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Wally "OX" Osterkorn and Frank Brian Photo By Dexter Jones

At 78 years young, four-year NBA veteran Wally “Ox” Osterkorn hails from an era when basketball meant shooting softballs into a peach basket nailed to an alley roof.

 

“Starting when I was six, we’d meet in that alley everyday,” said Osterkorn, who grew up on the north side of Chicago. “Eventually we got a real backboard and a basketball, but my mom still begged me to get a ‘real job.’”

 

Little did she know the sport would change her young and determined son’s life forever.

 

“By my senior year in high school my basketball team was filling the high school gymnasium stands,” said the “Ox”, a nickname coined by his teammates due to his burly stature. “I’ll never forget that year because we lost the city championship by just a few points in a game I fouled out of. Wow, I cried my eyes out that day.”

 

That disappointing loss evolved into a tremendous college basketball experience for the 6’5” forward. His team won the Big Ten in 1949 and went to the Final Four that same year, which resulted in a loss to Kentucky.

 

Selected by the Chicago Stags in the second round of the 1950 NBA Draft, Osterkorn’s first year of pro ball proved tumultuous.

 

“The Stags folded before the season even started, so I went to St. Paul, where they were starting a new NBL [National Basketball League] team – that lasted a month. Then, I went over to the Sheboygan Redskins and played one season.”

 

An appealing opportunity then presented itself when the Harlem Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein invited Osterkorn to play on the Washington Whirlwinds, a team assembled to travel and play against the Globetrotters.

 

“That was the best experience of my pro basketball life,” he said. “We played all over Europe and Africa, and I had the chance to see the countryside and experience the cultures. We played one game a day, traveling by bus. We never won a game, but it was a heck of a time.”

 

Referring to Saperstein as the nicest guy he ever played for, Osterkorn says he was very content with his $300 a week salary.

 

“Then we played on a tour of 10 games in 10 states. This time, Saperstein brought in George Mikan to coach us, and we actually won a game! But it was funny because we were not supposed to be the featured team…the winning was for the Globetrotters to do.”

 

Finally the Syracuse Nationals acquired Osterkorn’s rights from Chicago, and on to the NBA the aggressive and resilient “Ox” went. He played four seasons with Syracuse, and won a championship with them in 1955. Unfortunately his rising career halted during a 1953 match-up with the Philadelphia Warriors.

 

“I was a real tough guy on that court,” he said. “All of a sudden, I got a Charlie Horse and my entire leg turned black and blue. Because of that, I only played in 19 games our championship year, and ended up having to retire.”

 

He may have had an untimely retirement, but it wasn’t without numerous laughs and invaluable memories to look back on.

 

“I have to share this story,” he said. “During an exhibition game against the Warriors, I got in a fight

NBA Legend Wally Osternkorn NBAE/Getty Images

with one of my opponents, Zeke Zawoluk. Next thing I know, there is a woman behind me beating me with an umbrella. It was Zeke’s mom! She came right off the bench and chased me around the court until I hid behind my teammates.”

 

He’s got a wealth of memorable stories similar to this one, and he says he still gets a good laugh out of each one of them. The times were certainly different back then, prompting all kinds of travel calamities, uniform fiascos and sneaker tribulations.

 

“We got one pair of shoes a year – Converse Chuck Taylor’s – and we wore them with holes if we had to. We even wash and dried our own uniforms, and I’m not kidding, some guys wouldn’t wash them for a week.”

 

Following a successful basketball tenure, Osterkorn dabbled in some Arizona business, before taking on a permanent sales position with Encyclopedia Britannica, where he worked for more than 20 years.

 

While trimming a palm tree at one of his Phoenix buildings, a thorn struck his head, a devastating accident that lead to a series of life-threatening medical complications which, once again, put an untimely ending to his career.

 

But, in typical “Ox” fashion, he turned his setback into a wonderful experience. He returned to the classroom and earned himself a master’s degree in counseling from the University of Arizona. He then volunteered at psychiatric hospitals and was certified as a psychodrama assistant.

 

“This way my way of repaying whatever wrongs I had committed in my lifetime,” he said. “I wanted to thank the world for all the blessings I had and offset the bad things I had done by helping children find the right path. It was tremendously therapeutic for me and helped me cope with my spinal problems.”

 

With an upbeat personality and a comical way about him, Osterkorn takes his disappointments in stride and his accomplishments to heart. These days, he and his wife have taken what was originally a hobby into a revenue-earning art form.

 

“Oh, we work,” he said. “We build wooden Kiva ladders, which are a sign of welcome in the Indian culture. We made and decorated so many, we started selling them every weekend at an indoor swap mart.”

 

Keeping busy, the Osterkorn’s also enjoy renting movies and spending time with their seven children and 11 grandchildren.

 

“I love having the family over. I still decorate our entire house for Christmas with sleighs, reindeer, Santas…I start that project each October so it’s ready for everybody to come see.”

 

Young at heart, this NBA veteran hasn’t seemed to slow down all too much, and he still looks back and laughs at his once ferocious NBA demeanor.

 

“I love going to the Retired Player Association meetings…I see all the guys I played against, and I go around apologizing to all the ones I got in fights with. I was a real mean son of a gun back then.”