... We had two choices: either go to the schoolyard and play ball or hang around on the corner and get in trouble.

"[4] He attended Stuyvesant High School, where he played for the basketball team.

[2][6] He began his college basketball career as a freshman at CCNY in 1941, playing for a team that had a 16–1 record.

Stationed at Cornell University, he joined its basketball team for the 1943–44 season.

[3] In 1999, he and the other Jewish players on the Knicks, Sonny Hertzberg, Ralph Kaplowitz, Leo Gottlieb, Hank Rosenstein, and Ossie Schectman, were inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in New York.