On the Shoulders of Giants

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  The Rens ended the 1938–39 season with an astounding 109 wins against only 7 losses.

  Then something amazing happened: the Rens were invited to come to Chicago for the first-ever World Professional Basketball Tournament.

  The waiting was finally over.

  The Shots Heard Round the World: The World Championship of 1939

  In 1939, copromoters Harry Hannin and Harry Wilson made history by creating the World Professional Basketball Tournament. There had been other “world championships” before, but what made this one so special, and a little closer to living up to its grandiose name, was that this would be the first time both black and white teams would compete for the title. Hannin and Wilson decided they would invite the top twelve teams in basketball—if not from the entire world, then from the East Coast and Midwest. And because they weren’t dependent on any leagues, they could invite whomever they wished, including teams from the NBL, the ABL, barnstorming teams, black teams, even all-star teams formed at the last minute. The first-place team would be awarded $1,000 and the title of world’s best basketball team.

  The twelve teams included the Chicago All-Americans (Harmons), the New York Yankees, the Harlem Globetrotters, the Clarksburgh Oilers, the Philadelphia SPHAs, the Michigan House of David, the Sheboygan Redskins, the Fort Wayne Harvesters, the Cleveland White Horses, the Oshkosh All-Stars, the Kate Smith Celtics (now owned by the “First Lady of Radio,” singer Kate Smith), and the New York Renaissance Big Five. The SPHAs, a tough team that had beaten the Rens several times that season, had to withdraw due to injuries and were replaced with the Illini Grads. The only two black teams, the Rens and the Globetrotters, were considered by most experts to be the two best teams of any color in the country. Whether it was an oversight, bad reporting, or racism, a local white newspaper, the Chicago Daily Tribune, wrote that the Chicago All-Americans were the only team from Chicago, even though the Globetrotters were also from Chicago. Was it also an oversight, coincidence, or racism that placed the Globetrotters and the Rens in the same bracket, thereby ensuring that there would not be two black teams in the finals?

  On Sunday afternoon, March 26, 1939, at the Madison Street Armory, the Rens met their first opponents, the New York Yankees. The Yankees lost, 30–21. Following the first day of play, the Sheboygan Press declared, “The Renaissance displayed the most class, and to most observers, they appear to be the team to beat, although anything can happen in a tournament of this kind.” That same day, the Globetrotters had to play a doubleheader, first hammering the Fort Wayne Harvesters, 41–33, then, a few hours later, beating the Chicago All-Americans (Harmons), 31–25.

  Finally, after all the years of publicly taunting each other, the Rens and Globetrotters met on Monday, March 27, at the Chicago Coliseum. The crowd of seven thousand was the largest yet for the tournament. Two weeks earlier, the Globetrotters had defeated the Celtics in Chicago, something the Rens had never been able to do. That must have been on Bob Douglas’s mind as he paced the sidelines, chewing his cigar, anxiously awaiting the outcome of this clash of styles and philosophies that reflected not just on the game, but on African-Americans everywhere. But in this game, there was no clowning, no playing to the crowd, there was just straight-up basketball. Bigger and more experienced, the Rens pressed their advantage at every opportunity. Said the Chicago Defender, “At no time did the Globetrotters get a chance to put on an exhibition of ball handling or passing. They were guarded so close that most of their shots were from a distance.” A basket by Tarzan Cooper in the last fifteen seconds clinched the victory for the Rens, 27–23. Play was so intense that both teams received several ovations from the spectators. The next day the Globetrotters took the third-place prize of $400 by defeating Sheboygan, who took home $200.

  Meanwhile, in the other bracket, the Oshkosh All-Stars were having no trouble defeating their opponents. The Clarksburgh Oilers fell 40–33 and the Sheboygan Redskins lost 40–23. Now all they had to do was defeat the Rens, whom they had already beaten earlier in the season by a shocking twenty-two points! In fact, they had beaten the Rens in seven of ten games played over the last two years. The crowd, the odds, and history itself were in their favor.

  This tense March day was the realization of a lifelong dream for Bob Douglas. But his dream had faced many obstacles. In 1926, Douglas’s Rens had been denied membership in the American Basketball League because they were black. Then again in 1937, the Rens were rejected by the National Basketball League on the same grounds. Suddenly, here they were, playing the best teams from both those leagues. Now that his team had finally been given the chance they’d been denied for the past sixteen years, they couldn’t afford to fail. If they did, who knows when the African-American athlete would be given such a chance again?

  African-Americans all around the country waited anxiously for the outcome. If these young black athletes won, would it finally send a signal to the white world that blacks were just as capable as whites in competing, not just in sports, but for jobs, housing, and basic civil rights? If the white Oshkosh team won, that would just confirm what so many whites already believed: blacks just weren’t good enough.

  Over three thousand fans, most of them cheering for the Oshkosh All-Stars, watched the final game. The Chicago American described the game as a “rough and tumble affair with spectacular passwork and close guarding mixed in great profusion.” Despite the encouragement of the fans, and the Rens’ loss of their two big men, Tarzan Cooper and Wee Willie Smith, due to fouls, Oshkosh never managed to keep pace with the methodical teamwork of the Rens, falling 34–25 to Harlem’s finest. Pop Gates led the Rens scoring with twelve points. Puggy Bell was selected the Most Valuable Player. Following the game, Chester Washington Jr. in Pittsburgh Courier crowed, “You just can’t take it away from them. The Rens still reign supreme as the greatest pro basketball team in the country.”

  After the game, Bob Douglas threw a banquet for the team at the Hotel Grand. The Rens received championship jackets that said on the backs COLORED WORLD CHAMPIONS. When John Isaacs saw the lettering, he took a razor to it, cutting out the word colored. When Douglas saw what he was doing, he protested, saying, “You’re ruining the jacket!” Isaacs replied, “No, just making it better.”

  The next morning, the world champion Rens boarded their bus and headed to Cleveland and their next game. And the next. And the next.

  Footprints in the Sidewalk: The Legacy of the Rens

  For the Rens, winning the world championship was the pinnacle of their career as a team, a moment of perfection they would never again duplicate. At the 1940 tournament, the Globetrotters again faced the Rens, this time before a crowd of nine thousand expectant fans. The Globetrotters won, 37–36, thanks to a last-second midcourt shot. The Globetrotters went on to win the championship, and thereafter their fortunes increased as the Rens’ decreased. (In 1995, the Globetrotters lost an exhibition game 91–85 to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s All-Star Team in Vienna, Austria, ending a run of 8,829 straight victories in exhibition games going back to 1971.) In 1949, ten years after nurturing them to the world championship, Bob Douglas leased the Rens to his nemesis, Globetrotter owner Abe Saperstein. The Rens played warm-up games for the Globetrotters, and Bob Douglas turned to booking wrestlers at the Renaissance Casino. Two years later, Douglas resumed ownership of the Rens and once again sent them on a barnstorming tour. But their games were rarely reported and their past glory was never to be repeated.

  But it was to be remembered.

  Joe Lapchick’s son, sports historian Richard Lapchick, remembered, “I was raised hearing that the Celtics were the greatest team of all time. My dad’s friends would say that and all our neighbors would say that. But he would correct them and say, ‘The Rens were every bit as good as we were in the beginning and were better than us in the end.’” In 1963, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame remembered and inducted the entire 1932–33 Rens team. Bob Douglas was inducted in 1972, Charles “Tarzan” Cooper in 1977, and William “Pop
” Gates in 1989. Douglas, who had by now picked up the nickname “the Father of Black Basketball,” was the first black individual to be inducted. Former Original Celtic Nat Holman had endorsed Douglas’s nomination: “His leadership, his integrity, his intelligence, qualifies Bob Douglas for a place in the Hall of Fame. His greatest reward is written in the hearts of his players. His influence in the black community on both amateur and professional players will remain long after he and the rest of us are forgotten.”

  Bob Douglas and the Rens were to be remembered, even if many of the individual players were forgotten. Some critics claim the Basketball Hall of Fame was prejudiced in electing only two Rens as individual players given that the Rens’ white rivals the Original Celtics have twice as many players in the Hall. For the past few years, John Isaacs, the last remaining Rens player alive, has been nominated for inclusion but not inducted. Given the legacy of fame and fortune that they have left for others, the fates of many of the star players seems downright shameful. Tarzan Cooper took to painting houses and in 1980, at the age of seventy-three, lay dead for several days in his Philadelphia apartment before his body was discovered. “Pappy” Ricks’s career was cut short by alcoholism. Casey Holt became a police officer for New York City, but was mistaken for a thief by fellow officers and shot to death. Wee Willie Smith was a school janitor and later had to have his leg amputated. Though their educational background was similar to that of the Celtics, the veterans of the white team went on to coaching jobs or careers as successful businessmen.

  Beyond the individuals, there was the legacy of how the Rens and other earlier black basketball players changed the style of the game itself. Segregation and racism kept many budding black players from being trained by the popular white coaches, whose approach was more formal and scientific. Black players began to improvise. Like some of the jazz musicians who had been denied formal training or forbidden to perform with whites, they developed a style all their own. The artistic impulse in the black athlete was described by NBA star Julius “Dr. J” Erving: “Basketball was—and is—a very simple game. But what the black athlete did was to enhance the game with an expression all his own, taking the basics to another dimension. Soon the white player began to emulate these thoughts and moves and eventually the game became what it is today—a stage where a unique combination of the team concept and individual expression is presented in pure form.”

  Eight black men putting a ball through a hoop more often than eight white men doesn’t seem that world-shaking. But the world can be a fragile place sometimes. A Great Depression had shattered a lot of people’s faith in the conventional wisdom they’d clung to so blindly for so long. Having endured a crucible of hardships, some people were ready to look at the world in a different way, maybe a way that would make it better. The Rens’ victory offered one more way to look at the world anew. Whites could look at their black neighbors with greater respect, maybe see what they were capable of rather than where the past had relegated them. Blacks could hope for a better future. Pop Gates summed up their achievement as both athletes and ambassadors: “We loved being with the Renaissance because we thought we were the best, and we were happy and proud to represent the Negro people and give them something they could be proud of and adhere to. And we were happy that a lot of white fans loved us also.”

  The Rens had left footprints in the sidewalk that the next generation could follow into a future filled with new opportunities. Noted Ed Henderson, who’d spent most of his ninety-three years of life promoting black athletics, “It is our opinion that when the final record is written as to contributing values in the battle of human and civil rights, our Negro athletes should be accorded high esteem.”

  No, blacks and whites weren’t ready to join hands in a giant meadow of daisies and sing “Kumbaya.” But they were now ready to play basketball together. And that was a start. A start, after all, was all that the greatest minds of the Harlem Renaissance had been asking for.

  And that’s exactly what the Rens delivered. In 1939, the year the Rens became the first black team to win a world professional title in any sport, black basketball players in the ABL, the forerunner to the National Basketball Association (NBA), stood at 0 percent. In 2004, the number of black players in the NBA amounted to 77 percent.

  The Rens taught the world to see what had before been invisible: the color black.

  “Hoping Against Hope”

  How the Rens Basketball

  Team Influenced

  My Life

  BY KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR

  I was supposed to be a baseball player.

  Not basketball. Definitely not basketball.

  I was only seven years old, but I knew one thing for certain: I loved baseball and sucked at basketball. My passion for baseball originated with my babysitter, Mary Mitchell, a friend of my mother’s and a rabid baseball fan. My mom also liked baseball and would often listen to the play-by-play Brooklyn Dodger broadcasts announced by Red Barber. Mary’s home was only a short bus ride from Yankee Stadium, and a very short walk from the Grounds, so by the time I was five years old, I had already in 1951 watched Joe DiMaggio play his last season and Willie Mays play his first season. I quickly became a serious Dodger fan and learned to appreciate, and participate in, the hysteria that was New York baseball in the fifties. Baseball was the greatest game in the world. Period.

  My love of the game grew at the same rate as my body, and when I was finally old enough, I eagerly joined Little League baseball. Inwood, the neighborhood where I was raised, was just a mile or so north of Harlem, and I played for them during the whole time I was eligible for Little League. I played the outfield, first base, and occasionally pitched. However, I was starting to grow to such a height that basketball was a choice that I couldn’t completely ignore. So when I was about seven, I ventured out on the basketball court and tried a few shots. I failed miserably. My father even took me out to the public park to show me a few pointers. “This is how you protect the ball,” he said, then elbowed me in the face. After that, I avoided any additional lessons from him and abandoned basketball.

  Two things changed my mind about basketball: (1) going to a movie with my mother, and (2) getting the snot beat out of me. The movie, called Go, Man, Go! (1954), took place during the Harlem Renaissance and starred Dane Clark as Abe Saperstein, the founder of the Harlem Globetrotters, and Sidney Poitier as his assistant. It tells the story of how one day in 1927, Saperstein sees a group of talented black kids playing basketball and becomes obsessed with making them the greatest team ever. The Globetrotters played themselves. I was only seven years old, but I was transfixed. This was the first time I had seen basketball played by athletes who knew the game at the highest level. Before that day, the best I had seen were the kids that played at the park in my neighborhood. This wasn’t even the same game.

  One particular scene was especially memorable. Marques Haynes, considered by many at that time to be the world’s greatest dribbler, dribbles a basketball past Dane Clark in a narrow hallway with such agility and flair that I knew I had to possess such skill. (Haynes later said that scene actually happened when he met Saperstein.) I started practicing dribbling immediately. Of course, being seven, my dedication was short-lived, mostly because I was still a lousy player. I returned to baseball, my first love, and vowed to remain loyal ever after. But that magical scene stayed with me for many years to come. (I wasn’t the only one. I later found out that when Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan was asked to name a “guilty pleasure” movie, he replied, “Go, Man, Go!, the Harlem Globetrotters movie, where Marques Haynes dribbles around Abe Saperstein in his tiny hotel corridor.”) I couldn’t get out of my mind that although Haynes was only six feet tall and 160 pounds, he could make much bigger men look foolish, like lumbering woolly mammoths chasing a darting hummingbird. Though my lack of skill, and my father’s lessons, kept me away from basketball for a couple more years, much later, when I was playing professionally, I focused on being the kind of
big man who could move like Marques Haynes. Okay, I could never move like Haynes, but that was my goal, and I succeeded better than most men my size. Better to be the quick hummingbird than the extinct mammoth.

  The beating that brought me back to basketball took place in 1956. I was nine and my parents had sent me to attend the all-black boarding school Holy Providence in Cornwall Heights just outside Philadelphia. Holy Providence contained forty boys and about three hundred girls; the benefits of such a lopsided gender ratio were completely lost on a shy nine-year-old. Besides, my problem was with the boys. Although I was already a towering five feet eight inches tall, I was mild-mannered and cheerful. I also excelled in my classes. Thanks to my mother’s coaching and father’s example, I could read several grade levels beyond my fellow fourth-graders and was earning straight A’s in all my classes. Naturally, I was hated. This hatred was expressed by the school bullies, Eddie Johnson and Sylvester Curtis, pugnacious seventh-graders who treated me to a series of brutal beatings between the opening of school and spring when my parents came to pick me up. Two weeks before school let out, I was jumped by two boys in a narrow hallway, not unlike the one in which Haynes had moved so gracefully and powerfully. Only I didn’t move at all. They pummeled me relentlessly until they tired and ran away. When my parents arrived to pick me up at the end of the semester, they immediately noticed a distinct change in me, complaining that I didn’t smile anymore.