High School Basketball: The Courtship of Lew Alcindor

The Stepinac Crusaders were already halfway through their pregame warm-ups by the time the boys from Manhattan’s Power Memorial Academy finally showed up at Madison Square Garden. That was enough practice as far as Coach Nat Volpe was concerned. He ordered his team back to the locker room to await the start of the game. “I didn’t want them to see him before they had to,” he explained. Who was him? Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr., 17.

The Lollipop & the Dunk. A lot of him there was, too. Even in high school, basketball is a giant’s game. New York City alone has 50-odd high school players taller than 6 ft. 5 in.—but Power’s Lew Alcindor, at 7 ft. 1 in. and 235 Ibs., is a giant among the giants. He wears a size 16D sneaker, and he can palm a basketball faster than a cop can palm an apple. In practice, he stands idly under the backboard sucking on a lollipop, dropping ball after ball into the 10-ft.-high basket—without ever leaving his feet. In a game, his specialties are the “dunk” shot (in which he leaps up and rams the ball through the hoop from above) and the “backward dunk” (the same thing, but backward over his head), and the only way anybody has figured out to stop him from scoring is to glue his sneakers to the floor somewhere around midcourt.

Even that might not work. A nifty hooker and a delicate outside shooter, Alcindor is so fast, scrappy and versatile that Power Coach Jack Donahue could probably saw him in half and get two varsity guards. High school games last only 32 minutes (v. 40 minutes for a regulation college game), but Lew is averaging 31 points a game, and no less an authority than Wilt (“The Stilt”) Chamberlain,* a seven-footer of note himself, calls Alcindor “the greatest high school player I’ve ever seen.”

Those who remember Wilt as a youngster in Philadelphia might argue. But against Stepinac Alcindor poured in 37 points; against previously unbeaten Rice High last week, he hit a phenomenal 21 out of 23 field-goal attempts. A few days later, he scored 35 and pulled down 23 rebounds, as Power walloped St. Helena’s High 71-57—for its 69th victory in a row.

Somewhere in Manhattan.That would be enough to keep the college scouts hammering at Lew’s door—if only they knew where to hammer. Papa Alcindor is a 6-ft. 3-in. New York subway policeman, and Mama is 5 ft. 11 in.; to all but their closest friends they live “somewhere in upper Manhattan,” and their phone number is unlisted. All of Lew’s letters are screened by his coach, and sportswriters are required to submit questions in writing—a procedure that has led some to suggest nastily that Donahue is really John Alden in disguise. One Midwestern university hinted that Donahue could have the head coach’s job if he promised to deliver Alcindor.

So far, 60 colleges have invited Lew to look them over. Boston College Coach Bob Cousy writes him mash notes; Princeton, Cincinnati and St. John’s would all like invitations to his graduation this June. And the pros, who have four years to wait, are already saving up: they figure that Alcindor will start out somewhere around $50,000 a year. Imagine. All that fuss over a 17-year-old who has only grown one inch in the last two years.

* Traded last week to the Philadelphia 76ers by the San Francisco Warriors for three players and an undisclosed amount of cash.