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February
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- Enter Match 34 scores
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- 8th Supplemental draft Sunday
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- Funny Hoops Scout in NY Times 2/1/13
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February
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Tom Konchalski has an uncanny memory for faces, names, dates and high school basketball lore.
By COREY KILGANNON
Published: February 1, 2013
¶ From the moment he shakes your hand and looks you square in the eye — part military dad, part concerned priest — Tom Konchalski is assessing: Are you Division I material, or simply junior college?
The Particulars
Name Tom Konchalski
Age 66
Where He’s From Elmhurst, Queens
What He Is Freelance basketball scout
Telling Detail Mr. Konchalski is 6-foot-6 but was never very good on the court. He jokes that his career is “revenge” for that.
¶ Whichever it is, Tom will tell you. As a basketball scout, Mr. Konchalski, 66, is a fixture in gyms in New York City, seeking out college prospects.
¶ “If Tom says you can play, you can play,” said Troy Gaskin, a real estate agent who happened to see Mr. Konchalski on Queens Boulevard on Wednesday afternoon and came over to ask if he remembered him from the Stuyvesant High School basketball team in the 1970s.
¶ “Troy Gaskin — Golden Hoops,” Mr. Konchalski said immediately, naming the tournament where they last met.
¶ Walking away, Mr. Konchalski laughed and said, “I actually live a very sheltered existence — I know very few people outside of basketball.”
¶ Still, he is constantly recognized all over the city by men who have had the honor of having their jump-shots assessed in his scouting newsletter, the HSBI Report. The pamphlet rates thousands of high-school basketball players each year, and is mailed — hard-copy only — to the several hundred college coaches who subscribe.
¶ At his apartment in Forest Hills, Mr. Konchalski prepares the report every three weeks on a typewriter. He does not use a computer, a cellphone or an answering machine — and he has never driven a car.
¶ A typical day consists of attending noon Mass at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs nearby and then hopping on the subway to a game. Often he takes trains and buses to Catholic schools in New Jersey, prep schools in New England, or really any of the powerhouses from Maine to West Virginia.
¶
Mr. Konchalski, a lifelong bachelor, is a slim 6-foot-6, but he was never very good on the court, and he jokes that his prominence as a scout is “revenge” for that.
¶ “I like to say that the only thing I’ve ever jumped to in my life is a conclusion,” he said.
¶ Those conclusions are offered as pithy comments about the players, each of whom is assessed with a five-star rating system. On one recent sheet, a player was billed as “loaded with offensive chutzpah,” while another was “like rabid dog on D.” He writes that one player can “tip like Sinatra” around the basket, and another has the “metabolism of a hummingbird” on the court. Along the right margin, he squeezes in comments of 25 characters or less — like “Scores like we breathe!” and “Bodyguard w/surgeon’s touch.”
¶ Tuesday afternoon found him in the last row of the bleachers at George Westinghouse high school in Brooklyn, where the team was taking on the South Shore Vikings, also from Brooklyn. Mr. Konchalski watched a South Shore player, Terrence Samuel.
¶ “He’s got good feel, makes other people better,” Mr. Konchalski murmured as he took notes on his trademark legal pad, with more than a dozen categories for each of the four players he was ranking. The well-dressed scout stood out against all the teenagers in puffy ski jackets singing along to the Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne songs echoing in the gym.
¶ Coaches and referees trotted over to pay their respects to Mr. Konchalski, who grew up in Elmhurst, Queens, and was already a basketball junkie by the time he was an altar boy and soon after was scouting players all over the city, for teams he helped run or coach.
¶ He realized basketball was his life’s calling after seeing a teenage Connie Hawkins playing summer league ball in 1959.
¶ “I would follow him from playground to playground,” he said of Hawkins, who starred at Boys High School in Brooklyn and as a professional. “His game was electric. With one hand, he could palm a rebound out of the air.”
¶ Mr. Konchalski became a Catholic school math teacher, but in 1979 he quit to work full-time for the scouting legend Howie Garfinkel, who founded HSBI but sold it to Mr. Konchalski in 1984.
¶ Over lunch at a Boston Market on Wednesday, he demonstrated his memory for dates related to basketball. Asked about a great forward out of Flatbush, Chris Mullin, Mr. Konchalski recalled the day — Jan. 12, 1981 — that Mullin became eligible to play as a senior after transferring to Xaverian High School in Brooklyn.
¶ As for Boston Market, Mr. Konchalski said he first visited the franchise on Dec. 1, 1994, while on a trip to scout a young Kobe Bryant in Pennsylvania. He added that he had not eaten a meal at home in 22 years.
¶ At this point, a man walked over to ask if the scout remembered him. Yes, Mr. Konchalski said: Thomas Edison High School, class of 1988.
¶ Afterward, Mr. Konchalski protested that he was not famous.
¶ “It only means I’m old,” he said.
¶
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