Art Heyman (1941-2012)

[blazindw]

The Men's Basketball official Twitter feed just posted the following:


Duke loses an all-time great with the passing of Art Heyman on Monday. Condolences to the Heyman family.

A sad day for Duke fans everywhere...Heyman was one of the greatest players to ever put on the Duke uniform. RIP.

[subzero02]

RIP Art Heyman

[tommy]

Duke flags at half mast. Nothing but respect for an all-timer. RIP Artie.

[Newton_14]

Man that is terrible. Duke family lost one of the greats. RIP AH. You blazed the trail for other Duke greats to follow! Punking Larry Brown just added to the legend and solidified your place in our 9F hearts!


Sad day for sure.

[licc85]

Can't say I was there to watch him play, but his name is hanging from the rafters in Cameron . . sad day for Duke basketball . . . RIP #25!

[Lord Ash]

Wow. I cannot believe this. RIP to one of the best to ever represent Duke University and wear our colors.

[Devil in the Blue Dress]

I'm writing with tears in my eyes. I saw Artie play. He was one of a kind in terms of talent and will to win. This is like losing a member of my family.

[westwall]

is that 'Artie' always followed his missed shot to put it in; he was the first great offensive rebounder, as a guard, I ever saw. Sorry!

[superdave]

RIP.

Condolences to the Heymans.

[CameronBlue]

Wow, this really stinks. My sister who matriculated to Duke 13 years before me filled my imagination with stories about Heyman, Mullins, Vacendak, Verga....one of the icons of my youth has passed. As heroes are much easier born in an adolescent's imagination this void will remain for a long time.

[magjayran]

RIP to one of the greats. Before my time but the stories are legendary and the stats speak for themselves. Too bad there's not a lot of highlights floating around on the web.

[roywhite]

Got to know Artie a bit, sort of a friend of a friend thing, but what a character!

One of a kind guy who was funny and warm-hearted.
Truly was instrumental in putting Duke basketball on the map.

Rest in Peace, Artie.

[devildeac]

RIP to one of the greats. Before my time but the stories are legendary and the stats speak for themselves. Too bad there's not a lot of highlights floating around on the web.

This one just might be enough:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0RroAH4vwU

[Jarhead]

My recollection regarding Art is that he was the first recruit for Vic Bubas. It signaled a change in Duke basketball that has continued until now with only a couple of slight interruptions. God bless you Art.

[chrishoke]

I fell in love with Duke basketball watching Art as a nine year old with my dad in Cameron - the beginning of a life-long love affair with duke sports. He and Bubas fathered Duke basketball. RIP Art, and thanks.

[OldPhiKap]

Rest well, Artie. One of the true foundations of what we enjoy today.

[moonpie23]

sad in his passing......condolences to his family ...

[Jim3k]

I agree that this hurts. Art sat next to me in at least three classes. He was a year ahead of both me and my classmate Sagegrouse, who probably knew him better than I did, given Sage's Chronicle duties.

Here's the Herald--Sun article: http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/19947263/article-Heyman--Duke-basketball-legend--dies-at-71

[fayfan20]

Here's a post about Heyman with some of his exploits, including being the Final Four MOP without playing in the title game

http://blogs.fayobserver.com/accbasketball/August-2012/Duke-great-Art-Heyman-dies-at-71

[sagegrouse]

Very sad news. I knew him well. He was an incredible competitor but a really good guy.

sagegrouse

[dukebsbll14]

I believe there will be one special addition to "Roll Call" during CTC this year...

[davekay1971]

Sad news to hear the passing of a legend. He is one of the pillars that Duke Basketball is built upon. Rest in peace.

[bjornolf]

RIP to a great, you will be missed. Thoughts and prayers to the Heyman family.

[Indoor66]

RIP, you earned it. I am very sad.

[dukeman28428]

This is very sad news. I met Art when he lived near Durham and came to know him well. He was a good guy and I will always appreciate what he did for Duke basketball. He was a competitor from the get go and RIP Art...we will miss you my friend.

[weezie]

Too young to have left us. Will always look with great pride at his number hanging above the court.
Godspeed Mr. Heyman.

[Olympic Fan]

Art was my first Duke basketball hero.

I was 10 when he arrived at Duke and 14 when he left. I lived in Charlotte at the time, so I only got to see him play a dozen or so games in person, plus a douple of dozen more on TV (one game a week was the max in those pre-ESPN days).

You can imagine what a thrill it was to meet and to get to know Art when he moved back down here in the mid-1980s. A warm, generous person ... and one of the 2-3 greatest players ever to wear a Duke uniform. I could be wrong, but I think there are only two players in ACC who were unanimous first-team All-ACC for their entire varsity career -- one was David Thompson ... the other was Art. Jordan didn't do it, Sampson didn't do it. Rosenbluth didn't do it. None of K's great stars did it.

But Art did. If you weren't lucky enough to see him play, I'm sorry for you. Let me correct one small point made earlier in this thread. He was a 6-5 forward, not a guard. I can understand how the mistake was made -- he was a brilliant passer, who loved to lead the fast break ... and when Duke was pressed, Vic usually used Art to break the press. But his normal operating radius was from 15-feet in. He was a good medium-range jump shot ... he was strong enough to overpower people around the rim and he was incomparable when it came to following his own shot. I still say that after 50-plus years of watching college basketball, I've never seen another player follow his own shot like Art did.

Add one thing -- he had to endure a level of abuse that no modern player would be forced to deal with -- especially from the North Carolina fans, where he was the target of vicious and constant anti-semetic abuse. Twice ,once when he was a freshman and once when he was a sophomore, he was physically assaulted on the court by UNC players. But tough as he was, he never started anything. The one fight he was involved with -- the '61 brawl in Cameron -- he was slugged by Larry Brown, then cold-cocked from behind by Donnie Walsh -- only then did he fight back. And guess what, ACC commissioner Jim Weaver gave Heyman the same penalty that he gave Brown an d Walsh. More than 50 years later, that still ticks me off.

RIP, Art

[mkline09]

I, like many of the younger generation of Duke fans never got the chance to see Art Heyman play. I wish I had because from what I've always heard he seems like the kind of player I would have really liked. He is the only non-Krzyzewski era player to be put on ESPN's 50 in 50 all-time Duke team. My first thought was he was so young 71 to put it into perspective I believe Bob Harris just turned 70, so it was a bit of a shock to hear about his passing. My condolences to his family and friends and farewell to one of the greats.

[SoCalDukeFan]

I only got to see Art play for one season, but what a season and what a great player.

Very sad to hear of his passing.

SoCal

[Devil in the Blue Dress]

I, like many of the younger generation of Duke fans never got the chance to see Art Heyman play. I wish I had because from what I've always heard he seems like the kind of player I would have really liked. He is the only non-Krzyzewski era player to be put on ESPN's 50 in 50 all-time Duke team. My first thought was he was so young 71 to put it into perspective I believe Bob Harris just turned 70, so it was a bit of a shock to hear about his passing. My condolences to his family and friends and farewell to one of the greats.
Tee Moorman, one of our football greats, a TE from the Cotton Bowl team, died in 1969 at age 69. We can look at health and variety of other factors for explanations and predictions, but passing on has its own timeline.

[trinity92]

Although he was way before my time on campus, I'll always remember watching our 2001 title run with Art at his (now defunct) Gramercy Park watering hole Tracy J's and getting to know him just a little bit. Art popped champagne for everyone in the bar when we won the title and of the little I remember of the night, he was in extremely fine feather and overjoyed to see us win.

Sad day for Blue Devils everywhere.

[Rogue]

Like Olympic Fan , he and Jay Wilkerson were my first Duke Heros.. Channel 11 Durham use to televise some of the home games on TV, and if you had a nice antenna, you could pick up the game on the coast.. ( no, there was no cable, nor as much atmosphere interference :)

RIP #25..

[heyman25]

I fell in love with Duke basketball watching Art as a nine year old with my dad in Cameron - the beginning of a life-long love affair with duke sports. He and Bubas fathered Duke basketball. RIP Art, and thanks.
Still sorry I never made it to Tracy J's in New York.He was definitely my childhood hero. I got to ride in his convertible and learn how to shoot baskets at Carr Jr High on Duke Street with my brothers and him.

[wsb3]

“As much as any other human being, Art was responsible for Duke University becoming a national power in college basketball,”

“I always told him that he was a true pioneer in modern Duke basketball. His records and stats speak for themselves, but I don’t know that any words can do justice to the role that he played in the history of our teams in that era.”

Vic Bubas

[Devil in the Blue Dress]

“As much as any other human being, Art was responsible for Duke University becoming a national power in college basketball,”

“I always told him that he was a true pioneer in modern Duke basketball. His records and stats speak for themselves, but I don’t know that any words can do justice to the role that he played in the history of our teams in that era.”

Vic Bubas
High praise and true..... for those who grew up after Artie played and who have seen Duke only in the past decade or so, Coach Bubas makes it clear how important and how good Artie truly was.

[Indoor66]

High praise and true..... for those who grew up after Artie played and who have seen Duke only in the past decade or so, Coach Bubas makes it clear how important and how good Artie truly was.

I would only add that Vic was at least as important.

[wsb3]

I would only add that Vic was at least as important.

I would very much agree.

[drcharl]

Are there any links to videos (other than the infamous fight and other than pro) that would allow those of us who did not get a chance to see him play get a flavor for what a great player he was?

[Devil in the Blue Dress]

I would only add that Vic was at least as important.

Amen! There was a special era including Final Fours before Coach K's arrival. In fact, some of this era at Duke roughly coincided with Coach K's playing at Army.

[davidson]

One of the better descriptions of Art Heyman is from Pat Conroy's "My Losing Season". Pat was on staff one summer at a basketball camp and he described it Art as follows:

"The star that summer was Art Heyman, Duke's fast-talking, gum-chewing first-team All-American who won the basketball Player of the Year award his senior year, beating out such greats as Walt Hazzard and Bill Bradley. When Art entered the room the barometric reading rose, and his outrageous big-city ways became the focus of every eye. His arrival at Camp Wahoo is still the stuff of legend. I remember him driving his convertible beneath the porte cochere with a blonde looking like the embodiment of original sin seated next to him. Often I'd read the word "floozie" in certain kinds of novels but had never encountered one in the flesh. The car, the floozie, and the All-American were all part of a package deal: Art Heyman was to teach us all a new sensibility that was then making its presence known in basketball circles across America. With no apologies, Art's game was urban black, big-city, kiss my a** and hold the mayo, in your face, wiseass Jewish, no-holds-barred and a hot dog at Nathan's after the game. He seemed to delight in and feed off the hatred of those southern boys who filled up the ranks of the counselors - boys out of VPI, Hampden-Sydney, Wake Forese and Richmond - much more at ease with the aw-shucks, pass-the-biscuits-ma'am variety of heroism embodied in Jerry West and Rod Thorn. Art Heyman would stride among us as anithero heart of darkenss, the harbinger of all that terrified us about the chain-netted boroughs of New York. His West Side Story stormed down to do battle with our Wahoo Walton Family. Heyman came up to me before the jump ball and whispered, "It's show time, peanut. Get me the ball." . . . Our real job was to let everyone in the gym marvel at the extraordinary gifts of Art Heyman."

As a Davidson fan first and a Duke fan second, my recollection is that Davidson played Art twice in the 62-63 season, losing at Duke and winning 72-69 in Charlotte in a game that was one of the most important early wins in establishing Davidson as a powerhouse in the 60s. Lefty's story of inventing a feud with Bubas in order to sell out the Charlotte Coliseum is one of many classic Lefty stories that I won't ruin by trying to repeat the version told by the master. The short version is that Bubas agreed to play in Charlotte if the teams split the gate, and Lefty said "here's how we're going to get a sell-out."

[Devil in the Blue Dress]

Are there any links to videos (other than the infamous fight and other than pro) that would allow those of us who did not get a chance to see him play get a flavor for what a great player he was?
I, too, wish for those old game films. While it's not the same as seeing a film or video, Al Featherston has written an informative article that appears on goduke.com
http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=22724&SPID=1845&DB_LANG=C&ATCLID=205670367&DB_OEM_ID=4200

[OldPhiKap]

One of the better descriptions of Art Heyman is from Pat Conroy's "My Losing Season". Pat was on staff one summer at a basketball camp and he described it Art as follows:

"The star that summer was Art Heyman, Duke's fast-talking, gum-chewing first-team All-American who won the basketball Player of the Year award his senior year, beating out such greats as Walt Hazzard and Bill Bradley. When Art entered the room the barometric reading rose, and his outrageous big-city ways became the focus of every eye. His arrival at Camp Wahoo is still the stuff of legend. I remember him driving his convertible beneath the porte cochere with a blonde looking like the embodiment of original sin seated next to him. Often I'd read the word "floozie" in certain kinds of novels but had never encountered one in the flesh. The car, the floozie, and the All-American were all part of a package deal: Art Heyman was to teach us all a new sensibility that was then making its presence known in basketball circles across America. With no apologies, Art's game was urban black, big-city, kiss my a** and hold the mayo, in your face, wiseass Jewish, no-holds-barred and a hot dog at Nathan's after the game. He seemed to delight in and feed off the hatred of those southern boys who filled up the ranks of the counselors - boys out of VPI, Hampden-Sydney, Wake Forese and Richmond - much more at ease with the aw-shucks, pass-the-biscuits-ma'am variety of heroism embodied in Jerry West and Rod Thorn. Art Heyman would stride among us as anithero heart of darkenss, the harbinger of all that terrified us about the chain-netted boroughs of New York. His West Side Story stormed down to do battle with our Wahoo Walton Family. Heyman came up to me before the jump ball and whispered, "It's show time, peanut. Get me the ball." . . . Our real job was to let everyone in the gym marvel at the extraordinary gifts of Art Heyman."

As a Davidson fan first and a Duke fan second, my recollection is that Davidson played Art twice in the 62-63 season, losing at Duke and winning 72-69 in Charlotte in a game that was one of the most important early wins in establishing Davidson as a powerhouse in the 60s. Lefty's story of inventing a feud with Bubas in order to sell out the Charlotte Coliseum is one of many classic Lefty stories that I won't ruin by trying to repeat the version told by the master. The short version is that Bubas agreed to play in Charlotte if the teams split the gate, and Lefty said "here's how we're going to get a sell-out."

He was Christian Laettner before Christian Laettner was cool. In a way.

[tommy]

I'm waiting for Greybeard to weigh in here and wax rhapsodic about Artie and the brilliance of his mind, body, and soul. Grey, where are ya???

[DisplacedBlueDevil]

Just wanted to elevate this legend to the top of the board...he dropped 36 on Davidson fifty years ago today in the "Indoor Stadium".

[Devil in the Blue Dress]

Just wanted to elevate this legend to the top of the board...he dropped 36 on Davidson fifty years ago today in the "Indoor Stadium".

Thank you for remembering the King!

[jv001]

Began with King Arthur. Sandwiched in between: Johnny Dawkins and Gene "tinkerbell" Banks. Mr. Heyman was a great player and important in getting Duke well known for it's basketball program. After a few lean years, a young West Point guy came along and took Duke to a different level. GoDuke!

[greybeard]

I'm waiting for Greybeard to weigh in here and wax rhapsodic about Artie and the brilliance of his mind, body, and soul. Grey, where are ya???

I was in 7th grade, a year out of Brooklyn, when Art was a senior at nearby Oceanside High. Had I not been obloivious to the world of high school basketball, including what was to become my own, Hewlett High school. Like everyone else who could breathe on L.I., expecially if you were Jewish and lived on Long Island, in a few years I knew of Art Heyman. In fact, in a way, you could say that I met him. It must have been the Spring of 1963, after the basketball season, and I was a sophomore. I was in the gym, in gym class I think, when who comes out of Bill Munch's office, but Art freakin Heyman. Somebody got him a basketball and he started shooting. One after another, clank. Art never stopped grinning, he knew that no one cared, no one believed for a second that he did either. He was the king, he was in our gym, he had come to visit the guy I hoped would be my coach, and he was giving all of us something we could talk about for years. Heck, that was more than 50 years ago and I'm still talking about it.

Few of you probably remember, if you were aware of it at the time, but there was another Jewish ballplayer on who was a consensus First Team All American Heyman's senior year. His name was Barry Kramer, a junior who played for NYU. A 6'4" guy who played anywhere he wanted. Kramer was poetry. He'd take it out front, dribble laterally to the basket out front, just inside the top of the key, perpendicular to the basket, nice and easy like, not a care in the world. All of a sudden, in his good time, Kramer would plant, turn to square up to the basket if moving right, stay perpendicular to the basket if going left, and rise, and then rise some more, and sitting on top of the world, float at the apex for what seemed like a couple of seconds, the ball resting on the finger tips of his right hand, extended six inches above his head, with his left hand nowhere in sight. He'd hang there, until his defender was back on the ground, or so it seemed, and then release the ball, with perfect backspin and he ever hit the net, none of us saw it. I saw Kramer play at the Garden that year. If there was a sweeter player on the planet, I hadn't seen him, perhaps never have. Unfortunately, Kramer hurt his ankle badly before the start of the next season, and was a shadow of himself and never really regained what he had shown his junior year.

But, as great as Kramer was, as elegant and unbelievable and regal he was, he was not Art Heyman, not to me or anyone I knew, except for my teammate Brent Glass, whose family seemed to have nearly adopted Larry Brown at the time, and it seems in hindsight that they had. Heyman had swag, Heyman was tough, Heyman could play with anyone and I was sure would kill folks in the pros. Heyman was reincarnate, only bigger and much stronger, then the two original Knicks and one College All Americans whom Munch used to convince to come to Saturday Morning "recreation" for everyone else but us sophomores and then juniors on the chain of Hewlett basketball at the time. We didn't iknow much about Sonny Hertzberg, or the Kaplan brothers, except that they had to fight their way to respectability, never acceptance as good as they were, acceptance worthy of their stature. I don't think that Art had to fight his way to anything. He just did, and that made him the dominant force that he was.
But, that afternoon in the Hewlett gym, there was not a thing about Art Heyman that had a hint to a rough edge. Quite the opposite. He knew where he was and who he was to who were there. He was, a hero; he showed us something else. Something alon the lines that inside he was one of us, just a kid from Long Island, a regular guy, who just happened to have a special talent. Nice to be able to tell a story about the guy, especially to this audience.

By the way, it somehow didn't seem out of place that Heyman would be visiting with Munch. Munch was a player in the basketball world on Long Island. Had produced few better teams then the one Heyman's senior year. That team had two all county ball players, one of whom, a 6'4" junior who seemingly had it all. Brian McSweeney was was co-player of the year the next season, and I have to believe that he and Heyman knew eachother quite well, that they had had their battles, and that Heyman had been in Munch's office a few times before. But, most guys from the NYC area who were good enough to have had the opportunity back then, chose the other place, as did Brian. A teammate of mine, a junior, had that kind of game.

Who knows what brought Heyman to see Munch that day. He propably wanted to get Munch's take on someone on the Island who Duke might have had an interest in. Frankly, I didn't know, and wouldn't have dared to ask. It didn't matter anyway. Hey, Art Heyman, Art Heyman was in my gym, was shooting around just many of Munch's guys who we had heard of used to do. And, I was there.