5’8” Davey Banks, and 6’ Dutch Dehnert. At 5’11”, one of the guards was Nat Holman. At 5’10”, the other guard was Pete Barry. George Haggerty at 6’4” and John Beckman at 5’10” were the forwards. Chris Leonard at 6’ was their reserve. John Witty at 5’11” was coach and reserve player if needed.
On the sidelines, the coaches were yelling last minute instructions. The players walked to the middle of the court for the tipoff. Centers Joe Lapchick for the Celtics and Charles Cooper for the Rens did the jumping.
Cooper slapped the ball to Clarence Jenkins who broke down the court.
Jenkins spotted Bill Yancey in the corner and passed the ball to him. Yancey did a little body fake to the left and then dribbled straight to the basket for a two-point layup.
The players walked back to center court for the tipoff. Lapchick tipped the ball to Davey Banks who dribbled down the sideline. Banks passed to Dutch Dehnert who was set at the top of the key for his pivot play. He faked passing to John Beckman running off his left side and instead threw the ball to Nat Holman who was running off of his right side. Holman dribbled in for an easy layup.
After the Rens got the tipoff, Yancey took a pass from Wee Willie Smith. Yancey squared off at the top of the key and hit a long two-handed set shot.
The Celtics got the ensuring tipoff when Lapchick pushed the ball to George Haggerty. Cooper was closely guarding Haggerty as they crossed the center line. When Haggerty tried to pass to Banks, Eyre “Bruiser” Saitch intercepted the pass.
The teams seemed to be evenly matched as they traded baskets up and down the court. Midway through the first half during one of his time-outs, Rens’ coach Robert Douglas told his players to start trapping with two defensive players.
A man-to-man defense was utilized by all early teams. After Douglas’ time-out, the Celtics had the ball. Holman passed to Pete Barry who tried to dribble inside, but Jenkins stripped the ball. He threw an underhand pass down court to Smith who dribbled down the sideline, made a cut up the middle, and took the ball to the basket for a layup. The Celtics called a time-out.
Excitement was building in the crowded gym. Jake sat among the men, cheering, as the teams huddled during the time-out. He realized his collar was damp with perspiration. The men around him were yelling, the cares of their day in the steel factory clearly not on their minds.
The teams came back on the court. The Celtics were adjusting to the Rens’ defense, and the score had been close the entire half with neither team leading by more than four points.
Douglas signaled a play he had the Rens work on during practices involving Jenkins coming all the way down the key and setting a screen for forward Smith. In turn, Smith came off the screen and took a set shot.
The final play of the half had the Celtics’ Lapchick setting a screen on the right side of the court for Beckman. He dribbled nonstop down the baseline and hit a nice layup as the buzzer sounded.
The score was the Rens 16 and the Celtics 14. On their way to the locker room, the Rens could hear the fans yelling obscenities. They had heard them so many times the players paid no attention. Referring to obnoxious fans, Douglas always told the Rens, “Just ignore them.”
In the locker room, the Celtics were receiving instructions from coach John Witty. He was telling them they needed to set better screens for the players breaking to the basket. He also said they needed to be tougher on defense.
The buzzer sounded, ending the time in the locker room. The Rens were cautious walking between the narrow bleachers toward the court, and they made it without getting hit by anything. A few of the fans shouted obscenities as usual. It was tough playing, but Douglas was good at keeping their focus on the game.
The referees signaled the players in for the start of the second half. The Rens substituted John Holt
and James Ricks for Clarence Jenkins and Eyre Saitch. The Celtics substituted Chris Leonard for Davey Banks.
Joe Lapchick took control of the center jump and slapped the ball to George Haggerty. He took a couple of dribbles and then passed to Lapchick, who was guarded closely by Charles Cooper. So, Lapchick passed the ball back out to John Beckman. He then passed to Nat Holman who took it in for a layup.
The referee called both teams to the center of the court for the jump off. Lapchick outjumped Cooper and tapped the ball to Holman. He got trapped by two defenders but managed a high arching pass to Dutch Dehnert. At 6’8”, Lapchick was hard to stop even with a good defender like Cooper on him. Lapchick faked a shot and then dribbled around Cooper for a layup. There weren’t many players in the league who could stop Lapchick once he had made up his mind to go to the basket – he had speed, agility, and force.
Cooper got the next tipoff and tapped it to Ricks who started dribbling down the sideline when he heard Douglas yelling for a time-out. Douglas called the players over and told Wee Willie Smith to help out Cooper when Lapchick had the ball. That would mean Jenkins at 5’7” would have to guard not only his player but also help guard Lapchick. That would be no easy task.
Holt took the ball out-of-bounds on the sideline and passed to Ricks who dribbled down the middle of the court crossing the mid-court line. Ricks passed to Smith who was heavily guarded but managed to take a nice set shot that went high off the backboard and into the basket.
The Rens’ Smith was lined up for the jump ball when a fan threw a tomato at him and it splattered his jersey. The referee got a towel from the sidelines and handed it to Smith. Someone from the scorer’s table had run out to wipe the floor. One of the policemen near the exit took a few steps up in the bleachers to try and stop this behavior from the fans. They had started throwing more than just tomatoes. Smith did not react since this happened all the time and he was just used to it. Getting the ball down the court was what mattered. The referee resumed play with the tipoff.
After the tomato-throwing incident, the tough defensive play of Smith and Holt were starting to take a toll on the Celtics. The Rens had managed a 10-point lead with six minutes remaining in the game. The Celtics scored a couple of layups by setting up screens at the bottom of the key. But in the end, it was the Rens’ outside shooting from Yancey and Saitch that won the game for them, 31-28.
Ralph’s Creator
New York City, 1995
When Charles got to the office, he had a message waiting from his friend Ted. Ted was the “mad genius” who had created Ralph, using the early research of an equally eccentric mathematician, Alan Turing. Returning Ted’s call, Charles said he would stop by Ted’s apartment in a few minutes. After going through some papers and checking some legal reports, Charles drove to Ted’s apartment. The genius’ pad wasn’t much to look at. Besides two red vinyl chairs, a beat-up sofa that Charles had helped Ted pick up from the Goodwill, and an old black and white TV with rabbit ears, the apartment was pretty bare. Stacks of dishes piled in the sink and on the counter gave off a foul smell and Charles could see clothes heaped on the bed from the open bedroom door. In another room was Ted’s work area, a tiny space overloaded with electronic equipment, where Ralph had been assembled.
Like Frankenstein, Ralph was created to be a companion. Ted had diligently and passionately studied the work of Turing, his hero. Turing’s theory hypothesized that a computer could be programmed after the human brain. He called his machine a B-type unorganized machine. The human brain “talks” with its millions of brain cells or neurons by using synapses. Turing developed the theory that computers could work like the human brain by using artificial neurons and devices that modify the connections between them. In other words, by setting up a neural network in which each neuron-to-neuron connection must pass through a modifier device, Turing could create a “real” brain.
The difference between Turing’s computer and other computers consisted of Turing’s network that enabled the neurons to interconnect freely. In modern computers, the flow of information through the network from one layer to the next layer is restricted. It had taken years of hard work applying Turing’s theories before Ted had accomplished what he had set out to do – build a computer that would simulate the neural