THE HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS – WINNING CAN BE FUN.
What defines a sports dynasty to you? Three in a row. Four? Five? Ten?
The Boston Celtics won 11 NBA championships and were in the final 12 times in 13 years. The New York Yankees played in the World Series 13 times in 16 years and won 10. The Montreal Canadiens won 5 Stanley Cups in a row. The UNC Tar Heels women’s soccer team has won the championship 18 years out of 25.
All pretty impressive.
But here is a sports dynasty whose numbers are completely off the charts. Try this on for size: 22,500-345.
Yes that is 22,500 wins to 345 defeats in 81 years. They have played more games than any franchise in professional sports and won at a pace no other team has come close to touching.
The Globetrotters, like many businesses, began out of a big idea and some desperation, In 1927 Chicago’s Savoy Ballroom was having trouble attracting customers, so a local entrepreneur named Abe Saperstein put together a team of young basketball players from the South Side of the city to play against all comers at the Savoy. Called the Savoy Big Five, the all black team was successful in winning games, if not attracting crowds.
Saperstein decided to take them on the road, so he piled them into his Model T and began touring the area, playing against college teams and pickup squads with great success.
At the time, professional basketball was not integrated, and Jackie Robinson had not yet begun his assault on the color barriers in baseball. Saperstein soon changed the team name to the Globetrotters, and then the Harlem Globetrotters because Harlem was seen as the center of African American culture and he though being an out-of-town squad had fan appeal.
They were pretty good. In fact, they were very good, and they took their basketball very seriously. While leading one game by a score of 112-2 in the first quarter, a few of the players started goofing off: doing stunts, crazy passes, hiding the ball.
The fans ate it up. With a tremendous dribbler and shooter on the team, “Runt” Pullins, and a showboating scorer named Inman Jackson, the team defined two key roles: The Dribbler and The Showman.
Soon the fun became serious business, and once the Globetrotters got a safe lead in a game – which was pretty much always – the shenanigans began. You get good at what you practice, and they got very good at combining on-court antics with putting the ball in the other team’s basket over and over again to win the game. As they practiced together, they found increasingly new and difficult ways to do that, to the chagrin of all of their competitors.
For the next decade, they compiled an almost unbeaten record while drawing fans to the game of basketball in huge numbers. But mostly they were playing college all-star teams. Were they good enough to play a professional team and win?
The answer came in 1939 when they accepted an offer to play in the World Professional Basketball Tournament, an all-black showdown that they lost in the final game to the New York Rens. But the loss was avenged the following year when the Globetrotters won the tournament. They were now officially as good as or better than any professional black team out there.
But could they play against a professional white team? Well you know what most of America thought – no chance. Not so. They beat the best professional team in basketball, the Minneapolis Lakers, two years in a row in 1948 and ‘49, cementing their role as the greatest team in basketball.
Were they really as good as they looked? In one game, one of their stars, Bobby Milton, sank 9 consecutive baskets from half court! Years later, Michael Wilson would be the first player to sink a 12’ dunk shot!
As had happened with Jackie Robinson in baseball, the Globetrotters were so good that white professional basketball could not ignore them. They increasingly put pressure on the NBA to integrate. In 1950, the Boston Celtics signed Chuck Cooper away from the Globetrotters, the barrier in basketball fell, and the game was changed forever.
This simple “street” game that only required a ball and a net, was now officially open to anyone with skill.
The Globetrotters’ reputation grew, the tours became world tours instead of cross-country tours, and the players who passed through their ranks before becoming NBA greats included Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain, “Sweetwater” Clifton, “Meadowlark” Lemon, and many others.
All the while, they created something new for the fans which they could not se anywhere else. A unique blend of fun and the very highest level of athletic skills.
And let’s talk skills. In 1995 in an 11 game tournament against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s All Stars, the Globetrotters lost only one game – snapping an unbeaten streak of an astounding 8,829 games! In some cities, when the home
teamwins two o
r three in a row it is called a “streak”!
In their first 81 years, the record stands at over 22,500 wins and only 345 losses. Not bad for a team dreamed up as a PR Stunt.
But clearly the Globetrotters are not just about winning. They have become role models for what SHOULD be good about sports.
They have had several films made about them and their winning style, and had their own Saturday morning cartoon.
They have campaigned hard for equality of all kinds, bringing white players, females, and a one armed player onto their squad.
They became goodwill ambassadors for the game of basketball, and for America, traveling to hundreds of countries on every continent, and playing before over hundreds of millions and several generation of fans.
Their appeal was so powerful that a civil war was temporarily ceased in Peru during one of their visits, and resumed immediately after they left the country!
The Globetrotters have raised tens of millions of dollars for charity, visited war and disaster zones, and brought a smile to the faces of the downtrodden and oppressed more times than you can count.
They have played an instrumental role in shaping the face of the good side of professional basketball today with their music, antics, and fan participation on the court – tactics all used by NBA teams.
But ultimately I think the mark of the Harlem Globetrotters is something much deeper, and it is something that is very sensitive to every parent who has a kid in sports.
Sport is supposed to be about having fun and winning, not just winning. Too often we forget that it is a game, that we started kicking or throwing balls or shooting pucks or jumping or whatever as kids as a way to have fun with our friends.
At one of my son’s recent hockey tournaments, the opposition’s parents yelled obscenities at our substitute goalie and laughed when of our kids got injured. The kids are six years old for goodness sake. Shame on those parents. They are role modeling for their kids in the worst possible way, showing them that winning at all costs however possible is all that matters.
And those horrible role models are everywhere out there.
Fortunately, we also have the Harlem Globetrotters. 81 years later. Not the wealthiest franchise in basketball, but certainly the richest in spirit.
A group of people who have created something uniquely theirs by never forgetting that sport is supposed to be fun. Being role models by reminding us that being good and having fun do not need to be mutually exclusive.
Cirque du Soleil understands this. Disney understands this. And thankfully, so too do the incredible Harlem Globetrotters.
Pass it on.
