Harry Gallatin obit

Harry Gallatin, Rugged and Durable Hall of Famer With the Knicks, Dies at 88

He was not on the list.

Harry Gallatin, a ferocious rebounder who played nine seasons for the Knicks and 746 consecutive games in a postwar era when pro basketball was a low-paid game for smaller, thinner men, died on Wednesday in Edwardsville, Ill. He was 88.

His wife, Beverly Gallatin, said he had died after surgery.

When fans get nostalgic about the old days — before jump shooters, the 3-point line, shot clocks and $20-million-a-year contracts — the legends who are often mentioned are Bob Cousy and Ed Macauley of the Boston Celtics, George Mikan and Vern Mikkelsen of the Minneapolis Lakers, Dolph Schayes of the Syracuse Nationals, and Nat (Sweetwater) Clifton and Dick McGuire of the Knickerbockers.

But to the cognoscenti, there is Harry Gallatin, nicknamed the Horse, a bruising, durable Hall of Fame forward and center and seven-time All-Star who never missed a game in his 10-year playing career, from 1948 to 1958, and who grabbed 33 rebounds in a game against the Fort Wayne Pistons on March 15, 1953. That still stands as a Knicks record, matched only by Willis Reed years later.

The Knicks earned seven playoff berths in Gallatin’s nine seasons with them, and they played in the National Basketball Association finals three straight years, although they lost to the Rochester Royals in 1951 and to the dynastic Lakers in 1952 and ’53.

Gallatin’s string of consecutive games played — 682 in the regular season and 64 in the playoffs — was herculean, although it is not an N.B.A. record. That is held by A. C. Green, who played in 1,192 consecutive games — and 1,278 games out of the 1,281 in his career — in 16 seasons, from 1985 to 2001, playing for the Los Angeles Lakers, the Phoenix Suns, the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat.

By today’s N.B.A. standards for forwards, and certainly for centers, Gallatin was not especially big, at 6 feet 6 inches and 225 pounds. And by his own admission, he could not even jump well.

But he was rugged and instinctive under the rim, sensing where the ball would come down after a missed shot and knowing how to box out bigger players to get it.

In New York, he averaged nearly 12 rebounds a game. In 1954, he led the league in rebounding with 15 a game and was named to the All-N.B.A. first team. The Knicks traded him to the Detroit Pistons for his final season, 1957-58.

After his playing career, he had a successful four-year run as the head basketball coach at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

In 1962, he returned to the N.B.A. to coach the St. Louis Hawks. That season, the Hawks reached the division finals, and he was named the N.B.A.’s coach of the year. After three seasons in St. Louis, he coached the Knicks briefly in 1965 before being replaced by an old teammate, McGuire.

In 1987, after decades as a college teacher and coach in the Midwest, Gallatin returned to play in an All-Star old-timers’ game. He might as well have landed in another century. Basketball was dominated by towering giants and dazzling superstars like Michael Jordan, with their multimillion-dollar contracts.

“Gosh, I made $4,500 when I joined the Knicks in 1948,” Gallatin told George Vecsey of The New York Times. “I made $13,500 in my best season. The money today is just amazing. I just hope the players today appreciate it.”

Harry Junior Gallatin was born on April 26, 1927, in Roxana, Ill., to Harry E. Gallatin and the former Cecile Hartmann. He played basketball at Wood River and Roxana High Schools and graduated in 1944.

After serving in the Navy in World War II, he attended Northeast Missouri State Teachers College (now Truman State University) and led the basketball team to a 59-4 record in two years. The Knicks drafted him in 1948.

“It was a dream come true,” Gallatin told the Illinois newspaper The Edwardsville Intelligencer in 2007. “I really didn’t know what to expect; it was my first plane ride, from St. Louis to New York. Here I am a boy from Wood River, a country boy, and going to the Big Apple.”

Gallatin married Beverly Hull in 1949. Besides her, he is survived by their sons, Steve, Jim and Bill; his sister, Eileen Palmer; eight grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Organized in 1946, the Knicks played at the old Madison Square Garden on Eighth Avenue and 49th Street, except when circuses, rodeos or the Harlem Globetrotters bumped them to the 69th Regiment Armory, at Lexington Avenue and 25th Street. On the road, they traveled by train.

Gallatin fit right in with a team noted for playmaking, rebounding and defense. “Our coach, Joe Lapchick, who was an amazing motivator, wouldn’t have it any other way,” Gallatin told an N.B.A. website in 2005. “Stylistically and philosophically, we were definitely the forerunners of those smart Knicks championship teams of ’70 and ’73.”

Like many players, he rarely argued referees’ calls. Old films show a game of slender athletes putting up two-handed set shots and big men like Mikan with unstoppable hook shots and great finesse, especially around the basket.

Within two years, Gallatin was an All-Star. He is ranked 14th in career scoring for the Knicks, with 7,771 points; fourth in rebounds, with 5,935; and sixth in playoff rebounds, with 522.

After his basketball days, he was also a teacher, dean of students and basketball and golf coach at Southern Illinois University’s campus in Edwardsville.

He was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 1991. He retired in 1992.

Before the 1998 All-Star Game, he recalled his own, and the league’s, first All-Star Game, in 1951.

“I think we got nothing to play in it that year,” he told The Times. “In later years, I remember getting a $100 cash stipend, then getting a ring.

“I think the difference between modern players and the pioneers is that we probably would have played for nothing. Of course, we didn’t tell the owners that.

His notable teammates were: Carl Braun, Butch van Breda Kolff, Dick McGuire, Ernie Vandeweghe, Vince Boryla, Nathaniel "Sweetwater" Clifton, Max Zaslofsky, Tex Ritter, Al McGuire, Ray Felix, Gene Shue, Kenny Sears, Walter Dukes, Jim Baechtold, Slater Martin, Willie Naulls, Richie Guerin, Mel Hutchins,

Some of his coaches were: Joe Lapchick, Vince Boryla, Red Rocha and Charles Eckman.