AROUND TOWN: Naismith inductee Garfinkel brought big-time hoops to Wayne County

Jul. 18—From Muggsy Bogues to Patrick Ewing, the game's best, small to tall, headed to Honesdale each summer to be a part of the most important basketball camp on Planet Earth.

Five-Star Basketball Camp, the brainchild of showman Howie Garfinkel and his business partner, Will Klein, was THE place to go, whether it was a top-flight Division I coach or a high school player hoping to be recruited by the upper echelon of college basketball.

In a little under two months, Garfinkel, who would hold court evenings at The Fireside Inn just north of Honesdale, will be posthumously inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

He died five years ago, but Garfinkel's influence, and ability to wow a crowd, hasn't been forgotten by Ron Rowe, former Honesdale boys varsity basketball and current girls head coach, or Tom Finan, who preceded Rowe as the varsity boys coach at Honesdale.

"Garf was a character in his own right, as you well know," Rowe said.

He made Camp Lake Bryn Mawr the place to go to see future NBA stars take the court for evening games, one of whom didn't look like much of a player — at least in stature.

"We're up there watching games at night, my wife, some of the players, and who the hell is Muggsy Bogues?" Rowe recalled. "He's 5-3, whatever he was, and you say, what the hell is so special? He gets the rebound or an outlet pass and everybody is screaming, get back, get back. He made fast kids look slow."

His 14-year career in the NBA — at 5-foot-3 the shortest player in league history — bore that out. Garfinkel knew that he had the talent long before the coaches who made the trek to be part of the camp, which ran from 1966 to 2008 in rural Wayne County, and drew names like Bobby Knight, Chuck Daly, Hubie Brown, Jim Boeheim, Bob Hurley Sr., Dick Vitale, Rick Pitino and John Calipari, to name a few of the hundreds of coaches who were part of the teaching staff at Five-Star — before the NCAA stopped that

practice.

"At one time, he controlled the East Coast college basketball coaching openings," Finan said. "He had the best kids in the country coming to his camp so all the college coaches wanted to be a part of that. And they allowed college assistants to work on his staff. The NCAA eventually stopped that because they thought it was almost a monopoly, you know, of the college basketball ranks."

Finan, who was running his own high school camp at Lake Bryn Mawr, understood when he was put to the back burner. It turned into an opportunity for Finan, who hooked up with Garfinkel, offering Honesdale's gym for rainy days on Bryn Mawr's outdoor courts. It allowed Honesdale players to get discounted camp tuition — the cost, like the players, was top shelf — to attend, and Finan offered his services if Garf ever needed someone to coach.

"I coached Dominique Wilkins. I coached Ron Artest, who is now Metta World Peace. I mean I had an opportunity to coach some absolutely fantastic kids," Finan said. "I saw Patrick Ewing. I saw Alonzo Mourning, right there in Honesdale. It was an unbelievable level."

Orange-and-white T-shirts became the camp's signature look, and Garfinkel would show up every day in orange pants and orange sneakers.

"Hubie Brown used to lift up the orange pant legs and Garfinkel would be wearing black socks with his orange Converse sneakers," Finan chuckled. "Garfinkel was a character. You woke up to Sinatra music blasting at 6:30 in the morning, Sinatra blasting over the intercom throughout the whole camp. Of course, there's a lot of moaning and groaning as Garfinkel started the day with Sinatra."

There was no disputing the results. The 20-minute stations, most taught by a current or future Division I coach, bore the thumbprint of Garfinkel and Klein, both basketball junkies from New York.

"Garfinkel insisted — the games were great in the afternoon and evening — but all morning long you'd have Pitino at a station, you've got Calipari, Bob Hurley, all coaches were assigned stations to teach, and they were 20-minute stations," Finan said. "He wanted to make sure that the teaching aspect of Five-Star was the most important thing. He wanted to make sure that this wasn't just about bringing the kids in and let them play games. He wanted instruction and if you didn't participate in stations you didn't get to play in the game. He was tough when he had to be."

He also mastered the art of putting a name with a face.

"For a while, we were going to Madison Square Garden to the National Invitation Tournament, and Garf was there," said Rowe, whose affiliation with Five-Star started in 1980. "Our kids would be walking by in the concourse, and he would see them and say hello to them by their first name. He was something else.

"You look at the number of camps that they ran, and the number of kids that went to the camps, in just that one year, and he knew our kids. Our kids weren't D-I prospects. They weren't D-III prospects, but he knew them. He knew the seventh-grader who was going to be good, and he remembered the kids who weren't going to be good. Not only names, but he knew what you could do with a basketball. The kids just loved him.

"A lot of places I go with a Honesdale shirt on and there was one of two things people would say about it: Birthplace of American Railroads or Five-Star Basketball. That's how well-known it was. Garf and Will Klein built that unbelievably."

Inaugural event

The North Pocono Public Library will host its first fundraising golf tournament Aug. 9 at Elmhurst Country Club. Play in the captain-and-crew event begins at 1 p.m., with golf and cart, practice range, balls and tees, lunch, beverages and dinner included in the $150 per player fee.

Sponsorship opportunities are also available. Contact tournament co-chairman Chris Kelly for more information at ckelly@albright.org.

MARTY MYERS is a Times-Tribune sports writer. His Around Town column appears on Sundays. To contact him, email mmyers@timesshamrock.com, call 570-348-9100, ext. 5437 or follow him on Twitter @mmyersTT.

MARTY MYERS is a Times-Tribune sports writer. His Around Town column appears on Sundays. To contact him, email mmyers@timesshamrock.com, call 570-348-9100, ext. 5437 or follow him on Twitter @mmyersTT.