Erving’s former 76ers frontcourt mate, Bobby Jones, offers, “People say that athletes are freaks of nature, but he may be, too.”
Larry Brown, the one-time Sixers coach who was inducted into the Naismith Hall with Pollack in 2002, says discussing NBA history with Pollack is “like going to graduate school.” To Jim Lynam, also an ex-76ers coach, Pollack is “a gem … one of a kind.”
Moments before a 76ers game earlier this month against the Los Angeles Clippers, Pollack, sporting a full gray mane and slightly stooped over, ambles down the corridor from his cramped office — one littered with papers and paraphernalia — settles into his scorer’s table seat, straps on earphones and a microphone, and goes to work.
He long ago developed an intricate code to convey information to a colleague across the court for input into a desktop computer.
The colleague recording the data for statistical posterity? His 67-year-old son, Ron, who has worked with dad since 1962. On the night of Chamberlain’s wondrous game in Hershey, Pa., it was Ron who ran copy to the Western Union desk for transmittal to the wire services.
Ron’s son Brian, 40, works nearly every game with them from near the basket, calling out turnovers and substitutions. Not even the elder Pollack can monitor everything.
But Pollack’s basketball work extends beyond courtside. Silver’s “encyclopedia” metaphor is literal, too, since the “Harvey Pollack NBA Statistical Yearbook,” published annually since 1966, remains a staple of offices throughout the league.
As a player, Jones says he’d open the book and wonder how Pollack conjured such arcana as who had the most 360-degree dunks or the most offensive rebounds in the first quarter of a game — the latter mark belongs to Jones.
Besides basketball, Pollack’s No. 1 is Reba Greenberg Meyers, a 91-year-old widow known as Ritzi. (One of his T-shirts reads “Harvey is Ditzy When He Sees Ritzi.”). They began dating in 2004, set up by a mutual friend.
For one with a hard drive’s memory, Pollack hadn’t realized until their first date — at a restaurant in Voorhees, in southern New Jersey, he notes — that she belonged to his Simon Gratz High School Class of 1939.
Something else Pollack doesn’t know: What became of the iconic “100” sign and the ball Chamberlain used to score his 99th and 100th points that night in a victory over the New York Knicks.
Says Pollack: “Biggest mistake I made.”
There haven’t been many.
This article was written by Hillel Kuttler for JTA.