Second Story Morrys

Location: Pittsburgh, Pa.
Nickname: “The Morrys”
Colors: Black, Grass Green, Pink, Ivory

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The Second Story Morrys^® are a unique basketball team from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with two special links to local and the national African American sports history.

The first connection is through Cumberland Posey, the Pittsburgh native who was universally considered the best black basketball player of his generation. Posey learned the finer points of basketball from a man named Charles “Chick” Davies, who was his coach at Homestead High School.

Homestead was a closely-knit and ethnically diverse steel making community in Pittsburgh. Davies and Posey led Homestead High to the Pittsburgh city high school basketball championship in 1908.

The two men parted ways after high school, and Posey went on to play basketball at Penn State and eventualy at Duquesne University, where he was the team’s leading scorer for three seasons.

Posey then starred for several major Black Fives Era semi-pro and pro teams including the Loendi Big Five, which won four straight Colored Basketball World Championships beginning in the late 1910s.

Meanwhile, Davies, who was also an accomplished player, eventually left his coaching position at Homestead High and joined a local all-Jewish semi-pro basketball team called the Second Story Morrys.

The Morrys were so named because they were sponsored by a downtown Pittsburgh clothing haberdasher named Morry Goldman. Goldman’s apparel shop was on the second floor of his building in downtown Pittsburgh, so he became known as “Second Story Morry” and his team took the same name.

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