Looking
back, the Harlem Globetrotters did more harm to the cause of racial equality
than good.
True,
over the last eight decades the Globetrotters became arguably the most famous
professional sports team on the planet. But they did it by reducing themselves
to clowning, by exploiting racial stereotypes.
The
Globetrotters essentially became the athletic equivalent of the blackface
minstrel shows that dominated American theaters more than a century ago.
And
perhaps the most unfortunate result of the ‘Trotters success has been the
overshadowing of the team that truly deserves recognition as perhaps the most
important and influential basketball squad in history: the New York Renaissance
Big Five.
Founded
by entrepreneur Bob Douglas in 1923 — four years before huckster Abe
Saperstein created the Harlem Globetrotters (who were from Chicago, not Harlem)
— the Renaissance literally revolutionized the sport of basketball.
The
first fully professional African-American basketball team, the Rens invented
the motion offense, stressed crisp passing, and played with a brainy, heads-up
alertness that transformed the team into a coldly efficient and wildly dazzling
juggernaut that steamrolled almost all of its competition.
Over
the Renaissance’s 26-year existence, the team compiled an overall record of
2,318-381, which included an 88-game winning streak during the 1932-33 season.
In 1939 the Rens won the first universally recognized world professional
championship by emerging victorious in an 11-team tournament in Chicago.
“You
just can’t take it away from them,” respected sportswriter Chester Washington
Jr. wrote in the Pittsburgh Courier after the 1939 tournament. “The Rens still reign supreme as the greatest pro
basketball team in the country.”
With
such conquests, the Rens almost single-handedly proved that African-American
players had as much intelligence, heart, and hustle as the best white players.
When the New
York Renaissance played white teams, says John Isaacs, the last living Ren,
it always tried to race to a double-digit lead. The Rens had to, he says, if
they wanted to overcome the inevitable racism of the white officials.
“You
got 10 points as fast as you could, because you assumed those were the 10
points you weren’t going to get from the officiating,” he says.
Such
prejudice was just a part of life for Isaacs and his teammates in the 1930s.
And such prejudice lingers today. Despite their massive importance, at the
start of 2005 only two Rens — Charles “Tarzan” Cooper and William “Pop” Gates
— had been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame as individual players. And,
as New York Daily News writer Filip
Bondy recently noted, the Original Celtics — the Rens’ powerful white contemporaries
— have twice as many players in the Hall.
That
ratio could change, however, next Monday, April 4, when the Hall announces its
2005 inductees. Isaacs, as it turns out, is one of the finalists. And if he’s
selected, it could signal a change, however small, in the basketball world’s
attitude toward the woefully underappreciated Rens.
But
regardless of whether Isaacs and his teammates ever get the recognition they
deserve, it’s not going to change the fact that Isaacs still volunteers on an
almost daily basis at the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club in the Bronx.
It’s not going to change the fact that Isaacs loves working with kids, loves
imparting his knowledge, loves talking about his wonderful experiences as a New
York Ren.
“Basketball
is a fun game,” he says. “I had fun when I was playing. I had fun going to the
gym and shooting around, and I have fun playing with the kids today.”
Isaacs
is now 89. And he’s turned into a basketball curmudgeon. Today’s NBA stars are
too flashy, too shallow, too disrespectful to coaches and officials for his
tastes. They dribble and shoot too much, pass and D-up too little.
The
Rens were too busy, too excited, too tired to fully appreciate their role as
pioneers. “We never gave it a thought,” Isaacs says. “It was your job. Once the
game started, it was all business.”
And that’s all
basketball was
to Abe Saperstein: business. All he cared about was putting people in the
seats. So he told his players to work gags and practical jokes into their
games.
New
York Renaissance owner Bob Douglas loved making money, too. In fact, he
probably wouldn’t have founded and sustained the Rens if they didn’t make him a
handsome profit.
But
Douglas also realized the value of dignity. He understood that his Rens were
role models for black youth everywhere. So he told them to play it straight,
and play it well.
Douglas
and his team became the antithesis of the Harlem Globetrotters, and in so
doing, they became the greater team, perhaps the greatest of all time.
This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 5, 2005.
