Honoring a legacy of giving

Sid Tanenbaum Memorial Basketball Tournament celebrates 30 years

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Sid Tanenbaum, who lived in Woodmere and owned a metal-stamping shop in Far Rockaway, where he was known more for his charitable ways than his two-handed set shot, has been honored for the past 30 years with a basketball tournament that raises scholarship money for students in the Five Towns.

The annual event is named for the 6-foot guard who starred at New York University in the 1940s. He was stabbed to death in his shop in 1986, at age 60, by a woman he had given money to several times. Tanenbaum was known as a benefactor to the homeless in the neighborhood.

His generosity lives on thanks to Cedarhurst resident Syd Mandelbaum, who, along with the Tanenbaum family and Abram Williams, a former commissioner of the Nassau County Department of Parks and Recreation, established the tournament, which will take place on Sunday at North Woodmere Park, where the basketball courts are also named in honor of Tanenbaum. The games will begin at 8:30 a.m.

“Both Sid and I were from Brownsville, in Brooklyn,” said Mandelbaum, the founder and chief executive officer of the poverty think tank Rock and Wrap It Up!, which helps sponsor the tournament. “We developed a special relationship playing ball at Hewlett High School and North Woodmere Park. He was around the same age as my mother, who is a Holocaust survivor. He would ask me to tell him stories about her concentration camp experience, which I did, slowly and in detail. He told me that he always thought about his contemporaries on Europe during the war, and always wondered if he would have survived a camp.”

When Tanenbaum left NYU, he was the Violets’ leading career scorer, with 922 points. He played two seasons in the Basketball Association of America, the predecessor of the NBA, for both the New York Knicks and the Baltimore Bullets. But he wasn’t a fan of being on the road, and retired after just 70 games, having scored 633 points and dished out 162 assists.

His legacy, however, looms large. In the Sid Tanenbaum Memorial Tournament, players in five divisions — boys 15-19, men’s open (18 and over), men over 40, women’s open and a wheelchair category — play for donations that support more than $30,000 in scholarships that have been given to students from Lawrence High School, Lawrence Woodmere Academy’s upper school and the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway High School. The scholarships range from $50 to $500.

The tournament has attracted the attention of celebrities ranging from former Knicks star Walt Frazier, who was the keynote speaker at the inaugural competition, to another former Knicks player, the late Anthony Mason, and Craig “Speedy” Claxton, who starred at Hofstra and played for no fewer than five NBA teams. Former U.S. Rep. Raymond McGrath and former Nassau County Executive Tom Gulotta have attended the event, and retired State Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg and current Town of Hempstead Councilman Bruce Blakeman have played in it.

Far Rockaway native and Lawrence Woodmere Academy graduate Karim Shabazz, who teaches health at his alma mater and coached this season’s baseball team to a league championship, fondly remembered the year, 1996, in which he played in the tournament.

“I had traveled all over New York City, but [had] never been [to] or heard of North Woodmere Park or the tournament,” recalled Shabaaz, who played college ball at Florida State and Providence and went on to play professionally in Europe. “When [LWA] coach [Jeff] Weiss asked me to play during my junior year of high school, I said sure. It was another chance to play with my good friends Craig Cacciola, Travis Reid and my brother, Quayyim. The park was nice, and they had those double rims, but that wasn’t a problem because Craig and my brother were such great shooters. Once the tournament started, you could see that our team had the perfect combination of inside and outside players, and we easily won our tournament division.”

“The county is honored to have North Woodmere Park host the Sid Tanenbaum tournament,” said current county Parks Commissioner Brian Nugent. “Men, women, teens and handicapped players compete in this single-elimination tournament, creating vibrant competition and fair play. This year the tournament celebrates its 30th year, and we hope to have it here for another 30.”