First Team All-Jewish NBA

You know I love talking about Jews and basketball. Obviously I’d relish the chance to pick my all-Jewish starting five. Tablet has made that possible:

he story of Jews in American basketball remains one to be proud of. Which is why we’ve teamed up with FreeDarko, the amazing five-year-old collective of basketball writers known for its wit, one-of-a-kind drawings, and revealing focus on unorthodox statistics, to let you select your top all-time Jewish-American starting five, plus a Jewish coach, naturally.

Naturally because one of basketball’s greatest legends is a Jewish coach—Red Auerbach—and many other Jews have been great coaches. The surprising history of Jews in basketball, which I discussed at length in this Jordan Farmar profile, is that for the first half of the 20th century basketball was dominated by Jewish players.

Tablet allows you to pick from three Jewish players for each position. Farmar made the cut, as did Amar’e Stoudemire, who actually isn’t Jewish. Omri Casspi was left off. More surprisingly, Hy Gotkin was too.

My starting five are shown in the above image. Whom would you choose?