[1] William "Red" Holzman was born on August 10, 1920, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City,[2][3][4] to Jewish immigrant parents, as the son of a Romanian mother and Russian father.

[5][6] He grew up in Brooklyn's Ocean Hill–Brownsville neighborhood[3] and played basketball for Franklin K. Lane High School in the mid-1930s.

Holzman attended the University of Baltimore and later the City College of New York, where he played for two years until graduation in 1942.

In 1953, Holzman left the Royals and joined the Milwaukee Hawks as a player-coach, eventually retiring as a player in 1954 but continuing as the team's head coach.

After being fired by the Hawks, Holzman then became a scout for the New York Knicks for the next ten years, till 1967, whereupon he became the team's head coach for the most part until 1982.

Following his lengthy NBA coaching career, Holzman was diagnosed with leukemia and died at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, New York in 1998.