Early Years
Arnold Jacob Auerbach was one of the four children of Marie and Hyman Auerbach. Hyman was a Russian Jewish immigrant from Minsk, Belarus, and Marie Auerbach, née Thompson, was American-born. Auerbach Sr. had left Belarus when he was 13, and the couple owned a delicatessan and later went into the dry-cleaning business. Little Arnold spent his whole childhood in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, playing basketball. With his flaming red hair and fiery temper, Auerbach was soon nicknamed "Red."
Amid the Great Depression, Red played basketball at PS 122 and in the Eastern District High School, where he was named "Second Team All-Brooklyn" by the World-Telegram in his senior year. Auerbach received an athletic scholarship to the basketball program of Bill Reinhart at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. Auerbach was a standout basketball player and graduated with a M.A. in 1941. In those years, Auerbach began to understand the importance of the fast break, appreciating how potent three charging attackers against two back-pedalling defenders could be.
Read more about this topic: Red Auerbach
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Early education can only promise to help make the third and fourth and fifth years of life good ones. It cannot insure without fail that any tomorrow will be successful. Nothing “fixes” a child for life, no matter what happens next. But exciting, pleasing early experiences are seldom sloughed off. They go with the child, on into first grade, on into the child’s long life ahead.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)