First MVP Kept Feet on Ground

The instant hero of an impatient night, the name of this year’s NBA All-Star game’s most valuable player probably will be revealed by the middle of the fourth quarter.

Ed Macauley hears this and laughs.

The MVP of the first All-Star game in 1951 didn’t find out that he had won the award until three years later.

Organizers initially didn’t even think the event should have an MVP, and it wasn’t until after the third such game that Macauley was voted the award retroactively.

“In those days, nobody emphasized awards like that, it was all about the team,” Macauley says.

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The owner of the most precious bauble on a bling-bling night, this year’s NBA All-Star game MVP will hold his trophy high.

Ed Macauley laughs a little louder.

The MVP of the first All-Star game didn’t receive his trophy until 52 years later. He didn’t realize he was supposed to receive a trophy, and never mentioned it until a couple of years ago, during a talk-radio interview.

A radio executive overheard and called NBA officials, who were stunned. A trophy was made, shipped to Macauley’s hometown of St. Louis, and there he received it last spring, at a banquet.

“Back then, you never looked for trophies -- it never even registered,” Macauley says. “It was a different game, you know?”

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A different game indeed.

This year’s All-Stars will take to the Staples Center floor with nicknames like Vinsanity and Diesel and the Answer.

The first All-Star MVP was nicknamed Easy Ed.

“Nobody would be called that anymore, I don’t think,” Ed Macauley says.

From a different world he visits us this week, 75 but smooth as ever, his 6-foot-8 frame supported by two artificial knees and a keen sense of reality. The retired Catholic deacon in St. Louis comes to the telephone to remind us of that distant time when the All-Star game used to actually be -- gasp -- a game.

“Not like it is today, when everything is about the pregame and halftime acts,” he says. “Last time I went to one of these All-Star games, seems to me they were even coming out and singing during timeouts.”

He is named Easy Ed from the time he energetically led his St. Louis University team up from a basement locker room and onto the court.

During the middle of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“I turned around and nobody had followed me,” he said. “People in the stands were shouting, ‘Easy, Ed, wait for the end of the song.’ The name stuck.”

So did Macauley’s game, one of quickness and power that enabled him to quickly become one of the best players in the fledgling NBA when he joined the soon-to-be-defunct St. Louis Bombers in 1949.

In his second season -- by then he’d gone to the Boston Celtics after the Bombers folded -- he was averaging around 20 points and nine rebounds when he received his formal invitation to a new brainchild of NBA publicist Haskell Cohen.

“Red [Auerbach] walked into the locker room one day and said something like, ‘Well, um, there’s this All-Star game in a couple of weeks and, well, er, Easy Ed and [Bob] Cousy, you guys go,’ ” Macauley says. “It wasn’t exactly a big deal.”

And it almost didn’t occur, so worried were officials that nobody would show up. Pro basketball wasn’t all that popular to begin with, the college game had been racked by a point-shaving scandal, and some thought the game would be a cheap imitation of baseball’s midsummer classic.

Walter Brown, the Celtics’ legendary owner, donated the Boston Garden for the event, but the league soon pleaded with him to cancel it.

“Even up until the last week, the game was in doubt,” the late Brown was quoted on nba.com. “A few days before the game, [Commissioner] Maurice Podoloff called me on the phone and asked me to call it off. He said that everyone he had talked to said it would be a flop, and that the league would look bad.”

Before the game, Brown was so worried that he joined other league officials in the Garden lobby, counting heads to see if they would break even.

Turns out, they did better than that, drawing 10,094 to an event that, compared to today’s game, was like a Model T compared to a Hummer.

There were no African American players in this game, the league’s first blacks having only been drafted the previous summer.

“No question, we didn’t have all the best athletes,” Macauley admits.

And there were no practices, no parties, no hype.

“It was a matter of everyone showing up in the locker room before the game and introducing themselves to each other,” he recalls. “It was like, ‘Hi, Ed, I’m Harry Gallatin of the New York Knicks, and I’ve always hated your guts ... ‘ “

But once they took the court, amazingly, they were more of a team than many All-Star teams since.

The winning East team scored a relatively few 111 points, yet did it with 40 assists.

Last year, the winning West team required 155 points to accumulate 40 assists.

“We played the game like it was a real game,” Macauley says.

And, even with his game-high 20 points, he fittingly won the MVP trophy because of defense. He held giant George Mikan to four-for-17 shooting simply by standing in front of him and counting on his teammates for help from behind.

“The other guys took care of me,” Macauley says.

Imagine that. Team defense at an All-Star game? How about, no skywalking at an All-Star game?

“There was not one dunk ... I don’t think any of us could dunk,” Macauley recalls with a laugh. “I’ve had many ladies tell me I have a magnificent body. But I could not jump.”

After the event, his game-high 20 points with six rebounds headed unwittingly for the history books, Macauley and Bob Cousy met at a local hotel, ate sandwiches, and went home.

“We never thought much about any of it,” Macauley says. “To see it become like the Super Bowl today, it’s amazing.”

And, he says, unsettling.

He probably won’t watch Sunday’s game because of activities with his grandchildren, and he’s worried that many others are leaving a sport that is forgetting its roots.

“There’s so much stuff going on now, so much entertainment, it seems like the game itself is secondary, and that’s not good,” Macauley says. “The NBA has to remember to keep the game the primary thing.”

For all its jewelry and furs, the NBA is still about the game, and the team, as the first All-Star MVP knows so well.

He was inducted into the Hall of Fame as an individual, but Macauley should be best remembered for a bit of quiet teamwork that changed the league forever.

It was 1956, and his 1-year-old son Patrick had been diagnosed with spinal meningitis, which debilitated the boy and finally took his life 13 years later.

Macauley received a call that spring from Walter Brown, raising the possibility that Easy Ed could be traded to the St. Louis Hawks for a draft pick.

Brown told Macauley he wasn’t going to make the deal.

Macauley, who lived in St. Louis, said that if Brown didn’t make the deal, he was going to leave Boston anyway because he needed to spend all his time with his young wife and sick child.

So Brown made the deal.

And that is how Bill Russell became a Celtic.

“I guess it worked out well for everybody,” says Easy Ed, not only the first true All-Star MVP, but maybe one of the last.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.