It’s around 1:30 in the morning on Feb. 18, 1951. Detectives from the New York District Attorney's office are standing on the platform at old Penn Station, waiting for the train from Philadelphia.

"It's a cold, drizzly night," author Matthew Goodman says. "It's kind of a scene out of a film noir with everybody bundled up in overcoats and fedoras."

The detectives are there to arrest three members of the City College of New York men’s basketball team.

A Team Playing At The Hub Of Sports Gambling

During the late 1940s, the City College of New York men's basketball team featured an all Jewish and African American roster. It was unusual for the time, but it made sense. This was New York City, the home of so many minorities.

City College played almost all of its games at the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden.

"City College would play, you know, a double header at the Garden, and they would invariably draw a full house, 18,000 screaming fans," Goodman says. "The New York Knicks had trouble drawing seven or eight thousand fans. And in fact, when there was a scheduling conflict, the Knicks got moved downtown to the dilapidated old 69th Regiment Armory on 23rd Street because the college game was by far the bigger game."

The old Madison Square Garden during the 1940s. (Getty Images)

And there’s another reason it’s important to this story that City College played in Madison Square Garden.

"It's estimated that there were 4,000 bookmakers operating illegally in New York," Goodman says. "About $300,000 was bet on each game that was being held at the Garden. Much of it — as everybody knew — from inside the Garden itself."

At the center of that gambling scene was Harry Gross, a bookmaker from Brooklyn.

"His syndicate was taking in $20 million a year in sports bets, which seems like a lot — which is a lot — but especially when you consider that that's worth over $200 million a year in today's currency."

Gambling was illegal, but Gross ...

"He was protecting himself, his syndicate, from arrest by doling out $1 million a year in what he called 'ice' — bribes — to policemen and to politicians to keep them from busting his organization," Goodman says.

Dealings In The Borscht Belt

When there are gamblers, there are cheaters. Back in the 1940s, their method of choice was point shaving.

"So, if, for instance, the point spread was 11 points, you could win the game by 10 points or nine points or eight points and so forth," Goodman says. "So a player, who might recoil at the notion of intentionally losing a game, might think, 'Well, what's the difference whether we win by six points or nine points?' "

In the 1940s, City College featured an all Jewish and African American roster. (Larry Gralla)

City College established itself as the best team in New York. And the players already had the gamblers’ attention.

"A lot of these players first came into contact with bookmakers and gamblers actually not in New York City, but upstate in the hotels of the Catskills — you know, the so-called 'Borscht Belt,' " Goodman says. "These players from New York and from elsewhere around the country would get hired by the hotels in the mountains, ostensibly to work as waiters or busboys or lifeguards, because by NCAA rules, the hotels were not allowed to pay them to play basketball.

"But, in point of fact, they were being hired because they were basketball players. Each hotel had a basketball team, and the competition got pretty intense. There was always a raffle at the end of these games, and whoever had the ticket that was closest to the final score of the two teams’ combined points would win a huge pot. And the gambler would say, ‘You know what? If you can arrange it so that my number is the final number, I will give you half the pot.’ And that was where these players first began to take money to control the points."

'No, We've Come Too Far'

During the 1949-50 season, a few City College players were taking money and shaving points. It wasn’t every game, and it certainly wasn’t everyone.

City College finished that year’s regular season with a 17-5 record, best among the New York City schools. As a result, they had earned a bid to the NIT — at the time the most prestigious postseason tournament.