over Bradley. Clark Kellog from Manhattan blew the whistle on CCNY and LIU. Jack :eek:linas of Columbia was the instigator.
 
[quote="Rehobie" post=363817]I was there for many of those games. LIU was undefeated when they went on their western trip to Kansas, Arizona , etc. Players shaving points broke Clair Bee heart. Bee invented 1 3 1 half court press. Has the winningest won lost pct in history. Not Wooden.
CCNY won the NIT and NCAA over Bradley. Clark Kellog from Manhattan blew the whistle on CCNY and LIU. Jack :eek:linas of Columbia was the instigator.[/quote]

NOT Clark Kellogg--it was Junius Kellogg. He was $1,000 to shave points and told his college coach, Kenny Norton. He was injured after college and became paralyzed but continued his love of Basketball giving help to wheelchair basketball.
 
Jack Molinas was not involved in the 1951 scandal. He was the primary participant in the 1961 scandal which involved more players and teams. Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown were banned from the NBA based on their connection to Molinas even though they never played a college basketball game.
SJU's Tony Jackson was also banned because he didn't report a bribe offer.
 
[quote="Enright" post=363823]Jack Molinas was not involved in the 1951 scandal. He was the primary participant in the 1961 scandal which involved more players and teams. Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown were banned from the NBA based on their connection to Molinas even though they never played a college basketball game.
SJU's Tony Jackson was also banned because he didn't report a bribe offer.[/quote]

Jack Molinas was involved in the '51 scandal as a player, in the '61 as an instigator. There were many suspicions that the crash that paralyzed Junius Kellog was not an accident.
 
[quote="Rehobie" post=363817]I was there for many of those games. LIU was undefeated when they went on their western trip to Kansas, Arizona , etc. Players shaving points broke Clair Bee heart. Bee invented 1 3 1 half court press. Has the winningest won lost pct in history. Not Wooden.
CCNY won the NIT and NCAA over Bradley. Clark Kellog from Manhattan blew the whistle on CCNY and LIU. Jack :eek:linas of Columbia was the instigator.[/quote]

Clair Bee, along with Joe Lapchick were two of Bobby Knight's idols and mentors.

Knight claims that he lost a ton of respect for John Wooden when Wooden told him of the dirty stuff boosters were doing, "Well gee bob, I wish I knew a way to stop it." Knight's reaction was "I'd know how to stop it.", and from that point on didn't think very much of Wooden.
 
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Jack Molinas played for Columbia his first year when the 51 scandal broke but was never implicated by any of the gamblers or middlemen to the D A. so was never charged. Had he played for one of the teams that played at the garden he surely would have been involved.
Many of the players caught feel those arrested were only the tip of the iceberg. In all of the books written on the 51 scandal what is interesting is was any player on SJU involved. None were charged.
 
[quote="Enright" post=363878]Jack Molinas played for Columbia his first year when the 51 scandal broke but was never implicated by any of the gamblers or middlemen to the D A. so was never charged. Had he played for one of the teams that played at the garden he surely would have been involved.
Many of the players caught feel those arrested were only the tip of the iceberg. In all of the books written on the 51 scandal what is interesting is was any player on SJU involved. None were charged.[/quote]

Used to play in the playground with a guy named "Pepper" Dooley who was older but could sure still play. Never knew his first name and the word was he had played at St. Peter's in Jersey City. Anyway, he told us Molinas stories one day after playing and said he would literally bet on anything. He said he saw him in a bar one rainy night go to a window with a group of guys and they started betting on which rain drop would fall to the bottom of the window first. I thought it was BS until later I read the same thing in a book about Molinas.
 
Molinas was such a degenerate gambler that when he was thrown out of the NBA around the mid fifties for point shaving he admitted throwing a city championship high school playoff game while a member of Stuyvesant High.
 
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