Basketball: Princeton great Joe Ruklick - In his own words (Part 2)

Editor’s note: Joe Ruklick doesn’t have a display case in the Prouty Gym lobby at Princeton High School, because he’s been the school’s all-time leading scorer since 1955. But rather because of his remarkable life story rising out of the Covenant Children’s home, being cut from the freshman team at PHS to become an unanimous All-State player, Prep All-American and College All-American for Northwestern University. He left NU in 1959 with 16 school records. He was a first-round draft pick of the Philadelphia Warriors, famous for recording the assist on teammate’s Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point basket in 1962. His story is what legends are made of. The following is a letter that Ruklick, who passed away on Sept. 17, 2020. wrote to BCR Sports Editor Kevin Hieronymus, shown with the flair of his future in journalism, on April 13, 1995, leading up to the 1953-54 and 1954-55 state basketball teams’ induction into the BCR’s Bureau County Sports Hall of Fame. Here’s Joe Ruklick in his own words: Part 2, playing for Northwestern University and the NBA’s Philadelphia Warriors.

COLLEGE-NORTHWESTERN

We’ve got a heckuva good bunch of freshman, and we beat the varsity. My sophomore year, I beat out the team captain, Bill Schulz, hero of Hebron’s 1952 state champs. I scored 31 in the first half against the Illini the first time I’m back in Huff Gym since the state tournament. A zealous official fouls me out on three QUESTIONABLES the second half. (Illinois coach) Harry Combes stares at the floor when I run by their bench. The bad guys win, though, blunting my message to Harry the faculty member.

I hold Wilt Chamberlain to 52 points in his first college game our sophomore year and I’m MVP my sophomore and junior years. We put on two winning seasons in a row for Northwestern (they’ve had only three winning seasons in the 36 years since) and we beat No. 5 Maryland and No. 1 West Virginia my senior year. We come THIS CLOSE to winning the Big Ten: If Phil Warren doesn’t break his foot mid-season and miss seven games, we’re champions.

I sit there listening to a doctor at Columbus Hospital on the afternoon we’re to play Minnesota. He tells Art Ellis (his foster parent in Princeton) they can’t help him anymore. He has pancreatic cancer. I score seven that night, my all-time college low, and we lose.

Years later, I’m elected a charter member of Northwestern’s athletic hall of fame, the only modern-era basketball player in the class of 50. I’m a charter member of the Illinois Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame. I owe the plaques to Don Sheffer and his code of honor.

PRO BALL

Now the crazy stuff starts. Coach (Princeton’s Don) Sheffer’s code of honor, the lessons we learn from the mystery of the land, all the American virtues disappear behind the pro basketball show. “I’m to learn that Wilt Chamberlain will be featured by his Philadelphia NBA team as an attraction, featured like he was put on stage when he played for the Globetrotters. In Boston, Red Auerbach will operate a championship franchise by building a winner around Bill Russell. This is in direct opposition to the show put on by Philadelphia impresario and owner Eddie Gottlieb.

The show starts when Wilt is drafted out of high school. I become Philadelphia’s first draft choice, then, my senior year in college. Nowadays the NBA draft is a TV show in prime time. I found out I was Philadelphia’s No. 1 pick when I bought the Sunday Chicago Tribune at an old fashioned news stand on Rush Street after I’d taken a date home. There were all the NBA draft choices in the bottom right hand corner of page three of the sports section in a three-inch column.

Philadelphia now has Wilt, me and six-time all NBA center Neil Johnston, who’s recovering from knee surgery and plans to be player coach and Wilt’s back-up center. To make the team I have to beat out Neil.

But why does Gottlieb want me? He needs a “White Hope” for his sideshow in a league whose unwritten rule was that there were to be no more than three black players - and ABSOLUTELY no more than four - on any team. The fans won’t pay if too many blacks are on pro rosters. That’s the owners’ thinking in this pre-civil-rights era. And Philadelphia wants Ruklick as the White Hope, a Big Ten All-American who scored 22 and 27 in his college games against Wilt and who looks like a fine player opposite this monstrous giant Chamberlain. The idea is to accent the spectacle Wilt creates when he walks out on to the floor by dramatizing that he’s superior to the All American from Northwestern. That he does. I beat out Neil.

I score 19 against the Knicks once in my rookie year and I’m ballyhooed as the Player of the Game. I sit for six subsequent games. I go along for the first season, then I asked to be traded. Gottlieb says, “Come back for your second year: Wilt will need rest.”

In my second season I hit nine out of 13 shots in a game at Madison Square Garden. The fans go crazy because I’m shrinking the gamblers’ point spread. Ed Conlin, darling of New York and a Fordham alumnus, later to coach Fordham, takes a shot during my hot streak and his beloved New York fans boo him when it misses.

I ask to be traded after that season and Gottlieb says they’ll need me at forward for my third year. I buy it, sit most of the season, but I become a sports asterisk when I get the assist on the basket that brings Wilt to 100 points against the Knicks in March.

After three seasons sitting behind Wilt as the foil to the scoring machine, the team is sold to San Francisco. The owner offers me a fat contract and when I insist on being traded, he says “If you don’t like San Francisco I promise I will deal you to the team of your choice.”

Do I have any pride? Is my small-town America morality totally forgotten? Have I abandoned Coach Sheffer’s code of honor? Hell, no. I say goodbye to my teammates, get a job as a salesman, and retire from basketball.

Years later, Wilt sends my son, John, the jersey he wore in his first college game against us. Kansas, 13. The editor of Sports Memorabilia magazine told me it’s worth $12,500 to $15,000 at first bid if it’s authentic, maybe twice or three times that to a fanatic.

Wilt’s letter to my son authenticates it.

Maybe Wilt had a high school coach like Don Sheffer.