Author and former professional basketball player Dan Grunfeld joins me in The Locher Room for the 16th episode in the Conversations with Alan series.

Dan will be here to share the story of his father, former Milwaukee Bucks player and general manager Ernie Grunfeld who is the only athlete in NBA history whose parents survived the Holocaust. As a longtime figure in the public eye, audiences knew very little about his background. His son, Dan, in his book By the Grace of the Game, details what the Grunfeld family had to endure during the Holocaust, how basketball transformed Ernie from immigrant outcast to an Olympic gold medalist for the United States.

By the Grace of the Game is a story of an ordinary family thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Surviving the horrors of the Holocaust, deceiving a brutal communist regime, and adapting to life as illiterate refugees caring for a dying son in New York City are only the beginning. The true improbability of this family story lies in the discovery of a game – the game of basketball – that unknowingly held the power to heal wounds, build bridges, and tie together generations of a fractured family.

If the magnitude of an American dream is measured by the intensity of the nightmare that came before and the heights of the triumph achieved after, then By the Grace of the Game recounts an American dream story of unprecedented scale. From the grips of the Nazis to the top of the Olympic podium, from the cheap seats to center stage at Madison Square Garden, from yellow stars to silver spoons, this striking family saga traverses the vast spectrum of the human experience to detail how perseverance, love, and legacy can survive through generations, carried on the shoulders of a simple and beautiful game, a vehicle no one could have predicted.

With antisemitism and attacks on Jewish people on the rise, please join us for another important conversation.

Original Airdate: 10/26/2022