Harlem Globetrotters

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Eugene Edgerson of the Harlem Globetrotters

The Harlem Globetrotters are a native to Chicago originating Basketball -Show team. They combine their skillful basketball game against opponents that have always been the same since the 1960s with show elements and slapstick interludes. Her humor was in the early days of ethnic nature and seemed Minstrel - stereotypes to embody, but actually turned the archetype of the trickster in the form of a so-called hidden tradition represents.

In addition to the team as a whole, numerous members of the Globetrotters have been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as individuals . The team has now played well over 22,000 games in 122 countries.

history

According to legend, the beginnings of the team go back to 1926, when Abe Saperstein took over the basketball team of the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago , the "Savoy Big Five", as coach and owner . Although neither Saperstein nor any of his players came from New York , he is said to have renamed the team "Harlem Globe Trotters". On the one hand, "Harlem" should refer to the consistently African-American composition of the team, and on the other hand, "Globe Trotters" should symbolize the fact that the group has traveled extensively.

In fact, the beginnings of the Harlem Globetrotters are in the dark and even the "official" historiography had to be rewritten several times.

For example, the original name of the team is unclear. It is not clear whether the Savoy Big Five were actually the original Harlem Globetrotters, as claimed, or rather Tommy Brookins's Globe Trotters . Different scenarios are conceivable: a competing team, a recruited player ensemble under a new name or a replacement for an overbooked team. The fact is that the Savoy Ballroom was only opened in November 1927, the as yet nameless Savoy Big Five only played there in December and this was by no means unsuccessful, as was rumored. The name Harlem Globe Trotters or the spelling Harlem Globetrotters , which was occasionally used from the 1940s and exclusively from the mid-50s, has only existed since 1929.

Saperstein's role is completely dubious. The authors Nelson George and Ben Green agree that Saperstein, unlike Dick Hudson and later Al Monroe , was hired by the weekly Chicago Defender not as a coach, but as a white straw man and thus as a booking agent. He was an equal partner to his business partners, but received a double share from the income at the door to cover the expenses. It was only with the gradual withdrawal of the original players in the mid-1930s that he took over the organization as the longest-serving member, no longer dividing the income, but instead paying the employed players a flat rate of $ 7.50 per game.

It is said that the Globetrotters - as soon as they had a comfortable tour - showed various tricks and shows. In this way, the team developed in the direction of a show troupe, which has become the mainstay for globetrotters touring around the world today. Globetrotters' slapstick and trick play began in the 1930s because Saperstein believed that humor could defuse the hostility of subliminal racial competition. However, Saperstein interpreted the humor in the racist manner of the Minstrel tradition developed in the northern states , the elements of which he tried to emphasize.

According to the official historiography of the 1953 book Around The World with the Harlem Globetrotters , written by Dave Zinkoff, general manager of the 1952 European tour with Edgar Williams, the game of trickery began in 1939 in Woodfibre, British Columbia in a tense situation. Point Guard Al "Runt" Pullins is said to have ordered that he wanted to sanction racist heckling through superior play.

There are a number of things remarkable about this version. Racist attacks are not ruled out in Canada either, but with this version, history is being rewritten at the same time, because Canada was after all the historic destination of the Underground Railroad . It is also noteworthy that there are no press reports about this incident, but firstly about a significantly earlier occurrence of the trick game and secondly about several physical confrontations on American soil in the past, all of which are said to have originated from the Globetrotters themselves (which doesn't mean much, given the general social pressures on African Americans). With the exception of the Woodfibre incident, these recurring arguments have been completely erased from the history of the globetrotters.

At the first World Professional Basketball Tournament , the Globetrotters made it to the semi-finals in 1939, but were subject to the eventual winner, the New York Renaissance . A year later they defeated the Chicago Bruins in the final of the tournament and made their breakthrough. In March 1944, when the same tournament was held in front of 11,000 spectators, there was an uproar in a legendary game against the Oshkosh All-Stars . The All-Stars left the stage with the score from 31-41 six minutes before the end. The Oshkosh All-Stars' style of play had always been physically rustic or at least immune to the modernization and refinement of the game in the 1930s, but this game even used fists and elbows and two white spectators were arrested for storming the pitch . It is believed that when their lead allowed the Chicago team to use their famous style of trick basketball, which must have deeply frustrated the All-Stars.

The clown prince

The roots of clowning are in baseball . In black baseball of the 1880s, it was common for each player to perform at least one trick play, preferably after the first half of the game in the sixth inning . In addition to their games in the Negro Leagues , many African-American baseball teams also played challenge games against small-town white teams in the 1920s and 1930s to supplement their income. This tradition was taken up again. The reason is obvious: the score should be kept deliberately low in order to be invited again next year, but at the same time the audience wanted to be entertained.

Since Abe Saperstein booked baseball games as well as basketball, he was with the success of the Cincinnati Ethiopian Clowns (also: Indianapolis / Cincinnati Clowns and Indianapolis Clowns ), their best player in the all-star fiesta of the East West Classics in front of over 40,000 spectators played only too familiar. Their humor was largely racial. The focus was on the first baseman , who hit the first base provocatively late and casually in order to "burn" the batsman . He was also the leadership clown who was supposed to address the audience, opponents and throwers from his position .

This clown prince was Reece "Goose" Tatum , whom Saperstein recruited in the fall of 1942. As before and afterwards, primarily due to its physical characteristics (Tatum could touch his knees without bending over) - characteristics that corresponded to the physical caricatures of African Americans in the minstrel shows. But Tatum was a natural who only learned to play basketball after his twentieth birthday and still perfected it.

After one season, however, he was first drafted to the Army Aviation in Lincoln, Nebraska and, as a bloody basketball beginner, was one of the top ten service basketball players in the nation with the highest points until the end of the war . In 1946 the former first baseman of the Black Colonels and the Zulu Cannibal Giants returned to the Cincy Clowns, for whom he even took part in the aforementioned all-star game of the above-mentioned East West Classics , and at the same time to the Harlem Globetrotters.

The Globetrotters had show elements and trick play before, such as Sonny Boswell's 1941 football-style field goal , but Tatum introduced full-time entertainment. He not only brought his persona as a clown prince with him, but also the resuscitation after a faint by smelling his own shoe and the Pepperball / Shadowball routine, which the Globetrotters should be called Magic Circle . The baseball is thrown faster and faster from baseman to baseman until it is dropped at some point, while the speed of the throwing movements continues to increase.

A clear reference to the Minstrel tradition with its Jim Crow and Zip Coon figures and their caricaturing representation of African Americans was the use of the Globetrotters hymn " Sweet Georgia Brown " in the version of the minstrel artist Brother Bones during that Magic Circle . This the (German) carnival-like in their deliberate dilettantism variety -Shows with costumed half, uniformed half Orchestra, eccentric dance, slapstick humor and a Stump Speech (a political carnival speech by a white actor in blackface Masking) presented blacks as Children who have grown too big show a tendency towards superstition, naivety, laziness, lack of discipline, ignorance, irresponsibility towards threatening self-mutilation, cunning, towards music and the sensual.

The monkey sounds of the globetrotters, their “Yassuh, Yassuh!” Shouts and grimacing rubber gallop across the floor naturally corresponded to this caricature of the African American, but Tatum made use of this mainstream cosmos in which the white fear of revenge was the former Slaves is dampened by minstrel stereotypes, the hidden transcript , the hidden tradition that suggests subversion instead of explicitly pronouncing it. This hidden transcript , which goes back to a theory by James C. Scott , is recognizable to African Americans and is used and taught in the Trickster narratives, which are extremely popular in their circles . The African-American trickster narratives are undoubtedly influenced by the transatlantic slave trade and are regarded as models of action and role in suppressive societies in which the necessity of "amoral" actions for the purpose of survival is emphasized.

Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem “We wear the mask” sheds light on the dichotomous personality on which the nicknames of most basketball players are based, namely their own as well as those shown towards the white oppressor. And Tatum's nickname “Goose”, undoubtedly a prey animal, is of course in historical contrast to Kobe Bryant's “Black Mamba” and embodies that masking of the trickster.

Goose Tatum often sneaked away in exaggerated pantomime , either into the huddle of the opposing players to learn their tactics or out of his own field defense - apparently out of laziness, out of irresponsibility or simply because other distractions caught his attention. As soon as the Globetrotters had fought for the ball under their own basket, he returned to the field under the opposing basket and caught a ball that was thrown over the entire field by a teammate from his own zone. Then he turned around and threw the ball over the Shoulder in the basket. So he reconciled himself with the white audience by artificially complicating a crooked light ball.

Tatum's 1955 lawsuit against Pan Am shows that he was racially conscious. And he obviously didn't feel adequately rewarded. The fact that the globetrotters were in books, film and television proved their media value, but advertising revenue from Coca-Cola campaigns with the likeness of Tatum or other globetrotters such as the backcourt player and dribble artist Marques Haynes flowed first Saperstein line to.

In addition, racist remarks by Saperstein, who liked to portray himself as the “Jewish Abraham Lincoln”, were repeatedly passed down to (white) journalists. The relationship between the players and Abe Saperstein was therefore ambivalent. Connie Hawkins , who died in 2017 and who described the Globetrotters show as an " Uncle Tom performance", found him paternalistic: "He was good to you as long as you played the role of the grateful boy."

Bill Russell confirmed this plantation mentality from Saperstein, who courted him from 1954. On the sidelines of a basketball tournament in Chicago in December 1955, Saperstein tried, assuming a black hypersexuality , to bribe Russell with pornographic magazines. He later visited him in his hotel and recommended Russell to consult his coaches. While his assistant Harry Hannin joked with Russell and Ross Giudice, Saperstein negotiated over Russell's head exclusively with his head coach Phil Woolpert , like one father plantation owner with another.

Also Meadowlark Lemon felt a love-hate relationship to Saperstein, because you had to beg for vacation, after all, were the mid-1950s up to three teams simultaneously for the Globetrotters on tour. Globetrotters were paid better than most African Americans, but far less than their opponents in the World Series of Basketball or NBA players. While the latter had to play 72 games, globetrotters had to play over 200 or even 300 games with just two reserve players, sometimes two a day in the southern states alone , because of racial segregation for both a white and a black audience.

Marques Haynes therefore left the Globetrotters to found the Harlem Magicians in 1954 , which Tatum joined as a co-owner in 1955. Subsequently there were other competing organizations of the Globetrotters, such as B. Tatum's own Harlem Roadkings , which Saperstein liked to bring to trial for their apostasy out of vengeance. Haynes later turned down an offer from the Philadelphia Warriors that would have made him the second highest paid NBA player after finding out that Saperstein was a partner in Eddie Gottlieb's franchise. When Saperstein died in 1966, Haynes nevertheless appeared at his funeral to make sure, as he later claimed, that he was really dead.

The Harlem Globetrotters in the Cold War

In contrast to a minority among African Americans, such as the spectacle, basketball and football player Paul Robeson , very few blacks wanted to come into opposition to the USA , but instead wanted to create a gradual improvement towards integration and finally towards equality . The prerequisite for this was the belief in a capitalist America under the conviction that racism was not an economic problem, but a moral one, that it could also be solved by moral means. This is summed up in the slogan popular with blacks and whites, "He who can die for democratic principles, deserves the right to enjoy them," which led to Truman's presidential decree, Executive Order 9981 . In view of the red threat postulated by Truman , with and on the basis of which the alliance with the Soviet Union was terminated, African Americans inevitably had to put themselves in the service of the Truman doctrine , which only became apparent in the 1960s with the threatened Olympic boycott of black athletes and increasing solidarity with black African anti-colonialism movements should change. The greatest handicap for the US's foreign policy relations and thus the expansion of its sphere of influence in competition with the USSR was precisely the international reception of US racial policy.

The most universal and popular battlefield of the Cold War was undoubtedly the international sport because of its symbolism and emotional connection. In all ideological systems it stands for personal and social progress and the superiority of the represented political social system that produced and trained the athlete. Because of this universally understandable symbolism, people tend to trust sporty competitors rather than development workers in all other areas of life such as education, music, culture or the Peace Corps , which provides technical know-how.

In 1950 the Harlem Globetrotters lived up to their name for the first time by setting out to fly over the Atlantic to join the American All-Stars on a tour of Europe and North Africa through Morocco, Algeria, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, England and Germany to go. Both teams held basketball clinics on this tour, played against local teams - the All-Stars beat the Portuguese champions with 79-9, for example - and finally competed against each other in the evening. The tour was organized privately. After a game in Frankfurt am Main, however, Saperstein was asked by the High Commissioner John Jay McCloy to give an appearance in Berlin (West) .

The occasion was a Bolshevik “Third World Festival of Youth” under the motto “For Peace and Friendship - Against Nuclear Weapons” in August 1951 in the Soviet sector , to which over two million participants from over fifty countries were expected. The festival program was primarily played by musicians, dancers and athletes from the Eastern Bloc . The American occupation authorities therefore sponsored the appearance of the Harlem Globetrotters in order to present the participants with a counter-draft of the USA with this game as part of an alternative festival, since the demarcation line could still be exceeded at this time.

The game against the Boston Whirlwinds took place on August 22, 1951 in front of a conservatively estimated 75,000 spectators - one of the largest backdrops that ever existed in a basketball game - in Berlin's Olympic Stadium. One of the highlights was the landing of an Air Force helicopter at halftime, dismissing Jesse Owens in sportswear. The four-time Olympic champion of the XI Games. The 1936 Olympics was met with a standing ovation. After minutes of thunderous applause, Owens ran a lap of honor through the stadium. Owens often worked for Saperstein and Globetrotters' farm teams as ambassadors and commentators in the 1940s and 1950s . Occasionally he also had to be available for halftime shows, such as a hurdle run around the basketball court or a race against a Joe Louis in a similarly financially strained situation with Louis running backwards and Owens crawling on all fours. His reception at the site of his greatest triumph was far from such humiliation.

It is not known how far the government subsidies for the Harlem Globetrotters went beyond the game in the Olympic Stadium. The State Department denied payments, but in circulars it pledged extensive support for the Globetrotters because of "unlimited possibilities of racial understanding and goodwill," as Secretary of State Dean Acheson stated in a letter in which he also announced a review of whether the Globetrotters should be encouraged to cover Southeast Asia 1953 to be included in their tour calendar.

With their ambiguous ethnic humor, the Globetrotters portrayed African Americans as (so far) unsuitable for full integration, but at the same time painted a hopeful picture of social permeability from which talented or “unusually” disciplined African Americans could benefit and thus cushioned international criticism of the US Racial politics. According to writer Damion Thomas, the State Department sponsored the worldwide distribution of The Harlem Globetrotters . Rookie Brown's character plays an All-American whose professor tries to persuade him to pursue an academic career in view of the promises of easy money in professional basketball. The United States Information Agency hailed this as a sign that African Americans were welcome in academic life in the 1950s. Interesting in this context, however, is the fact that Rookie Brown, like the majority of the Harlem Globetrotters, attended a historically African American college .

Sporting importance

Despite the strong Afro-American influence, the Globetrotters also signed white players like Bob Karstens , who was the team's general manager from 1943 to 1954. Saperstein, who ran an Asian-American basketball team on the west coast with Chinese-born players, the Hong Wah Kues , would also like Wat Misaka , who was sacked by the New York Knickerbockers after three games and seven points , for the Globetrotters committed. The Japanese-born Misaka, NCAA champion and NIT winner , hadn't realized that he had to prove himself to coach Joe Lapchick because professional basketball in 1947/48 still had the reputation of the "precarious" while college basketball commonly viewed as the pinnacle of the sport, a misconception that George Mikan had already sunk in a game against the Oshkosh All-Stars.

The Harlem Globetrotters won the World Professional Basketball Tournament in 1940 and grossed between two and three and a half million dollars in the early 1950s with the increasing emphasis on entertainment. The Globetrotters always wanted to remain a serious basketball team and also want to compete in sports. Two wins against the Minneapolis Lakers in 1948 and 1949 were followed by five defeats between 1950 and 1953.

The historian Ron Thomas had suspected that Saperstein was responsible for the fact that the National Basketball Association (NBA), unlike the National Basketball League (NBL), was only integrated late to the globetrotters, who often played double headers with NBA teams and so on Keep league alive, don't upset. While college games drew 10,000 and Globetrotters games over 20,000, the Boston Celtics , for example , only drew 2,000 at times.

The race for college talent such as B. Walter Dukes between NBA and Saperstein seems to support this theory. But today's since 2007 "Globetrotters Draft", held shortly before the annual NBA Draft , reflects the fact that Ned Irish Abe Saperstein once paid $ 25,000 for the rights to Nathaniel "Sweetwater" Clifton . That same year, Harold Hunter, Earl Lloyd and Chuck Cooper were drafted by the NBA, all of whom had played for the Globetrotters before. Contrary to Thomas' theory, however, speaks that Clifton returned to the Globetrotters every season break and All-American Charles Cooper took part in the World Series of Basketball .

The World Series of Basketball was a touring game series initiated by the Globetrotters against the College All-Stars . These were selected outstanding college players, just graduated and often All-Americans, who first played a so-called college all-star game in Madison Square Garden and whose best all-stars then went on tour with the Globetrotters for a month. This World Series was very popular because the NBA was only able to sign a TV contract in the mid-1950s and - with two one-off exceptions in 1949 - was not to cross the Mississippi with the Lakers and the Warriors until 1960 and 1962. These tours were the only way for many fans to see high-quality basketball. Bob Cousy and Paul Arizin were among the College All-Star players , Clair Bee and Hank Iba among their coaches. The trick game faded into the background in this series between 1950 and 1962, because the games all ran out very closely. The Globetrotters won 144-66 games. Occasionally, fans also missed the entertainment they expected from a Globetrotters game. When interest in the series decreased noticeably due to the rescheduling of dates because of the Pan American and Olympic Games in 1959 and 1960, the organization shifted to pure entertainment after its end.

From then on, their opponents were the Washington Generals , who had existed since 1952 and were to lose in around 16,000 games. Red Klotz, a member of the 1948 BAA championship team for the Baltimore Bullets , bought the Philadelphia SPHAs (South Philadelphia Hebrew Association) and renamed them Washington Generals after Dwight Eisenhower was elected president . The SPHAs had previously toured the Globetrotters several times and had given them more than one defeat. But from the 1960s onwards, that was almost impossible. The Generals (or Boston Shamrocks , New York Nationals , etc.) were tasked with scoring as many points as possible, but could hardly win through the shows, with which the Globetrotters scored and which made up about 60% of the game (that last time in 1971 as New Jersey Reds by a buzzer beater from player-coach Red Klotz personally). Red Klotz knew that the audience came because of the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters, but saw his job not in losing the game, but in spurring the Globetrotters on to their top performances. The end of this legacy came a year after Red Klotz's death: The management of Herschend Enterprises , which has owned the organization since 2013, terminated the contract with the generals in 2015. The generals have been back since 2017, but are owned by Herschend Enterprises.

The Globetrotters and Coeducation

Women's basketball has existed since 1892. Senda Berenson Abbott of Smith College in Massachusetts had James Naismith explain the game to her in nearby Springfield and organized a game inside the walls of her school herself in March of that year. The game quickly spread to the university level, but despite its great popularity, it was soon limited again by sports teachers and officials. Around the turn of the century, women played according to three different sets of rules: the men's rules, the rules of basquette and Abbott's rules. The latter two reduced physical contact and restricted competition. So there was at Basquette seven zones, while the Women's Basketball Abbott on three zones and later the half field, so two zones, limited, which could not be abandoned by the two sets of three players. Only in the 1960s was there a rover that was allowed to switch between attack and defense zones and even allowed dribbling. These rules survived into the 1970s, locally even into the 1990s. Alternately, American masculinity should be protected against women's access to the game as a contact sport, or American femininity against brutalization of femininity. Physical education teachers were against competition and competition, which is why there were Telegraph Meets and Play Days , where teams were split up and reassembled on an equal footing. It is best to only exercise intramurally (within your own walls). In the 1920s and 1930s, however, women's basketball was played very well. With African-American women, who have always had to work hard physically as domestic servants and on plantations, the warning against masculinization through physical exertion did not catch on, as they had to master the balancing act between performance, reproduction and ladylike motherhood throughout their lives. And so the game spread to HBCUs, but also to Catholic high schools and colleges in Philadelphia. Challenge teams like the Philadelphia Tribune Girls or the All American Red Heads played according to both men's and women's rules, professional works team basketball under the supervision of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), as played by Babe Didrikson , mostly used Abbot's set of rules.

After a temporary decline in interest in female basketball in the 1940s and 1950s, the pressure in the women's basketball bowl soon rose again. In the mid-1960s , the acclaimed college / factory hybrid of the Wayland Baptist Flying Queens met the Harlem Globetrotters, who were staying in the same hotel. The Globetrotters taught the Flying Queens a few tricks, which from then on warmed up with the Globetrotters Magic Circle . A little later, Wayland Baptist College joined the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), a university sports association for women that was founded in the wake of Title IX and played according to men's rules. In the imagination of the American public had Title IX , the education amendment from 1972 ( Education Amendment of 1972 ) against sexual discrimination in federal funded educational institutions, with supporters and opponents of far greater power than in reality, but women's basketball was then no longer an obscurity. In 1976, the women also competed internationally at the first Olympic basketball tournament in Montreal , where they played according to FIBA rules and the first, albeit short-lived, professional women's league was created.

After the dissolution of this Women's Professional Basketball League (WPBL) and the replacement of the AIAW by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which now itself offered the once ostracized women's basketball, there were still no opportunities for basketball players outside of college and the Olympic Games. At the same time, the Globetrotters got into financial difficulties due to a decline in fan popularity and Hubert "Geese" Anbie (1960-1984) proposed to the organization to hire his cousin Lynette Woodard . In search of new fans, the Globetrotters became the first co-educational team and hired the Los Angeles gold medalist in 1985. Seven other women followed her until 1993. A year after Lynette Woodard, the future WNBA player Nancy Lieberman appeared in a professional men's team and joined the Washington Generals in 1987 . But the Globetrotters, pioneers of the integration of the game and the revolution in its way of playing, did without female players for 18 years from 1993, which was possibly due to a renaissance and return of the organization to its roots during this period. Since 2011 the Harlem Globetrotters have been co-educational again and since then have had a total of 16 female players in their ranks (as of 2019).

Others

Jumpin 'Joe live at the SAP Arena in March 2017

A cartoon series was dedicated to the Harlem Globetrotters. The first broadcasts were always Saturday mornings on CBS from 1970 to 1972 and were produced by Hanna-Barbera Cartoons . This made the series the first cartoon at prime time for children's television in which African Americans played the lead role. In 1979 the Bally company launched a pinball machine with the motif of the Harlem Globetrotters. The Harlem Globetrotters also made a few guest appearances on the TV series Scooby-Doo , Futurama and American Dad . In How I Met Your Mother season 9, episode 9, Ted and Marshall attend a Globetrotters game as fans of the Washington Generals. Krusty the Clown even bets the Generals in one episode of The Simpsons and Sister Laverne plays in Scrubs - The Beginners to the sounds of Sweet Georgia Brown superior pick-up basketball.

During a visit to the Vatican in 2000, Pope John Paul II was named the seventh honorary member of the Globetrotters. The other honorary members are Henry Kissinger (1976), Bob Hope (1977), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1989), Whoopi Goldberg (1990), Nelson Mandela (1996), Jackie Joyner-Kersee (1999) and Jesse Jackson (2001). Bill Cosby (1972) and Magic Johnson (2003) signed one-dollar lifelong contracts. In 2008, US soccer goalkeeper Tim Howard was drafted and became the team's ambassador. The team also drafts non-basketball players from time to time. B. the footballer Lionel Messi .

On the occasion of a papal audience on the upcoming 90th birthday of the Globetrotters, Pope Francis was appointed ninth honorary member in May 2015. At the beginning of the global birthday tour, sports reporter Robin Roberts joined as a tenth honorary member in early October 2015 .

Well-known globetrotters

Hall of Famers

The following members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame were members of the Globetrotters, a team that has been a member of the Hall of Fame since 2002.

Player:

Referee:

Officials:

  • Abraham "Abe" Saperstein with the 1971 class as a contributor .
  • J. Walter Kennedy , on tour with the Globetrotters in the 50s, with the 1981 class as a contributor .
  • Mannie Jackson , former player, Hall of Fame director, and temporary owner and innovator of Globetrotters in the '90s with the 2017 class as a sponsor.

Nancy Lieberman , a temporary member of the Washington Generals, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996 as a player.

Eddie "Gotty" Gottlieb was accepted with the class from 1972 as a contributor . In addition to the Warriors, Gottlieb owned the Philadelphia SPHAs , which went on tour with the Globetrotters before the end of the original American Basketball League (ABL) and from which, after being sold to SPHA player Red Klotz in 1952, the Washington Generals in all incarnations emerged should.

Retired shirt numbers

  • Wilt Chamberlain (13)
  • Marques Haynes (20)
  • Meadowlark Lemon (36)
  • Goose Tatum (50)

Other notable globetrotters

See also

Web links

Commons : Harlem Globetrotters  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ "Junge" ( Boy in the original) can be interpreted as a racist term in this context.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Todd Boyd: Young, Black, Rich, and Famous. The Rise of the NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion, and the Transformation of American Culture. With a new introduction by the author. Lincoln / London 2008: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-1675-4 (Page 27, in English.)
  2. ^ Daniel Friedrich: Harlem Globetrotters. Around the world for 80 years. On: Spiegel-Online-Website; Hamburg, March 20, 2007. Retrieved November 1, 2017.
  3. ^ Rob Ruck: The East West Classic: Black America's Baseball Fiesta. in: Separate Games. African American Sport behind the Walls of Segregation. edited by David K. Wiggins and Ryan A. Swanson. Fayetteville, 2016: The University of Arkansas Press. ISBN 978-1-68226-017-3 (pages 129-141, in English).
  4. ↑ Cy Kritzer: Globetrotters Have Center Who Can Reach 87 Inches. From: Buffalo Evening News; Buffalo, March 3, 1943 (page 38).
  5. ^ NN: Trotters Display Their Court Magic Here Tuesday Night. From: Buffalo Evening News; Buffalo, April 15, 1950 (page 5).
  6. ↑ David Wolf: Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story. New York 1972: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston (page 125, in English), quoted from: Christoph Ribbat: Basketball. A cultural story. Munich, 2013: Wilhelm Fink-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7705-5599-4 (page 61)
  7. ↑ David Wolf: Foul! The Connie Hawkins Story. New York 1972: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston (p. 125, in English), quoted from: Damion L. Thomas: Globetrotting. African American Athletes and Cold War Politics. Champaign, 2012: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-03717-7 (page 72, in English).
  8. ↑ Aram Goudsouzian: King of the Court Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution.. Berkeley / Los Angeles / London, 2010: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25887-7 (page 63f, in English).
  9. ↑ Peter Vecsey: Hall of Famer Haynes talks family, life in hoops . On: New York Post website; New York City, June 19, 2011. Retrieved October 4, 2017 (in English).
  10. ^ Dean Acheson in a letter to the American Legation Damascus dated July 28, 1952 (National Archives, 811.453 / 7-2852); quoted from: Damion L. Thomas: Globetrotting. African American Athletes and Cold War Politics. Champaign, 2012: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-03717-7 (p. 47f., In English).
  11. ^ NN: The Harlem Globetrotters (1951). On: International Movie Data Base website; Seattle, WA, 1990-2017. Retrieved October 30, 2017 (in English).
  12. ^ Damion L. Thomas: Globetrotting. African American Athletes and Cold War Politics. Champaign, 2012: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-03717-7 (p. 70, in English).
  13. ↑ NN: basketball. Reading the newspaper allowed. From: Der Spiegel 07/1951, quoted from the Spiegel Online website; Hamburg, February 14, 1951. Retrieved December 10, 2017.
  14. ↑ Christoph Ribbat: Basketball. A cultural story. Munich, 2013: Wilhelm Fink-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7705-5599-4 (p. 49 ff.)
  15. ↑ Douglas Stark: Wartime Basketball. The Emergence of a National Sport during World War II. Lincoln / London 2016: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-4528-0 (page 159, in English).
  16. ↑ NN: Chuck Cooper Is Added To Strengthen Trotters. From: Buffalo Evening News; Buffalo, NY, March 31, 1951. (Page 5).
  17. ^ Robert Bradley, Steve Dimitry, John Duxbury, Dave Quinn, Tim Kaldis: History of the World Series of Basketball 1950-1958, 1961-1962. On: Association for Professional Basketball Research website; 2006. Retrieved November 16, 2018.
  18. ^ NN: All-Americans Ready for Tour. Seven Collegiate Stars Play Garden Game Tonight, Then Start on Series With Trotters. From: Buffalo Evening News; Buffalo, NY, March 31, 1951. (Page 5).
  19. ↑ Ryan Gunderson (as Quinn Myers tells): [ I was the captain of the team that loses to the Globetrotters every night. As the Generals' point guard, my job was to be a jerk and get humiliated on the court. But behind the scenes, it was a different story. ] On: Mel Magazine website; Los Angeles, CA, September 5, 2019. Retrieved October 22, 2019 (in English).
  20. ↑ Rodger Sherman: A requiem for the Washington Generals, the worst sports team of all time. The Washington Generals lost to the Harlem Globetrotters over 16,000 times. Now they're dead, and they never got the respect they deserved. Let us remember them, and their beautiful failures. On: SBNation website; Washington, DC, August 14, 2015. Retrieved October 22, 2019 (in English).
  21. ↑ Joe Posnanski: Red Klotz. On: Joe Posnanski blog on the Substack website; Charlotte, NC, July 14, 2014. Retrieved October 22, 2019 (in English).
  22. ↑ Darren Rovel: After 63 years, Globetrotters drop rival General as primary opponent. On: Entertainment and Sports Programming Network website; Burbank, CA, August 14, 2015. Retrieved October 22, 2019 (in English).
  23. ^ Jone Johnson Lewis: History of Women's Basketball in America. A Timeline of Women's Basketball History 1891 to Present. On: Thought Co. website; New York City, NY March 18, 2017, amended July 3, 2019. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  24. ↑ Russell T. Wiggington: The Strange Career of the Black Athlete. African Americans and Sports. Westport and London 2006: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-98223-8 (page 88f, in English).
  25. ^ Sarah K. Fields: Female Gladiators. Gender, Law, and Contact Sport in America. Urbana / Chicago, 2008: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-07584-1 (pages 5–11, in English)
  26. ^ Jone Johnson Lewis: Lynette Woodard. First Woman on the Harlem Globetrotters. On: Thought Co. website; New York City, NY June 4, 2017. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  27. ^ Adele Jackson-Gibson: Black Girl Strength: The Future Is Female For The Harlem Globetrotters. On: The Shadow League website; New York City, NY December 10, 2018. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  28. ^ NN: Washington Generals, Longtime Foes of Globetrotters, Sign Nancy Lieberman. On: Los Angeles Times website; Los Angeles, CA, December 2, 1987. Retrieved October 22, 2019 (in English).
  29. ↑ Chris Varias: Harlem Globetrotters have 'girl power'. On: USA Today website Cincinnati Enquirer blog; MacLean, VA, December 26, 2017. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  30. ↑ Syreeta McFadden: Ace Jackson and the Revolutionary Women of the Harlem Globetrotters Continuing to break boundaries, legendary basketball team proves women can play alongside the men. On: Rolling Stone website; New York City, NY April 17, 2017. Retrieved October 22, 2019.
  31. ↑ NN: Harlem Globetrotters Have An Audience With Pope Francis, Name Him Ninth Honorary Harlem Globetrotter In Team History. In: Harlem Globetrotters website; Peachtree Corners, GA, May 6, 2015 (in English). Retrieved November 1, 2017 .
  32. ^ NN: Robin Roberts Named Honorary Harlem Globetrotter; Team Announces The Great Assist Initiative And 90-Year Celebration. In: Harlem Globetrotters website; Peachtree Corners, GA, May 6, 2015 (in English). Retrieved November 1, 2017 .
  33. ^ NN: The Harlem Globetrotters in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame On: Hoophall website; Springfield, MA, 2017. Retrieved November 1, 2017 (in English).
  34. ↑ NN: Harlem Globetrotters To Retire Sweet Lou Dunbar's No. 41 Jersey. On: MarketWatch website; New York City, NY January 23, 2019. Retrieved March 27, 2020 (in English).