Jeff DiVeronica

@RocDevo

Wanzer was a five-time time NBA All-Star and the league's MVP in 1953.

He was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1987 with Rick Barry, Pete Maravich and Walt Frazier.

Wanzer started the St. John Fisher College program in 1963 and coached there for 24 years.

Rochester lost a basketball legend on Saturday.

Robert F. "Bobby" Wanzer, a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, star guard for the 1951 NBA champion Rochester Royals and the coach who started St. John Fisher College’s program, died. Mr. Wanzer was 94.

“It’s certainly sad that he’s gone but what an unbelievable, wonderful life he lived,” said Rob Kornaker, 47, the current coach at Fisher, where Mr. Wanzer coached from 1963-87.

A Brooklyn native born June 4, 1921, he was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 1987 with Rick Barry, Pete Maravich and Walt Frazier. Mr. Wanzer was selected by the Royals in the first round of the 1948 Basketball Association of America draft after a brilliant career at Seton Hall.

Nicknamed “Hooks,” Mr. Wanzer played his entire nine-year NBA career with the Royals and participated in five NBA All-Star Games. He teamed with Bobby Davies to form one of the best backcourts in league history, and a popular debate of the era was whether that duo was better than Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman of the Boston Celtics.

The 5-foot-10, 172-pound Mr. Wanzer often was described as the best NBA player pound for pound and inch for inch.

“He was a player’s player (he never missed a game in his NBA career and usually played all 48 minutes) and as good as anyone in that decade (the 1950s), including Cousy,” former Royals owner and coach Les Harrison said decades ago. “He was a complete player. Every time we played Boston, he guarded Cousy and he usually outplayed him.”

“He was a great man. It’s a great loss for (Fisher),” said St. John Fisher Director of Alumni Engagement Bob Moline, 68, a 1968 graduate of the college who served as the Cardinals’ sports information director early in Mr. Wanzer’s tenure and said he felt like an assistant coach. “He taught kids to play the game the right way.”

Mr. Wanzer had been in good health until about a year ago, Moline said. Mr. Wanzer would usually spend May through October in Rochester, then head to Florida for the winter and also spent time in Texas. His daughters, Beth and Mary, live in the Rochester area and son Bob in Atlanta. Beth and Bob are Fisher graduates.

“A lot of his old buddies from New Jersey were in Florida and some former Royals teammates were down there. He’d play golf three or four times a week,” said Moline, who stayed in touch with Wanzer through the years. “But he always came back to Rochester. His two daughters were here. He considered Rochester his home. He loved playing golf at Oak Hill.”

Mr. Wanzer’s wife, Nina, was from here. She died about a decade ago. Mr. Wanzer had issues with skin cancer and a ministroke last summer, Moline said. He also suffered a couple of broken ribs in recent months after a fall. The last time they talked, Moline said, was just before Christmas.

“He said (2015) was the worst year of his life because he was always going to the doctor,” Moline said.

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Some of Mr. Wanzer’s best memories were of the 1951 NBA championship season and the Royals. “The thing I most remember is how well we got along and played together. We had a very unselfish team,” he said.

Mr. Wanzer, who wore No. 20, averaged 10.8 points that season, fourth on the team behind Arnie Risen (16.3), Davies (15.2) and Jack Coleman (11.4). He also coached the Royals for three-plus seasons, two in Rochester and then in Cincinnati when the franchise moved after the 1956-57 season.

Mr. Wanzer was a player-coach until the 1957 NBA All-Star Game. He didn’t make the game as a player but coached the West squad. It was the first time he participated in a college or pro game in a suit instead of in a basketball uniform. He was 31 and he decided it was time to retire as a player.

“Maybe I could have played longer, but I wanted to let the younger guys play,” he said.

Mr. Wanzer was the first NBA player to shoot over 90 percent from the free-throw line in a season (.904 in 1951-52). He averaged 12.2 points in 586 regular-season games and 15.2 in 34 playoff games. He led the Royals in scoring in the 1953-54 and 1954-55 seasons and scored 46 points in his five NBA All-Star Games, including 13 points in 1956 before a sellout crowd at the Community War Memorial.

After leading Seton Hall to a 16-2 record as a sophomore, Mr. Wanzer enlisted in the Marine Corps. He made the All-Pacific Armed Forces all-star basketball team and participated in the Occupation of Guam. He was elected to the Marine Corps Sports Hall of Fame in 2007.

“We had already secured the island and I wasn’t shot at,” he recalled. “I was one of the lucky ones.”

When World War II ended, he returned to Seton Hall, where his coach was Davies. In his senior year, Mr. Wanzer was player-coach for five games when Davies had scheduling conflicts and was played with the Royals. Seton Hall won all five games.

Mr. Wanzer was selling securities in 1962 when the longtime Brighton and Pittsford resident was approached to launch the basketball program at Fisher, the small, private college in Pittsford where the Buffalo Bills have held their training camp for more than a decade.

His teams posted 15 winning seasons in his 24 years and a 311-239 record. He also served as golf coach for 32 years (1993 was his final season) and men’s athletic director. He was inducted into the Fisher Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Frontier Field Walk of Fame in 1997.

Moline called Mr. Wanzer “fiery” on the sideline and in practice. He was only in his mid-40s when he started the Fisher program, so he’d often scrimmage with his players.

“The thing about coach Wanzer was you’d go down to the gym and no matter who you were he’d have time for you,” Moline said. “He’d never talk about his time in the NBA, though.”

Usually toward the end of a season, Mr. Wanzer and his wife would welcome players to their home for some of Nina’s lasagna. Players would see pictures on the walls of their Pittsford home of Mr. Wanzer in the NBA.

“For most of them it was the first time they found out he was in the NBA,” Moline said, speaking about Mr. Wanzer’s humility.

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Mr. Wanzer was once considered a strong candidate to coach at Seton Hall. But he didn’t want to leave Fisher, Moline said. “If I went to Seton Hall all I’d be is a recruiter,” Moline recalled Mr. Wanzer saying. “I love being here because I teach the game of basketball.”

Kornaker was on his way to watch his son, Griffin, play at the Naismith Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts on Saturday when he got word of Mr. Wanzer’s passing. Griffin, a sophomore at Aquinas Institute last year, now is enrolled and plays for Suffield Academy, a Connecticut prep school.

Kornaker didn’t know how to describe the feeling of being at the Hall of Fame on the night Fisher’s program founder and a Hall-of-Famer passed away. But it certainly was ironic.

“I’m going to get a picture of his bust tonight. I’ve got to get up there (where they’re kept) and do that,” Kornaker said.

He is in his 15th year as Fisher’s coach. He succeeded Bob Ward, who also coached for 15 years after taking over for Mr. Wanzer in the summer of 1987.

“The history in our program is just something people don’t realize,” Kornaker said. “It’s one of the things we talk about when recruits come. We want everyone who steps foot on campus to know a Hall-of-Famer started our program.”

JDIVERON@Gannett.com

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