American basketball player (1937–2022)
Donald Goldstein (1937 – May 27, 2022[2]), known as "Red", was an American college All-American and Pan American Games champion basketball player.[1]
Early life
Goldstein was Jewish.[1] His mother died when he was four.[1] He grew up poor, in the Brooklyn ghetto of Brownsville, and attended Flatbush's Samuel J. Tilden High School, where he was an all-city basketball player and graduated in 1955.[1]
College and Pan American Games
He attended the University of Louisville on a scholarship that paid for room, board, and books, and played forward for the school from 1956 to 1959.[3] He was 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m), and 190 pounds (86 kg).[1][4] He said: "these guys never saw a Jew. They once asked me once with no malice how old I was when they cut off my horns. I never had a bad day [with my teammates]. I never heard one anti-Semitic remark in Louisville. If you could play, that was it."[1]
In 1959, Goldstein was named All-American and led Louisville to its first-ever appearance in the NCAA Final Four.[4] Goldstein averaged 21.4 points and 10.0 rebounds in the NCAA tournament, and was named to the All-Mideast Regional Team and the All-Tournament Team.[1][4]
That same year, he and his team won a gold medal in basketball at the 1959 Pan American Games.[4]
In his three years at Louisville, Goldstein scored 1,019 points (the 10th Cardinal to score over 1,000 points) and had 838 rebounds (still 10th all-time in school history).[4]
Draft and later life
Goldstein was the first pick in the second round (8th overall) of the Detroit Pistons in 1959, offered a $7,500 ($75,000 in current dollar terms) salary and a $500 ($5,000 in current dollar terms) signing bonus to buy a car, but he did not play in the NBA.[4] Instead, he went to dental school, and was a dentist on Long Island.[4] He lived in Boca Raton, Florida.[5]
Honors
In 1980, he was inducted into the Louisville Hall of Fame.[1][4] The Basketball Old-Timers of America inducted him into its hall of fame.[1] His jersey was retired in January 2000.[4][6] In 2012, he was inducted into the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame.[1] He is also a member of the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2014, he was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.[5][7]
