Max Zaslofsky

I was playing Chicago Jewish sports trivia today with a guy at Max and Benny's and Max Zaslofsky's name came up. Zaslofsky, without a doubt, was the best Jewish professional basketball player that ever shot hoops on a Chicago team. He played for the Chicago Stags from 1946-1950. During the first three years of his career, the Stags played in the Basketball Association of America (BAA), a rival league founded to compete with the already established National Basketball League (NBL) in 1946. The two leagues merged at the end of the 1948-49 season and became the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Chicago Stags played one year as a NBA team, folding the franchise after the 1949-50 season, and letting its players be picked up in a dispersal draft.

A guard, Zaslofsky had a great two-handed set shot. He played one collegiate year at St. John's in his hometown of New York, and then signed on with the new Stags franchise, which included Arthur Wirtz in its ownership group. The team played at Wirtz's Chicago Stadium.

Zaslofsky had four outstanding seasons with the Stags. He led them in the BAA Finals in his rookie year, but the team lost the title to the Philadelphia Warriors. Zaslofsky's 877 points that year was the fourth highest total in the league. One of his fellow backcourt players for the Stags was another Jewish player, Chicagoan Mickey Rottner, who played high school hoops at Tuley and collegiate basketball at Loyola.

Zaslofsky was a prolific scorer, by the professional standards of the time, scoring over 1,000 points per season for the Stags three consecutive years. He was picked up by the New York Knicks in the dispersal draft and had three more productive years for the Knicks. He played sporadically for three other NBA teams before concluding his professional career in 1956.

During the NBA's Silver Anniversary in 1971, Zaslofsky was chosen as one of the league's top twenty-five players in its first twenty-five years (the other Jewish player in this group being Dolph Schayes). Zaslofsky's 7900 career points scored was the third highest in the history of the league when he retired in 1956.

Cousin Richie