Bob Karstens

Bob Karstens (born March 11, 1915 in Davenport , Iowa , † December 31, 2004 in Redlands , California ) was an American professional basketball player for the well-known show troupe Harlem Globetrotters . The 1.87 meter tall Karstens played the position of the center , was the first white player of the otherwise completely Afro-American team and was also the manager of this team until 1954.

Career

As a teenager, Bob Karstens was a talented basketball player from St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa, best known for his spectacular trick throws. When Harlem Globetrotters manager Abe Saperstein lost his star center Goose Tatum in 1942 because he was signed into the US Army Air Forces in World War II , he saw Karstens play and immediately signed Karstens as a replacement. He had seen Karstens on the Davenport Central Turner Rockets or Davenport Rockets team at the World Professional Basketball Tournament in Chicago that same year . Karstens thus became the first white player in the Trotters.

Karstens significantly diverse in the development of traditional Trotters tricks was involved in a style known Trotters warm-up routine called "Magic Circle" (Eng .: magic circle ), the Trotters player up in the circle and to the sounds of whistled " Sweet Georgia Brown “passing several balls with rhythmic contortions. Among his most famous inventions include a behind-the-back backhand throw, a yo-yo gag basketball with a cord, and the so-called "goofball" (Eng .:. Joke Ball ): it was a gag basketball filled with eccentrically applied weights that were almost impossible for non-Trotters to dribble.

Karstens played in a time when racial segregation still existed in professional sport. A bizarre side effect was that Karstens was the only white player in an otherwise black team to experience racism . A famous anecdote about Karstens is that he talked to the legendary black sprinter Jesse Owens on a train until Karstens was thrown out of the compartment by the conductor. The reason was that Owens was in the compartment for blacks and the conductor could "not expect" the white Karstens to have to share his seat with a black man. Karstens himself later said that he had never had a problem with African-Americans.

After his playing career, Karstens was a manager for the Trotters until 1954 and later got into the construction industry. In 1994 he received the Harlem Globetrotters "Legends" ring for his services. Karstens died of natural causes on New Year's Eve 2004. He was 89 years old. He was married and had three sons.

Web links

• Karsten's entry with the Harlem Globetrotters
• New York Times obituary notice
• Los Angeles Times obituary notice
• Obituary notice from a local Redlands newspaper