Though his playing career came to an end at age 27, it’s not even close to game over for Tamir Goodman

Photos: Elchanan Kotler, Personal archives

He was the talk of the town, the hope of his coach, and ranked the 25th best high school player in the US. At 6 foot 3, the gangly redheaded kid from Baltimore brought a golden reputation — he’d averaged more than 35 points per game in 11th grade — to his new career in college basketball.

But Tamir Goodman brought something else to the court: a staunch resolve that his identity as a Torah-observant Jew would always come first. Years later, forced by injuries to retire after a career that never had a chance to fulfill the breathless expectations of sportscasters across America, it’s not even close to game over for Tamir — today a coach, motivational speaker, entrepreneur, and inventor. Because all this time, his eye was on a different prize.

Tamir learned a valuable lesson from high school coach Harold Katz: “Don’t do anything to embarrass your Creator”

Squaring the Circle

Tamir Goodman became a nationally recognized figure in 1999, when he was dubbed “the Jewish Jordan” — a reference to greatest-of-all-time basketball player Michael Jordan — by Sports Illustrated, the king of all sports magazines. When SI crowned a skinny 17-year-old from Baltimore — and did we mention Orthodox Jew? — as a “Jordan,” the world sat up and took notice.

Tamir Goodman was born in 1982 to a close-knit, Torah-observant family of nine children. His parents kept a warm, open home, and he had a typical childhood, attending the local Talmudical Academy, an Orthodox day school.

But from age five, the lanky redhead was drawn to the basketball court, and his unusual talent was obvious. “I liked all sports,” he says, “but nothing came close to my love of basketball. And that’s probably what set me up for my basketball journey. If you’re going to reach the highest level at anything in This World, you really have to love it. The love has to be so deep, and you have to be so committed, otherwise, the hours spent, and the work… because you’re literally pushing yourself to tears every day in training. It’s not worth it unless you really, really love it. I love the game.”

Those hours on the basketball court were the bright spots in his life, because school was a painful struggle for Tamir. At age 15, he finally found out the reason why: severe dyslexia.

“Reading, writing, and basic math are a huge challenge for me. It was very frustrating not to be able to do simple tasks on a daily basis that other people could do. But life is about working with what we can do instead of focusing on what we can’t.

“I only heard recently that the doctor who diagnosed my dyslexia told my coach, ‘I don’t even know how this kid can play.’

“ ‘Why is that?’ the coach asked.

“ ‘Because,’ said the doctor, ‘he can’t tell the difference between a circle and a square.’ ”

But Tamir clearly had an instinctive feel for basketball. And it didn’t seem to matter if the basket was a circle or a square. By the time he was 17, Tamir was ranked the 25th best high-school player in all of America, averaging more than 35 points per game and attracting so much attention that Talmudical Academy had to rent larger courts to accommodate all the spectators clamoring to see the tall redhead in action.

That’s when the University of Maryland came calling.

And the name Tamir Goodman exploded onto the world stage.