Whitey Von Nieda
Encyclopedia
Stanley "Whitey" Von Nieda, Jr. (born June 19, 1922) is a retired American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 player. He was born in Ephrata, Pennsylvania
Ephrata, Pennsylvania
Ephrata is a borough in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States, south east of Harrisburg and about west by north of Philadelphia. It is named after Ephrath, a biblical town in what is now Israel. Ephrata's sister city is Eberbach, Germany, the city where its founders originated. In its...

.

He played basketball at Ephrata High School and Penn State University. Enlisting in the army during World War II, he played with the Fort Benning, Georgia paratroopers. There he led the country, both college and service teams, in scoring with 1062 points in 44 games. After being discharged he played for the Lancaster Red Roses in the Eastern Basketball League where he led that league in scoring, averaging better than 24 points per game.

In 1947 he began playing for the Tri-City Blackhawks in the National Basketball League (NBL). While with the Blackhawks he made the All-Rookie team averaging 12 points a game. The team made it to the final round of the playoffs in both of the years he played there. In 1949, the founding year of the National Basketball Association (NBA), he was traded to the Baltimore Bullets where he completed the 1949 and 1950 NBA seasons. In Baltimore he started every game playing both point guard
Point guard
Point guard , also called the play maker or "the ball-handler", is one of the standard positions in a regulation basketball game. A point guard has perhaps the most specialized role of any position – essentially, he is expected to run the team's offense by controlling the ball and making sure that...

 and shooting guard
Shooting guard
The shooting guard , also known as the two or off guard, is one of five traditional positions on a basketball team. Players of the position are often shorter, leaner, and quicker than forwards. A shooting guard's main objective is to score points for his team...

. Whitey was known for his quickness on the court.

After leaving the NBA he coached at Elizabethtown College for two years. In 1952 he became the player/coach of the Lancaster Red Roses for four years making it to the finals three of the four years. Again in 1985 he coached Lancaster in the Continental League, these teams were a stepping stone to the NBA. Once again his team made it to the finals. For many years he coached midget teams where he worked with 10 and 12 year-old kids teaching them the fundamentals of basketball.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK