Oneida County History Center

ADK Journal

the utica pros By Lou Parrotta City of Utica Historian, Oneida County History Center Volunteer

As the National Basketball Association (NBA) Season for 2020-2021 opens, let’s harken back sixty years to when Utica was home to a professional basketball team in the old American Basketball League. The Utica Pros were only in operation for one year, but the team was home to some noted college and NBA players. They did not endure much success on the court, finishing with a 17-22 record, and they were forced to back out of the ABA playoffs due to a lack of enough players to compete. The team ended the season $20,000 in debt and ultimately folded. These are some of the men who donned a Pros uniform and played for the Utica hoops entry.

The most noted player on the team was Chuck Harmon. Harmon, an African-American, was a player-coach of the Pros and that afforded him the groundbreaking honor of becoming the first black coach of an integrated professional sports team. While he is most familiar to sports fans as a professional baseball player and the first African-American to play for the Cincinnati Reds, Harmon was a basketball star at the University of Toledo. He did not get signed after trying out for the NBA’s Boston Celtics, so he came to Utica to play and coach. In 37 games, he scored 288 points for the Pros.

Sports fans may remember Chuck Harmon as a professional baseball player, but he was also a basketball player and coach for the Utica Pros.

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Alexander “Greek” Athas was a star in the Southeast Conference at Tulane University. He led the conference in 1943-44 with 14.1 points per game and was a 3-time ALL-SEC star. Athas made 325 points over 23 games for the Pros.

Gerald Calabrese, a St. John’s University All-American from 1946-1950, only played four games for the Pros, but amassed 55 points in those games. He was a second-round draft pick and 23rd overall in 1950 and played for the Syracuse Nationals in 1951-1952. Calabrese was the longest-serving mayor of any city in the United States (50 years running in Cliffside Park, New Jersey) when he passed away at age 90.

Leroy Chollett, the Pros’ most prolific player, scored 376 points in 34 games in Utica. He also played for the 1949-1951 Syracuse Nats, but “The Bayou Beauty” as he was known, was the first 1,000-point scorer in Canisius College history. He was part of the team’s NAIA Championship squad.

Ray Corley, a fifth-round NBA draft pick in 1945 out of Georgetown University by the Providence Steamrollers, played for the Syracuse Nats, the Baltimore Bullets, the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, and the Ft. Wayne Pistons. In Utica, Corley scored 240 points over 21 games.

Jerry Fowler, a player for the University of Missouri from 1947-1950, played one season in the NBA with the Milwaukee Hawks and two in the National Professional League with the Kansas City Hi-Spots. For Utica, he averaged 9.1 points per game in the ten he played December 8, 1950 Utica Daily Press headline announces that the Utica Pros have signed former Georgetown and Syracuse Nats player Ray Corely

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for the Pros.

Dan Lofgran, the California High School Player of the Year in 1946, had a spectacular career at both Grant Tec (1946-1948) and the University of San Francisco (USF) (1948-1950) before playing for the Pros. He was a consensus All-American in 1950, a first-round pick that year by the Nationals, and bucketed 1,265 points over a four-year NBA career in Syracuse, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. His USF squad won the 1949 National Invitational Tournament 4847, where he was named tournament MVP. Former coach Pete Newell of the University of California-Berkeley credited Lofgran with making the first jump shot in basketball history. Lofgran scored 26 points in two contests for the Pros.

Bob MacKinnon coached at Canisius College from 1959-1972 (at one time the youngest head coach in the NCAA), and at various stops in the ABA and the NBA (where he twice served as head coach and once as general manager of the New Jersey Nets). He played in all 39 of the Pros’ games scoring 250 total points. He came to Utica after a storied career at Canisius where he was a Sporting News Second Team All-American in 1950 and was named the MVP of the 1949 Jesuit game against the College of the Holy Cross over future NBA Hall of Famer Bob Cousy. He even played minor league baseball in the Brooklyn Dodgers organization.

Mike Novak only played three games for the Utica Five, but he was known as one of the first prominent big men in the game at sixfeet-nine-inches tall. He played professional basketball from 19391954 and amassed over 2,700 points.

Dick Smuin attended the University of Utah from 1943-1949, with a two-year hiatus due to WWII. His 1944 Utes team was a Cinderella Utica Daily Press announces the signing of Alexander “Greek” Athas to the Utica Pros, December 20, 1950

Photo: Buffalo News

Bob MacKinnon was at one time the youngest coach in the NBA. He played in all 39 of the Utica Pros’ games

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champion of the NCAA Tournament and the 1946-1947 NIT champions. In Utica, he averaged 10 points per game over the 33 contests he appeared in.

Ed Stanczak only played in six games for Utica, but he scored 109 points averaging 18.2 per contest. He spent four years in the NBL with the Anderson Duffy Packers, winning the 1949 championship. He also played in 17 games for the Boston Celtics in 1950-1951.

Other players included Robert Roper, Dermie O’Connell, Al Masino, and Robert “Bob” Healey. Roper was a 3rd round draft pick by the Rochester Royals in 1950 (tenth pick overall) and played in 32 contests for Utica scoring 294 points. O’Connell played at the College of the Holy Cross for four seasons, in 82 NBA games, and scored 188 points in twenty games for the Pros. Masino, a Canisius College graduate, spent two seasons in the NBA after his time in Utica. In ten games with the Pros, he averaged 5.4 points per game. Healey played at the University of Georgia where he was the team captain and ALLSEC. He logged one season in the NBA with the Syracuse Nats. He only saw action in four games for Utica.

As you can see, this short-lived team had some pretty impressive players. Who knows how the team would have performed had they done better that first and only year of existence! •