TicketsThe Cincinnati men’s basketball team’s Nov. 15 game against Nicholls will be yet another festive Fifth Third Arena atmosphere, but there will be an even bigger purpose on display.
"As I learned of this story after becoming the Head Coach at Cincinnati, I was amazed that it is not more well-known across the country,” Wes Miller said. “Regardless of your loyalty or interest in basketball, this is a story that can enrich us all. As Jack Twyman is one of UC's own, it's only right that we use our platform to bring light to this incredible story of teammates."
This is a story of immaculate teammates, forged first in Rochester, New York, then Cincinnati and later New York’s Catskills Mountains before sweeping across the nation, that sent shockwaves throughout the NBA on player unionization and an immortalized, annual award for the league’s Teammate of the Year.
Cincinnati’s game against Nicholls, part of the greater Twyman-Stokes Classic MTE shared with Northern Kentucky and Nicholls over the week, will bring this wonderful, intertwined story back into the fold.
KNOWING JACK AND MAURICE
Twyman, a native of Pittsburgh, had an unlikely ascent to the Hall of Fame, having been cut by his Central Catholic High School team before making it as a senior. He then signed to play at Cincinnati, scored 1,598 points (the most in school history at the time), before playing 11 outstanding seasons with the Rochester/Cincinnati Royals.
Stokes was also from the Pittsburgh area, the son of a steelworker, and dominated at St. Francis (Pa.) College where he became the second pick of the 1955 NBA Draft. He was the Rookie of the Year the following season and broke the NBA’s single-season rebound record in his second year.
In the final regular season game of the 1957-58 season, which was both players’ third in the league but the Royals’ first in Cincinnati, Stokes fell to the floor and hit his head. Days later, flying back from a road playoff game at Detroit in which he had 12 points and 15 rebounds, he experienced terrible pain, had a seizure and was taken directly to the hospital upon landing, where he went into a coma and woke up quadriplegic and unable to speak, suffering from post-traumatic encephalopathy.
THE LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY
Initially, the only communication Stokes could bear was blinking “yes” and “no” answers to Twyman and hospital staff. Over time, with letter-by-letter prompting to the alphabet, he composed his first note to Jack:
“Dear Jack, How will I ever be able to thank you? Maurie”
IMPACT ON FANS, PLAYERS AND THE NBA THAT WE KNOW TODAY
It exposed a lot of players to their vulnerabilities with the league in the event of catastrophic injury,” Twyman said. “Nobody had insurance because they were all independent contractors. It was the impetus for starting a players' union with collective bargaining and healthcare and pension.
“When Maurice was stricken down, he had about $5,000 in savings and $100,000 per year in hospital bills. It was a pretty dire situation. My dad was 23 and just starting a family in a different time back then, but he was the one there and wanted to raise money and go through a lot of hoops for Maurice to maneuver hospital bills, therapies and all of that. He sued the state of Ohio and became his legal guardian to be able to represent him. He filed a lawsuit against the state of Ohio for workman's comp because he was injured in a work accident, and that helped to pay a little of the bills.”
January 14, 1964: the NBA All-Star Game. As Stokes’ financial and physical condition continued to make waves amongst the league’s biggest names, everyone from Oscar Robertson to Bill Russell staged a holdout in the pregame locker room unless the team owners recognized the players’ union. With a nationally-televised audience geared up to watch a still-budding league (far from what it is today), such a news break would have been catastrophic.
An agreement was made five minutes to eight, and it was history from there.
EMPIRE STATE OF MIND
Jack Twyman’s big breakthrough was playing in New York one night, when Milt Kutsher, owner of Kutsher’s Country Club and Resort in the Catskills, introduced him with a bold fundraising idea.
“They had a basketball arena for all the summer leagues with internships,” Jay said. “A lot of college players did internships up there in the Borscht Belt or the Jewish Alps. Wilt Chamberlain was there as a bellhop, and he said he had this resort, court and stands. He would provide everything including hotels and meals, and as long as he got the players, he would give 100 percent of the receipts and host a Maurice Stokes benefit game.”
Jay said that its first year, nobody had any idea who would show up. The league only had 8-10 teams, so roughly 100 players overall.
Every player showed up and played before a sold-out crowd that included autograph sessions.
“It became a significant fundraiser,” Jay said. “I have a lot of childhood memories going to that game, playing pool with Cazzie Russell and shaking Lew Alcindor's hand.”
RETURN TO THE FOREFRONT
Twyman credits high school friend Bill Barrett, the chair of UC’s Cancer Center and namesake of the Barrett Center building, for its beginnings.
“We were talking about ways of using the legacy and if I would be open to bringing the name back to the forefront at UC as a way to also raise money for cancer research. He has a specific foundation which is not affiliated with UC, but there is a new venture with UC's blood cancer center. We thought it would be fun to bring the name back.”
The elder Twyman passed in 2012 from chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a form of blood cancer.
“We approached Wes a while ago, and these things happen a lot but it's about who you go through and how you present it,” Jay said. “I met Dick Thornburgh through another organization and discussed it with him. He knew the story, and I said I wanted to do some good and raise money for a friend, but for the school, it's a catalyst to bring some people back who had fallen away from the program.”
From there, Twyman said Thornburgh “deserves all the credit for elevating it to the right levels,” first with Barrett and Director of Athletics John Cunningham. The interest continued to rise, including with Coach Miller.
“We decided to go to the UCF game and get there early to talk to the two,” Twyman said of their Orlando rendezvous this past February. “John had no idea and thought it was amazing, and Wes was the same way about seeing his name and number in the facility, but not knowing how much more there was.
“If you're recruiting players and telling them about the legacy the school produces, what better way than to point to this one?”
“WHAT YOUR DAD DID FOR ONE OF OUR BROTHERS, THAT’S A STORY WE WANT TO KEEP ALIVE”
It goes without saying that the Twyman-Stokes bond took place during one of the most contentious decades, the 1960s. Even though Jay says that Jack never harped on it, the matter was still there.
“To have a white man adopt a Black man and take him under his wing, for my dad it wasn't an issue or thought, but some people didn't like that,” Jay said. “When my dad passed away (in 2012), we received a number of calls at my mom's house. One of them was Reverend Jesse Jackson, and he was so complimentary and said 'listen, what your dad did for one of our brothers, that's a story we want to keep alive.'
“I think he might have been one of the ones to lobby the NBA for the Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year Award and honor that relationship. It should be about a brotherhood and not about Black or white. It was a story of humanity.”
That award, first bestowed to Chauncey Billups in 2013, and later Tim Duncan, Vince Carter, Dirk Nowitzki and Damian Lillard among many other stars, recognizes the player deemed the best teammate based on selfless play, on- and off-court leadership as a mentor and role model to other NBA players, and commitment and dedication to team.
Another notable call came by the way of Hall of Fame center Bob Pettit.
“When I answered, this deep Southern accent asked for Carol. She was out but I said I was his son, Jay, and he said 'tell Carol that Bob Pettit called and my only message is that ‘I loved your father, and when I see all these players in the NBA today at tip-off hugging each other, I think that's all BS. The only person I would hug was your dad for what he did for Maurice. Everyone else, it was a war out there. Let your mom know that I called and I loved your dad.’ Those are pretty influential.”
TWYMAN’S TWILIGHT STILL SHINED BRIGHT
Jack’s later years were of high optimism and love for his grandchildren. His first bout of CLL came when he was 70, then after treatment it resurfaced 5-6 years later. He supported UC and the Bengals and managed to shoot his age in golf at 72.
One thing Jay prides himself on is Jack’s conversation with a priest that he was happy with his life and what was around the corner, in addition to if it was okay to opt out of any final treatments.
“The priest told him not only was it not bad, but you've taught us how to live, how to die at peace with deep faith.”
Twyman had three chapters of his life: basketball player, chairman of two major food wholesalers that registered on the New York Stock Exchange, and grandfather.
“His playing number was 27, and for a short time he was 31,” Jay said. “When he's in the hospital meeting with all the kids at the end, he said to 'keep your eye out, because I'll be winking at you. It's me when you see anything that you think is me.' The first day of school that next year, my son, Skyler, goes to his grade school class and gets his locker, and as he opens it up, he starts crying because "it's my grandpa." The code was 27-0-31. We see things all the time, like my son getting married on July 27, a wink to my grandpa who wanted to be at the wedding. One of my kids noticed at the RNC when Trump had the firefighter suit on stage, the helmet had 27 on it. My sons' room number at University of Chicago was 427. The 27 always shows up and it's uncanny, from flights to hotel rooms.”
STOKES’ EFFECT ON YOUNG JAY
Jay was born in 1960, and he said Stokes was omnipresent his whole childhood until his passing in 1970.
“I didn't know him as a player before, but as sort of this big guy who was my dad's best friend that would come to our house for dinner with a big entourage and ambulance,” he said. “We would visit him whenever my dad was in town, on a weekend, and my mom would make a point to have others exposed to him and make him part of our family.”
Jay also noted that among Stokes’ high engagement and upbeat attitude was him being prolific in artwork and ceramics. Jay still possesses a paper mache box on his desk, six-by-four inches compiled of clippings of football and basketball players, complete with a lid emblazoned with Stokes in his wheelchair and the phrase “leading the life.”
“He really thought he was fortunate to have so many people caring for him in this journey to getting back to normalcy.”
Stokes’ efforts transcended the Twyman household and included the entire Good Samaritan Hospital, where staff would bring him into visit with other patients who were feeling down and need a boost.
“He was Magic Johnson before Magic,” Jay said. “This was a man who had the world as his oyster and lost it all to being paralyzed, and my dad said he never saw him down and took it as a challenge. It was a pretty inspiring thing to grow up seeing as a child. I remember when I played at South Carolina, media asked who my hero was growing up, and they didn't know who Maurice Stokes was. Even Oscar Robertson said if he wasn't injured, you wouldn't be hearing about the Boston Celtics. You'd hear about the Cincinnati Royals' dominance. He was one of those generational players.”
BECOME THAT SOMEONE
Stokes was inducted posthumously into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2004, with Twyman giving the acceptance speech on his behalf. Joined beside him on stage were Robertson and Pettit.
Corroborated by both sportswriter Pete Vecsey and Jay Twyman in a February 2020 edition of ESPN’s Basketball: A Love Story, while they were from the same area of Pittsburgh, they were not friends.
“To be perfectly frank, they weren’t particularly close as players,” Jay said. “Maurice was a rebounder, team player, assist guy, and they were constantly at each other. Here’s a guy who was an NBA star, stricken one night. Jack stepped right up.”
“Maurice was on his own, something had to be done, and somebody had to do it,” Jack said as he sought to deflect his own actions. “I was the only one that was there, so I became that someone."
St. Francis University saw the quote as a perfect fit “with the Franciscan mission of service to others,” and adopted it as its official branding statement in 2017.
“Never did I see him depressed, angry or ‘why-me?’ Twyman said at the Hall of Fame. “He looked forward to the new day every day…as much has been said that I’ve done so much for Maurice, whatever I’ve done for him, I’ve gained tenfold from him.
“I’m thrilled to be here on behalf of Maurice. He belongs in the Hall of Fame. He was a great player, and in closing, let me just say ‘congrats, big fella. You made it.’”