William "Pop" Gates

Pop Gates
Player information
Full name	William Penn Gates
Nickname	Pop, Billy
birthday	August 30, 1917
place of birth	Decatur , Alabama , USA
date of death	December 1, 1999 at the age of 82
Place of death	New York City , New York , United States
size	188 cm
Weight	93 kg
position	Guard / Forward
High school	Benjamin Franklin (New York)
college	Clark College
Clubs as active
1937–1938 Harlem Yankees 1938–1944 New York Rens 1941–1944 Long Island Grumman Flyers 1941–1942 Washington Bruins 1942–1946 Washington Bears 1944–1946 Long Island Grumman Hellcats 1944–1945 Rochester Pros 1945–1946 Chicago Monarchs 1945–1946 New York Rens 1946–1946 Buffalo Bisons 1946–1947 Tri-Cities Blackhawks 1947–1949 New York Rens 1948–1949 Dayton Rens 1949–1950 Scranton Miners 1950–1957 Harlem Globetrotters 1951–1952 New York Celtics

William Penn "Pop" Gates (born August 30, 1917 in Decatur , Alabama , † December 1, 1999 in New York City , New York ) was a half- African-American , half -Native American basketball player and coach from the Cherokee nation and a pioneer of African-American professional basketball. He played in the National Basketball League (NBL) for the Buffalo Bisons / Tri-Cities Blackhawks , but was best known for his appearances with the New York Renaissance and the Chicago Harlem Globetrotters . He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1989 .

youth

Gates was born in Alabama and moved with his parents to Harlem at the age of three as part of the Great Migration via Cleveland . Gates grew up with a sister in this New York borough and attended Benjamin Franklin High School. He began playing basketball with the Harlem YMCA Seniors when he was eleven , and saw the New York Rens for the first time training at the same location. It got its name because it played stickball, an urban pick-up variant of baseball , against much older youth on West 132th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues . Gates played in the YMCA with Charlie Isles and Clarence "Puggy" Bell and alongside for the Passaic Crescents and as captain led his integrated high school team as a senior in the 1938 city championship in three of four years , which earned him an election to the All-City team. The school's biggest rival was Textile High with the later New York Ren Johnny "Boy Wonder" Isaacs.

After graduating, Gates went to Clark College in Atlanta, GA , but gave up after a few weeks for financial reasons without ever playing basketball there. His parents couldn't pay him more than a dollar child support, and that was enough for a carton of milk and a bag of cupcakes. Without the generosity of a friend of his mother's, he couldn't even have raised the money for a return ticket.

Career

Upon his return, Gates played professionally for the Harlem Yankees , who often played training games against the New York Renaissance, and Pop Gates was signed by Rens manager Bob Douglas in 1938 for $ 125 a month . On tour, the players had to buy from supermarkets and smear sandwiches because they were often not served in hotels and restaurants. This was especially true for the southern states , but also border states in the north with de iure (Indiana, Illinois) and de facto racial segregation (Ohio). But even New Jersey stuck in the players' minds negatively.

In March of its first season, the New York Renaissance took part in the first World Professional Basketball Tournament in Chicago, beating the reigning NBL champion of the Oshkosh All-Stars in the finals. Pop Gates was the only player who took part in every single edition of the tournament, admittedly with different teams. In 1940 he was elected as a Guard in the All-Tournament Team, in 1943 as a Forward in the All-Tournament First Team.

During World War II , it was common for African-American basketball players who had to play for traveling troops without transfer supervision to compete for multiple teams at the same time. When the New York Renaissance could no longer go on tour due to the war-related gasoline rationing, Gates signed on with Grumman Aircraft Engineering on Long Island. Work in war industries protected against drafting and offered further perks. The works team also played Tarzan Cooper , Johnny Isaacs and William "Dolly" King, as well as Ossie Schectman from Long Island University , Irv Torgoff, Butch Schwartz and Si Lobello (the latter died on his first day of action in the African theater of war). The team was not paid and played at Freeport High School roughly weekly. Gates, who made it to a preliminary stage in flight engineering, came with the Long Island Grumman Flyers , who were known for their short passing game and their scoring (51 PPG), to the semifinals of the World Professional Tournament in 1942 but with the Long Island Grumman Hellcats and players like Ed Sadowski and Nat Frankel in 1946 not beyond the first round.

In addition to the Flyers, Gates also played with all the Rens for the Washington Bears , with whom he had a perfect season and with whom he won his second title at the World Professional Tournament in Chicago in 1943.

In 1946, Douglas allowed him to join the Buffalo Bison NBL team. The bison moved in January as Tri-Cities Blackhawks, with whom Gates also competed again in Chicago, in the metropolitan area of ​​the Tri-Cities (now Quad Cities ), consisting of the cities of Moline and Rock Island in Illinois and Davenport in Iowa. Gates was not allowed to stay with his team at the Moline hotel and stayed at the local YMCA . He was later offered a room at the Rock Island Hotel, which was said to have had contacts with the Mafia. Some of Gates' teammates eventually moved to the same hotel out of solidarity. At the end of the season, however, in a game with playoffs implications against the Syracuse Nationals , there was an argument with Chick Meehan, whom Gates sent to the hospital with a right cross for weeks. The game was rougher in those days, players wore knee pads, fights were commonplace, but Gates was darker skin color. None of the four African-American contracts in the league were renewed after the season. Gates himself learned in the early 80s that sporting director Eric Illidge had allegedly refused a renaissance franchise in the NBL because he was missing his best players in Gates and Dolly King. In any case, Gates threatened a 50 percent pay cut, which is why he returned to the New York Rens at the end of the season.

Gates returned to the NBL two years later as a player coach for the Dayton Rens , making him the first African-American coach in a professional league. The New York Rens had taken over an unsuccessful franchise as Dayton Rens, but could achieve little success themselves because the New York Rens had toured in parallel. The New York Renaissance team was rented to Abe Saperstein after the season .

The following year Gates played for the Scranton Miners in the American Basketball League (ABL), which is based on the north east coast, and won the championship. However, it became clear that the merger of the sportingly more successful NBL of the Midwest with the economically more powerful Basketball Association of America (BAA) on the north east coast to form the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the basketball season 1949/50 had unnoticedly degraded the ABL to a minor league .

The Harlem Globetrotters had successfully challenged the NBA in the form of the Minneapolis Lakers in the late 1940s, and Pop Gates played for the team from 1950 to 1955 and coached it for the last time in 1956/57.

After the career

William "Pop" Gates lived in Upper Manhattan with his wife Cleo Pennington Gates from 1943 until his death. After his basketball career, he worked for 22 years as a security officer for the human resources department of New York Social Services. He had played over 1,500 games and averaged 14 points per game at a time when that was a lot. In 1939 he was tied with Leroy "Cowboy" Edwards lying top scorer with twelve points at the World Professional tournament. The general point average had increased substantially during the war and increased again substantially immediately afterwards. Gates says of himself that he couldn't dunk and was best known for his two-handed standing throw . The member of the NBL All-Time Team was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Direct Election Committee with the support of Red Holzman , who had played against him in the NBL.

Gates had two artificial knee joints and an artificial hip and suffered from arthritis. He died of heart failure.

See also

• List of members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame

Web links

• Pop Gates in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame On: Hoophall website; Springfield, MA, 2018. Retrieved February 28, 2018.
• Pop Gates in the Internet Movie Database . On: IMDB website; Seattle, WA, 1990-2018. Accessed February 28, 2018.
• Pop Gates in the Pro Basketball Encyclopedia. On: Pro Basketball Encyclopedia — Website, 2018. Retrieved February 28, 2018.
• William Gates on the Basketball Reference website; Philadelphia, PA, 2000-2018. Accessed February 28, 2018.

Individual evidence

1. ^ NN: Player Profile Pop Gates. On: Pro Basketball Encyclopedia website; 2020. Accessed August 10, 2020 (in English).
2. ^ Wayne Coffey: Pop of His Game in Era of Robinson, Gates Scored His Points on Hardwood. From: New York Daily News website; New York, NY, April 13, 1997. Retrieved February 28, 2018 (in English).
3. ^ Susan J. Bayl: Smilin 'Bob Douglas and the Renaissance Big Five 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 19-36, in English).
4. ↑ 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 (pages 66-70, in English).
5. ↑ NN: William 'Pop' Gates. On: Black Fives Foundation website; Washington, DC, September 28, 2016. Retrieved February 28, 2018 (in English).
6. ^ Robert W. Peterson: Cages to Jump Shots: Pro Basketball's Early Years. Lincoln / London 2002: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-8772-3 (page 13, in English).
7. Jump up ↑ Richard Goldstein: Pop Gates, 82, to Integrator of Pro Basketball. From: The New York Times, quoted from: New York Times website; New York, NY, December 5, 1999. Retrieved February 28, 2018 (in English).
8. ↑ Ron Thomas: They Cleared the Lane. From: They Cleared the Lane. The NBA's Black Pioneers. Lincoln / London 2001: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-4528-0 , quoted from: HoopsHype — Website; May 4, 2004. Retrieved from archived February 28, 2018 (in English).
9. ↑ Mark A. Johnson, Tracey Michae'l Lewis: Basketball Slave. The Andy Johnson Harlem Globetrotter / NBA Story. JuniorCam Publishing, Mantua (NJ) 2010, ISBN 978-0-615-17330-6 (page XX, in English).
10. ↑ Dave Anderson: Sports of The Times. Pop Gates Earned His Grits. From: The New York Times, quoted from: New York Times website; New York, NY, February 19, 1989. Retrieved February 28, 2018 (in English).