A ONE-TIME star player for St. John’s University basketball coach Joe Lapchick is looking to score a book deal on a just-completed manuscript on the late legendary hoop mentor.
Gus Alfieri, who emulated his old mentor as the longtime basketball coach of St. Anthony’s High School on Long Island (from 1968 to 1986), has been research- ing “Cast the Giant Shadow: The Life of Joe Lapchick in the Glory Days of New York Basketball” for six and a half years.
“He just motivated his team to play their hearts out,” said Alfieri, who played on Lapchick ‘s NIT-winning team in 1959.
Despite being a coach who dominated the college horizon for decades, no biography has been written on Lapchick , according to Alfieri.
UCLA coaching legend John Wooden, and Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain, gave interviews to the novice writer. “I must have done 250 interviews,” said Alfieri, who earned a doctorate seven years ago after retiring from coaching and teaching.
“I have a Catholic school background,” said Alfieri. “The one thing I’ve learned is discipline.”
He’s recently teamed up with East Hampton-based agent Philip Spitzer, who hopes to send out the book proposal to publishers right after the Labor Day break.
In an era where old school, no-nonsense coaches seem to make for bestsellers (think “Tuesdays with Morrie” and the Vince Lombardi bio, “When Pride Still Mattered”), Spitzer thinks he has a hit on his hands.
“I think it could be the ultimate book about New York City basketball in its heyday,” said Spitzer, who realized when he received the manuscript that he and Alfieri had been summer league teammates in the late 1950s.
In the Lapchick era – which spanned the ’30s to the mid-’60s – college hoops was far bigger than the pro league.
Lapchick , a star in some fledgling pro hoop leagues that went belly-up in the Great Depression, had only a grammar school education when he was tapped to be the coach of St. John’s in 1936.
Ten years later, he was lured to be the coach of the New York Knicks in the second year of the then-fledgling National Basketball Association in 1947. The pros wanted him for their inaugural season but couldn’t get the principled coach to leave his team in the lurch. “He felt he had a commitment to St. John’s and didn’t want to walk out on them,” said Alfieri.
Lapchick stayed with the Knicks until 1956, when he returned to his beloved St. John’s Red Men, where he coached until the 1964-1965 season.
In a made for Hollywood ending, Lapchick finished his last year on top. St. John’s won what was then the top post-season tournament in the nation, the National Invitational Tournament, beating Villanova.
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As the New York Times gears up to take its Sunday Styles section national, there is considerable shuffling in the ranks.
Deputy Style Editor Ileen Rosenzweig is said to be getting ready to jump ship, following her boyfriend, Rick Marin, out the door. She’s been lured by the sweet smell of book-publishing success and a possible TV comedy in development with Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment.
Marin, a Styles writer, left this summer after scoring a book deal with Disney’s Hyperion to write “CAD – Confessions of a Toxic Bachelor.” Miramax has already picked up the film option.
Now, Rosenzweig, who co-authored “Swell, a Girl’s Guide to the Good Life” with Cynthia Rowley, is leaving to do two more “Swell” books with her friend. The Pocket books imprint is paying the duo an estimated $750,000 for a two-book deal to write “Home Swell Home” about decorating and “The Swell Dressed Party” about entertaining.
But that’s not all the news at the Style section.
Times sources confirmed that the flamboyant magazine beat reporter Alex Kuczynski – daughter of Peruvian Economic Minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the economic minister for Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo – is leaving her mag beat job to return to the revamped Styles section.
The Sunday Styles section sometime this fall is about to become part of the national edition of the Times. In the past, it was part of the local package only.
Kuczynski was on vacation and could not be reached, but her media editor, David Smith, confirmed the move is afoot. No replacement has been named he said.
A Times spokesman said that Rosenzweig will still do some work for the paper.
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Scott Crystal thinks his days at the embattled Ziff Davis Media group – where he was the executive vice president of the consumer media group – prepared him well for his new gig at Gruner + Jahr. He was tapped to succeed David Carey, who bailed out of the CEO job of the group that includes Inc. and Fast Company to return to the publisher post at The New Yorker. “It’s not daunting at all,” Crystal said of his new gig overseeing the two titles.
“In a sense, I was at a technical publishing company at the worst possible time,” he said of his days at Ziff Davis. “But it enabled me to look at publishing from a different perspective,” he said. During his tenure, Family PC was closed and his boss Jim Dunning was ousted as profits shrank.
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