In one person’s era, the Harlem Globetrotters are basketball titans, entertainers who have graced courts and millions of fans from sea to sea. Throw a dart at a global map, and there’s a chance they’ve performed either in or surrounding that city.
During another person’s generation, the Globetrotters teamed with a group of four teenage detectives and a dog named Scooby-Doo who rolled around in an iconic 1960s van solving multiple cartoon mysteries. The Globetrotters even briefly had their own animated show.
For someone else perhaps a little more conscious, the Globetrotters were community-empowered difference-makers first and Hall of Fame hoops stars second, primarily because of their strong passion for philanthropy. Using basketball to “spread goodwill worldwide” is a part of the verbiage in their commitment to social responsibility initiative.
For 99 years, a bridge tying the Globetrotters only to basketball has traveled far beyond the optics. They are actors and comedians. They are health and wellness advocates. They are socially astute individuals who don’t mind letting their voices be heard. They are, as their nickname supports, “ambassadors of goodwill.”
It just so happens that they also are incredibly talented basketball players, athletes who can tell stories with a trick shot, a specific dribble, a monster dunk or a full-court pass that many others can’t. Visionaries who jump-started much of what we see today on the basketball court.
“Remember when Magic (Johnson) and those guys came to L.A. and started playing? They started calling it ‘Showtime,’” Louis “Sweet Lou” Dunbar, a 27-year Globetrotters veteran who now serves as the organization’s director of player personnel and a coach, told The Athletic. “It’s always been ‘Showtime’ for the Harlem Globetrotters.”
So many elements of the sport can be traced back to a franchise with a versatile reputation. Since 1926, Globetrotters’ exhibition games have consisted of playful fouls, comedic skits and creative passes and shots, not to forget the legendary three-man weave to the whistling rendition of “Sweet Georgia Brown” by Brother Bones & His Shadows. Present-day fans witness entertaining halftime dunk contests, 4-point shots and alley-oops from nearly anywhere on the court.
During segregation, the game’s path to integration was paved by the Globetrotters pushing the envelope with lopsided scores and a knack for finding the best talent to either recruit or oppose when barnstorming was the status quo. Additionally, the game was decades away from globalizing and its current state of relying on commissioners, players unions and collective bargaining agreements for more inclusive endeavors.
Dr. James Naismith invented basketball in 1891 in Springfield, Mass. Seven years later, the National Basketball League tipped off as the world’s first pro hoops league. The Globetrotters weren’t founded until 35 years after the game’s inception, and they were known as the Savoy Big Five, a team made up of players from Chicago’s Wendell Phillips High School: Walter “Toots” Wright, Byron “Fat” Long, Andy Washington, William “Kid” Oliver and Albert “Runt” Pullins. The Savoy Big Five played exhibition games at the Savoy Ballroom to boost attendance for the largest dance hall in Chicago’s South Side.
Abe Saperstein, a North Side Chicago businessman whose sports career started with a job as a booking agent, later made a crucial pivot. He took over the team and renamed it the New York Harlem Globetrotters to brand around the team’s racial makeup — even though none of the players were from New York. The rebrand was to entice curious fans outside of Chicago who assumed the team hailed from the then-perceived mecca of Black culture.
To tour the country, Saperstein leaned on family for additional fine-tuning in establishing an identity for a team that would compete in towns where most of the fans were White.
“My grandfather had to find new uniforms and went to my great-grandfather, who was a tailor,” Abra Saperstein, Abe’s granddaughter, told The Athletic. “He wanted to wrap the players up in the American flag … and the Globetrotters were born.”
Julian “Zeus” McClurkin wearing the traditional Harlem Globetrotters colors in 2018. (Kyle Terada / USA Today)
Before competing in more than 27,000 games, appearing in 124 countries and territories and engaging nearly 150 million fans, the Globetrotters played their first official road game in Hinckley, Ill., roughly 55 miles west of Chicago, on Jan. 7, 1927. Early opponents ranged from lumberjacks in Woodfibre, British Columbia, to farmers in Wheatland, Iowa, as the team sought as many matchups as possible to make ends meet.
The Globetrotters not only pushed barriers of integration but also dazzled crowds by lighting up scoreboards. The Globetrotters since have made societal strides by using an on-court dominance helping to set a distinct tone. Their all-time win percentage of .987 — the highest of any professional franchise ever — goes beyond routinely winning entertaining exhibitions.
“There were White kids who are impacted by the Globetrotters because they’re seeing someone who doesn’t look like them. And maybe, whatever expectation they had of that person was changed, right?” said Keith Dawkins, president of the Globetrotters and Herschend Entertainment Studios. “It’s a village that takes to get where we are today. The Globetrotters are part of the fabric of that history — not just for sport, not just for basketball, but for how they shaped, reshaped and reimagined the way people look at athletes and athletes of color.”
While it’s easy to dismiss the Globetrotters as an entertainment spectacle, their on-court antics are byproducts of keeping fans in their seats despite a game’s given score being well out of reach. They’d already notched more than 1,000 wins at a rate of better than 90 percent by 1934, but not every spectator was well-suited to enjoy Black players dominating their craft. Saperstein and his team managed to find ways to further push the sport.
Inman Jackson, a 15-year Globetrotters veteran (1930-45) was noted in a 1973 Jet magazine as “basketball’s first outstanding big man.” During his stint with the team, the 6-foot-4 center began applying on-court trickery by either rolling the ball through an unaware opponent’s legs or drop-kicking buckets from the free-throw line.
Those moves eventually brought about the savvy stylings of Reece “Goose” Tatum, Meadowlark Lemon, Fred “Curly” Neal and Marques Haynes, who helped pioneer any conversations about basketball’s best ballhandlers and showmen of the modern era.
Fred “Curly” Neal played 22 seasons with the Globetrotters, from 1963 to 1985. (Frank Becerra Jr. / The Journal News / USA Today)
“We didn’t just get here in 2015,” Dawkins said. “Throughout the fabric and sector of our society globally, the Globetrotters are one of those handful of things of being outstanding and otherworldly awesome.”
The Globetrotters have retired eight jersey numbers in its 99-year history. The iconic Wilt Chamberlain, who wore No. 13, was the first Globetrotter to have his jersey retired in March 2000. He was so impactful that he had his jersey retired despite playing only one season with the franchise.
Lemon, arguably the most recognized Globetrotter of all time, and Haynes, a dribbling machine, had their No. 36 and No. 20 jerseys, respectively, retired in January 2001. Tatum, who played 11 years with the Globetrotters, had his No. 50 retired in February 2002. Neal, known for his clean-shaven head and for being the ultimate showman as a dribbler and long-range shooter, had his No. 22 retired in February 2008.
Hubert “Geese” Ausbie, a former star on the court and a coach, had his No. 35 jersey retired in January 2017. Eleven months later in December, Charles “Tex” Harrison, a cat-quick guard who was an equally good rebounder as he was a dribbler, had his No. 34 retired. The most recent player to have his jersey retired, in February 2019, was Dunbar, a popular showman and big man with guard skills who wore No. 41.
Haynes and Tatum were with the Globetrotters when the World Professional Basketball Tournament, an invitational held in Chicago, took place from 1939 to 1948. Most of the teams entered then came from the newest rendition of the National Basketball League (NBL), which ultimately merged with the Basketball Association of America (BAA) to form today’s NBA. But the invitational also featured well-known independent franchises, such as the Globetrotters and the New York Renaissance.
During the inaugural tournament in 1939, the Globetrotters lost to the eventual champion Renaissance, pitting two all-Black teams competing in a semifinal. The Globetrotters, however, won the 1940 tournament, further legitimizing their standard. In 1948, the team faced the Minneapolis Lakers — led by basketball great George Mikan — at Chicago Stadium. By the time Saperstein and colleague Max Winter, the Lakers’ general manager, set up the contest, the Globetrotters entered with a 103-game winning streak.
The Lakers led 32-23 by halftime thanks to 18 first-half points from Mikan. But by the game’s end, the tables turned. Mikan grew frustrated with being double-teamed and was held to six points in the second half. Meanwhile, the Globetrotters worked their way back to keep it close throughout the second half. A long-distance Ermer Robinson bucket before the final buzzer gave the Globetrotters a 61-59 victory over the Lakers.
It was a win that came with skepticism.
“Everybody felt like the game was a fluke,” Globetrotters point guard Lucius “Too Tall” Winston said. “So they said, ‘OK, we’ll put the same game on in 1949.’ They televised it, (it) went to overtime, beat them again.”
By 1950, two former Globetrotters made history in the NBA. Chuck Cooper was the first Black player drafted — selected No. 13 by the Boston Celtics. Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton was the first Black player to sign an NBA contract.
Even a 22-year-old Chamberlain enjoyed a cup of coffee with the Globetrotters during the 1958-59 season before decorating his NBA Hall of Fame resume with four MVPs, two league titles and seemingly every record imaginable over stints with the Philadelphia/San Francisco Warriors, the Philadelphia 76ers and the L.A. Lakers across 14 seasons.
But as the NBA’s popularity grew, the Globetrotters maintained theirs by balancing on-court impact with big-picture thinking. They signed four-time All-American and Olympic gold medalist Lynette Woodard in October 1985, who became the first woman to play for the Globetrotters — and anyprofessional men’s team.
“When Lynette broke that gender barrier in 1985, that was historic — to open up that window to allow women to play on a male-dominated team,” Globetrotters guard Cherelle “Torch” George said. “Even aside from the gender barrier, there was the color barrier. The Globetrotters were the first to open that window for African-American people to compete and travel the world. It’s special.”
Throughout their esteemed history, the Globetrotters have multiple accomplishments on and off the basketball court, but their duality is what makes them an unmatched connector to ample hoops and societal history. Without their early dominance, there is a limited cache to host one of the largest-ever basketball crowds at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium in 1951 (75,000) — after which the U.S. State Department deemed the franchise “ambassadors of extraordinary goodwill.”
Nowadays, it’s almost impossible to hear “Sweet Georgia Brown” without thinking about the team. Over the years, the franchise has made honorable Globetrotters out of famous personalities like Magic Johnson, Nelson Mandela, Bob Hope and Whoopi Goldberg. During the 1970s, the Globetrotters had an animated series and a live-action variety show, both of which aired on Saturdays. And they’ve recently enjoyed a return to TV as their Emmy-nominated series “Harlem Globetrotters: Play It Forward” is currently in its third season.
Today, the Globetrotters continue to promote inclusion with their knack for inducing widespread laughter and astounded stares. Their enduring desire and creative vision routinely contribute to basketball’s growth and society’s betterment.
It helps that the team happens to be really good at basketball — something that hasn’t changed for 99 years.
“We’re the originators of basketball, and I think people need to know that,” George said. “That flash, showmanship … all that stuff starts with the Globetrotters. People think as Globetrotters not as basketball players, but we’re basketball players first; entertainment comes second.”
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