Paul Arizin

One of Basketball’s All-Time Greats

By Rich Westcott

 In his senior year in college, Paul Arizin led the nation in scoring and was named first team All-American. Two years later, he won his first of two scoring titles in the National Basketball Association. He was a 10-time NBA all-star, and after his career was over, he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Ultimately, Arizin was chosen as one of the top 50 NBA players of all time.

 And that’s not bad for a guy who was cut from his high school basketball team and who went to college with no intentions of playing the sport.

Arizin’s basketball career was a strong testimony to the virtues of hard work and perseverance. Using those traits, the former Villanova University and Philadelphia Warriors star rose from obscurity to national prominence while making an indelible imprint on the pages of basketball history. In the process, he refused to give up. He believed in himself. And his achievements spectacularly demonstrated that high levels can be reached even if they don’t always seem possible.

A resident of Springfield, Pa. for many years, Arizin, who died suddenly at the age of 78 in 2006, grew up in the basketball-rich city of Philadelphia. He played the sport as a youth, but never with any particular distinction and certainly without attracting any attention. In fact, baseball—a sport that he followed closely all of his life—held his interest as much as basketball did.

Eventually, the boy from South Philadelphia, an area of the city that many years earlier had spawned sports legend (and future Warriors coach and owner) Eddie Gottlieb and his famed SPHAS (South Philadelphia Hebrew Association) basketball team, enrolled at La Salle High School. A boys’ school located on the La Salle College campus in the Olney section of the city, the school had a highly successful sports program, a major part of which was its basketball team.

The level of competition was seemingly well above Arizin’s skills, but in his senior year, Paul tried out for the team. He lasted a few games, then was cut.

It wasn’t a case of poor judgement by a vision-impaired coach. “I simply wasn’t good enough,” Arizin recalled many years later. “It was just a lack of ability, pure and simple.”       

 Arizin, though, wasn’t discouraged. Demonstrating the tenacity that would later become one of his most visible strengths, he continued to play basketball in what were then called playground leagues. Then, after graduating from La Salle (the same school from which Tom Gola graduated), he enrolled in the fall of 1946 at Villanova with the intention of majoring in chemistry.

Initially, basketball at Villanova was not part of Arizin’s college life. “I never even saw the court,” he said. “I was strictly a student.”

He did, however, continue to play in the playground leagues that held games at various recreation centers around the city.  “Fellows were coming back from the service, and there was a lot of good independent ball being played,” Arizin said. “Eventually, I was playing five or six nights a week while going to school.”

He was also working hard to upgrade his skills, spending long hours alone in the gym, relentlessly practising every phase of his game. Arizin’s hard work finally began to reap rewards when in one local tournament, ultimately won by a team manned by members of the Villanova varsity, he was named the most valuable player. Soon afterwards, Paul was spotted playing in a gym by Wildcats coach Al Severance.

The Villanova mentor knew a good thing when he saw it. And he invited the unheralded youth to try out the following fall for the Wildcat varsity. The rest, as they say, is history.

Arizin made the team, then led it in scoring in each of his last two years. He scored 85 points in one game. And in his senior year in 1950, he led the nation in scoring with 735 points (25.3 average), was named College Player of the Year, and was selected first team All-American by six different organizations..

A first round territorial pick of the Warriors, Arizin played forward and averaged 17.2 points in his rookie season. The following season (1951-52), he won the NBA scoring title with 1,674 points (25.4). “Pitchin’ Paul,” as he became known, spent the next two years in the Marines. After returning to the Warriors, he teamed with Neil Johnston and Gola to lead the team to the NBA championship in 1955-56. Then he won the scoring crown again in 1956-57 with 817 points (25.6).

Arizin also finished second in the NBA in scoring twice. He was named first team all-NBA three times, and played in 10 all-star games, winning the Most Valuable Player award in the 1952 game.

“I was a guy who played as hard as he could, and who played to win,” Arizin once said of himself.

While he played, Arizin demonstrated a deadly jump shot and a marvelous ability to drive for the basket. Arizin was one of the first NBA players to use a jump shot on a regular basis. Some admirers called the shot a Renoir. Others said it was a Rembrandt. By any name, Arizin had an uncanny ability to put the ball in the basket, and his jumper and baseline drives stamped lifelong memories in the minds of those who were fortunate enough to have seen him play.

Arizin was among the smaller forwards in the NBA, standing just 6-feet, 4-inches, which was usually three or four inches shorter than his opponents. So he had to overcome that, too, along with a bothersome sinus condition that plagued him throughout his career.  The condition hampered his breathing, causing him to wheeze as he hustled up and down the court.

Paul retired from the NBA in 1962 when the Warriors moved to San Francisco. But he was not done with basketball. He played for three more seasons with the Camden Bullets of the Eastern Basketball League. He then retired from basketball in 1965 and began a full-time career in business.

In 1978, Arizin was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. He entered the basketball shrine not only as one of the game’s greatest players but as one of the most decorated and widely acclaimed players in Philadelphia’s storied basketball history. 

When the names of Philadelphia pro basketball legends such as Wilt Chamberlain, Julius Erving, Allen Iverson, Joe Fulks, Hal Greer, Moses Malone, Johnston, and Gola are mentioned, Arizin always rates a special place among those local pillars of the game.

For Paul, it was not easy reaching that level. But in doing it, he nobly showed that success can come to those who are willing to work hard, even if it requires overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds. 

Rich Westcott is a writer and sports historian and the author of 29 sports books..