The SPHAs, Philadelphia's Jewish Basketball Champions

The South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, known as the SPHAs, played professional basketball here at the Broadwood Hotel from nineteen eighteen through nineteen fifty-nine, winning twelve league championships along the way. During their peak years in the nineteen thirties, the roster was almost entirely Jewish, reflecting the neighborhood's immigrant character and making the team a point of communal pride in an era when Jewish athletes faced real discrimination elsewhere. Their owner and coach, Eddie Gottlieb, was one of the most influential figures in the early history of professional basketball: he helped establish the Basketball Association of America, which merged in nineteen forty-nine to form the NBA, and went on to own the Philadelphia Warriors.

In later years the SPHAs toured with the Harlem Globetrotters, barnstorming across the country. Their story is a window into the immigrant communities that shaped American professional sports.