Alfred Nicholas Cervi (February 12, 1917 – November 9, 2009) was an American professional basketball player and coach in the National Basketball League (NBL) and National Basketball Association (NBA). One of the strongest backcourt players of the 1940s and 1950s, he was always assigned to defend against the opposing team's best scoring threat. He earned the nickname "Digger" because of his hard-nosed style of defense. He won the National Basketball League championship in 1946 with the Rochester Royals while being an All-NBL First Team in three straight seasons. He stayed with the NBL with the Syracuse Nationals in 1948, where he became player-coach that same year, which was the last one prior to joining the NBA. In that first year in the NBA, the Nationals won 51 games and reached the Finals, where they lost to the Minneapolis Lakers in six games. Cervi led the team back to the Finals in 1954 and 1955, which each saw the Nationals play in a Game 7; denied in 1954 to Minneapolis, the Nationals won Game 7 in 1955 for their first NBA championship. After twelve games in 1956, Cervi was fired from the Nationals, having coached them to eight postseason appearances in nine seasons. He coached one season with the Philadelphia Warriors in 1958 but elected to leave coaching for more lucrative ventures. Cervi was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1985.
Early life
Born in Buffalo, New York, Cervi attended East High School in his hometown, where he captained the baseball and basketball teams and achieved All-City honors in both sports. He dropped out of school after his junior year when he was recruited by the Buffalo Bisons of the newly formed NBL. He played in all of the Bisons' nine games in 1937–38, the franchise's only season of existence.
He never attended college. Instead, he served five years in the United States Army Air Forces from 1940 through 1945.
Rochester Royals (1945–1948)
After the conclusion of World War II, he joined the Rochester Royals, another NBL franchise entering its first year of operations. He immediately experienced success as the team captured the 1945–46 league title after sweeping the best-of-five championship series from the Sheboygan Red Skins. The Royals returned to the finals the following two seasons, but lost to the Chicago American Gears and Minneapolis Lakers in four games each. In the first of those two campaigns, he was the leading scorer with 632 points.
The Nationals qualified for the playoffs in eight of the nine seasons that he coached the ballclub, including three trips to the NBA Finals. They were twice defeated by the Lakers, first in six games in 1950 and then in seven in 1954. The pinnacle of Cervi's coaching career was leading his squad to the NBA Championship over the Fort Wayne Pistons in seven games in 1955.
Later years
Cervi succeeded George Senesky as coach of the Philadelphia Warriors in 1958, but left after one season to accept a more lucrative job in the trucking business as an area manager for Eastern Freightways, Inc. in Rochester, New York. In 1960 he declined to accept a two-year offer to coach the Lakers in its first campaign in Los Angeles because his wife was reluctant to leave the Rochester area. Cervi was the head coach for the New Haven Elms of the Eastern Professional Basketball League (EPBL) during the 1966–67 season. He lived in the suburb of Brighton for the last 58 years of his life. He received similar honors from the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.
He died on November 9, 2009, in Rochester, New York, at the age of 92.
Regular season
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1937–38
| style="text-align:left;"| Buffalo
| 9 || 19 || 6 || || || 44 || 4.9
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#ffe6fa;"| 1945–46†
| style="text-align:left;"| Rochester
| 28 || 112 || 76 || 108 || .704 || 300 || 10.7
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1946–47
| style="text-align:left;"| Rochester
| 44 || 228 || 176 || 236 || .746 || 632 || 14.4
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1947–48
| style="text-align:left;"| Rochester
| 49 || 234 || 187 || 242 || .773 || 655 || 13.4
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1948–49
| style="text-align:left;"| Syracuse
| 57 || 204 || 287 || 382 || .751 || 695 || 12.2
|-
|style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 187 || 797 || 732 || 968 || .750 || 2,326 || 12.4
|}
Playoffs
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#ffe6fa;"| 1946†
| style="text-align:left;"| Rochester
| 7 || 23 || 24 || 30 || .800 || 70 || 10.0
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1947
| style="text-align:left;"| Rochester
| 11 || 49 || 50 || 68 || .735 || 148 || 13.5
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1948
| style="text-align:left;"| Rochester
| 6 || 18 || 14 || 19 || .737 || 50 || 8.3
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1949
| style="text-align:left;"| Syracuse
| 6 || 12 || 22 || 30 || .733 || 46 || 7.7
|-
|style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 30 || 102 || 110 || 147 || .748 || 314 || 10.5
|}
NBA
Regular season
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="font-size:95%; text-align:right;"
!Year
!Team
!GP
!MPG
!FG%
!FT%
!RPG
!APG
!PPG
|-
| style="text-align:left;" |1949–50
| style="text-align:left;" |Syracuse
|56
|–
|.332
|.829
|–
|4.7
|10.2
|-
| style="text-align:left;" |1950–51
| style="text-align:left;" |Syracuse
|53
|–
|.382
|.819
|2.9
|3.9
|8.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;" |1951–52
| style="text-align:left;" |Syracuse
|55
|15.5
|.354
|.883
|1.6
|2.7
|7.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;" |1952–53
| style="text-align:left;" |Syracuse
|38
|7.9
|.437
|.810
|0.6
|0.7
|3.8
|- class="sortbottom"
| colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" |Career
|202
|12.4
|.359
|.839
|1.8
|3.2
|7.9
|}
Playoffs
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="font-size:95%; text-align:right;"
!Year
!Team
!GP
!MPG
!FG%
!FT%
!RPG
!APG
!PPG
|-
| style="text-align:left;" |1950
| style="text-align:left;" |Syracuse
|11
|–
|.338
|.826
|–
|4.7
|7.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;" |1951
| style="text-align:left;" |Syracuse
|7
|–
|.304
|.880
|4.7
|5.4
|11.1
|-
| style="text-align:left;" |1952
| style="text-align:left;" |Syracuse
|7
|12.6
|.223
|.957
|1.4
|2.1
|5.1
|-
| style="text-align:left;" |1953
| style="text-align:left;" |Syracuse
|2
|14.0
|.600
|.800
|0.0
|0.5
|9.0
|- class="sortbottom"
| colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" |Career
|27
|12.9
|.314
|.866
|2.7
|3.9
|8.0
|}
Head coaching record
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Syracuse
| style="text-align:left;"|
| 64||51||13|||| style="text-align:center;"|1st in Eastern||11||6||5||
| style="text-align:center;"|Lost in NBA Finals
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Syracuse
| style="text-align:left;"|
| 66||32||34|||| style="text-align:center;"|4th in Eastern||7||4||3||
| style="text-align:center;"|Lost in Division finals
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Syracuse
| style="text-align:left;"|
| 66||40||26|||| style="text-align:center;"|1st in Eastern||7||3||4||
| style="text-align:center;"|Lost in Division finals
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Syracuse
| style="text-align:left;"|
| 71||47||24|||| style="text-align:center;"|2nd in Eastern||2||0||2||
| style="text-align:center;"|Lost in Division semifinals
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Syracuse
| style="text-align:left;"|
| 72||42||30|||| style="text-align:center;"|2nd in Eastern||13||9||4||
| style="text-align:center;"|Lost in NBA finals
|-style="background:#FDE910;"
| style="text-align:left;"|Syracuse
| style="text-align:left;"|
| 72||43||29|||| style="text-align:center;"|1st in Eastern||11||7||4||
| style="text-align:center;"|Won NBA championship
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Syracuse
| style="text-align:left;"|
| 72||35||37|||| style="text-align:center;"|3rd in Eastern||8||4||4||
| style="text-align:center;"|Lost in Division finals
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Syracuse
| style="text-align:left;"|
| 12||4||8|||| style="text-align:center;"|(replaced)||—||—||—||—
| style="text-align:center;"|—
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|Philadelphia
| style="text-align:left;"|
| 72||32||40|||| style="text-align:center;"|4th in Eastern||—||—||—||—
| style="text-align:center;"|Missed playoffs
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"|Career
| 567||326||241|||| ||59||33||26||||