Spinning the Globe (26 page)

The Chihuahua players couldn’t call time-out without possession of the ball, so the clock kept ticking. Unbelievably, Marques dribbled out the entire fourth quarter. Then, as he had done against Southern, he raced in for a layup just as time expired, giving the Stars a 3-point victory.

It was such an astonishing exhibition that the players who witnessed it would still be marveling at it over half a century later. It is a safe assumption that no other player in the history of basketball has ever done it, before or since. “That was the first and last time I ever did that,” Marques recalls, laughing. “The whole damn quarter; I wouldn’t advise it.”

From Mexico City, the word was sent back to Abe that this Haynes kid was something special. By January 1947, Marques had incorporated his dribbling into the Stars’ regular routine, and when the Stars played on a doubleheader bill with the Trotters in San Francisco, it was Marques who was singled out by the
Herald-Examiner:
“Marques Haynes, K.C. guard, staged a side-splitting show of his own in the final minute of the first game, dribbling up and down the court, through the opposition’s defense and out again, as the Hawaiians tried desperately to break up the play.”

Abe realized what a gold mine he had and brought Marques up to the big team for the end of the California tour, which put Goose Tatum and Marques Haynes in the same lineup for the first time. By mid-February, this new tandem was ready to be showcased. The Globetrotters, Kansas City Stars, House of David, and Hawaiians had been playing doubleheaders in California; then they slowly worked their way to El Paso, Texas. As elsewhere in the South, El Paso’s Jim Crow covenants prohibited black and white teams from playing each other, so the Trotters and K.C. Stars hooked up in the first game of a doubleheader. Goose poured in 28 points, and Marques bewildered his former teammates, who now had to chase him instead of admiring his handiwork. “Number one dribbler Marques Haynes, who moves the ball from every angle, had the Stars trying madly to corner him to regain possession,” the El Paso paper reported.

Goose was already being billed as the “Nation’s Best Known Basketball Player,” and Marques had a dribbling act like none in the Trotters’ twenty-year history. Abe now had two extraordinarily gifted stars who would go on to become the most celebrated ballplayers in the world.

In late February, Abe had arranged for the Trotters, Stars, and House of David to go to Havana, Cuba, for the first Cuban Invitational Tournament. Following a game in Cincinnati, the three teams boarded a private Pullman car that Abe had rented, which would carry them to Miami, where they were to catch their flight to Ha
vana. The Trotters had been the toast of every city they had played on their triumphant West Coast swing, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle; and in Cincinnati they had played before the largest crowd in the city’s history.

But once their private Pullman crossed the Mason-Dixon line, there were jarring reminders that they were now just another bunch of uppity niggers. When the train left the Cincinnati station, their Pullman porter warned them, “Once we cross that Dixon line, y’all got to keep these window shades down. If them peckerwoods see you riding in this car [with the House of David players] they’re liable to shoot.” The white players on the House of David were allowed to eat in the dining car, but the Trotters and Stars had to stay put and wait for the porters to bring food back to them. But several of the Trotters from northern cities decided to test the limits of southern hospitality. When the train stopped in Corbin, Kentucky, in the foothills of the Appalachians, Sam Wheeler and Vertes Zeigler noticed an ice-cream parlor about fifty yards from the train station. They walked over to check it out. When they walked in, some local teenagers who were playing the jukebox looked up and gave them a hard stare. Wheeler approached the waitress behind the counter.

“I’d like an ice-cream cone, please,” he said. The young woman was so stunned she didn’t respond. “I’d like one, too,” Zeigler added.

Finally, the waitress found her voice. “What flavor you want?”

“Well, I want a strawberry and a vanilla—a double dip,” Wheeler replied politely.

The waitress said, “Sorry, but I can’t give you strawberry and vanilla.”

“Well, what flavors you got?” Zeigler asked.

“Ain’t got nothing but chocolate for y’all,” the waitress said, with a smirk.

Zeigler, who had a quick temper, told her where she could stick that chocolate, then turned and bolted out the door, with Wheeler right behind him. The local boys took off after them, hollering threats and racing them to the train. The Trotters’ Pullman porter was standing on the platform, but when he heard the commotion he snatched up his little stepstool, threw it on the train, and jumped aboard himself. Wheeler and Zeigler had to leap onto the train.
“Those peckerwoods were dead behind us,” Zeigler recalls, laughing. “Man, we jumped in that car and slammed that door. They was throwing bricks and rocks as we pulled away.”

The train pulled out of the station before the situation worsened, but traveling secretary Winfield Welch was furious with the two players. “You damn fools, you wanna get everybody killed!?” he yelled. “We got these House of Davids in this car—what you think they’d do if they found out?”

“You tell Abe that’s his fault,” Zeigler said defiantly. “I ain’t gonna be living like that.”

When they arrived in Havana, the Trotters rolled undefeated through the Cuban Invitational Tournament, then followed that up with their second successful tour of Hawaii. Their fame was spreading beyond the boundaries of the continental United States, and they were at last living up to their name.

By the 1947–48 season, all of the elements were in place for the Harlem Globetrotters to explode into a national phenomenon. After World War II ended, there had been fears that the economy might slip back into a depression, but the conversion to a peacetime economy had jump-started the greatest economic boom in the nation’s history. For the first time in twenty years, the American public had money to spend on sports and entertainment—the two realms that the Globetrotters straddled better than anyone. They were packing in the crowds wherever they went: 20,000-plus fans showed up at Chicago Stadium to see a
regular season
game, not some special exhibition against the College All-Stars. They were now playing the biggest cities in the United States, they were immensely popular in Canada, and they had made successful tours of Mexico, Cuba, and Hawaii.

Internally, Abe Saperstein now had a front office staff, headed by Marie Linehan, which could handle the demands of a worldwide sports enterprise. In terms of publicity, the Trotters had hit the biggest jackpot of all in December 1946, when
Life
magazine, the most popular periodical in the country, ran a feature story on the team. If there had been any remaining doubts that the Trotters had hit the big time, the
Life
story now made it official.

One indication of the Globetrotters’ maturation was that they published their first “yearbook” (in effect, an elaborate game program), with photos and bios of Abe and the players. The yearbook contained the reprinted columns of a dozen sportswriters from across the country, each one praising the Trotters to the heavens.

Finally, Abe had the most talented African American players in the country. His yearly refrain that the Trotters were fielding the “best aggregation in team history” had finally come true. There was a cadre of battle-tested veterans, led by player-coach Babe Pressley, Ted Strong, Ermer Robinson, Ducky Moore, Vertes Zeigler, and Sam Wheeler, which was bolstered by an infusion of new talent: Lawrence and Lance Cudjoe (Marques Haynes’s former teammates at Langston); Frank Washington, a lanky forward from Philadelphia who had played with the Washington Bears and Detroit Gems; and Wilbert King and Boudreau King, two more Detroiters from the Brewster Center pipeline.

And then there were Marques Haynes and Goose Tatum. Goose was already famous nationwide, and had created his own persona as the “Clown Prince of Basketball,” melding the Globetrotters’ old standards with his own creativity to invent a new genre of comedy basketball. Goose was naturally funny, but he worked hard to perfect his craft. He studied the great comedians and clowns, like Charlie Chaplin and Emmett Kelly, learning new techniques. Like them, he could make people laugh
and
cry, although in Goose’s case they were usually laughing
until
they cried.

He had a standard repertoire of gags for every game, but he was brilliant at tailoring those gags—or “reams,” the players called them—to a particular audience, improvising new twists and subtle nuances on the fly. He was like a great jazz soloist, such as Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie, who at that very time were shaping their own new art form—bebop—from the musical streams of swing, blues, and big band.

To catalog all of the funny things that Goose did on the court would be impossible, because he did new things nearly every night. When the Trotters played in Hawaii, he donned a grass skirt and did his own crazy hula in the pivot. “People were laughing so hard they were crying,” Marques Haynes recalls. He would snatch a camera
away from a fan and take a picture of himself, voguing wildly for the camera. Or he would steal a woman’s purse and rifle through it, loudly announcing its contents to the crowd.

At halftime of a game in Wichita, Kansas, as the Trotters and their opponents started making their way to the dressing rooms, Goose lingered behind. “What the fuck is he doing now?” one of his teammates asked. The players stopped to watch as Goose went up in the stands and found a young boy, then brought him out to center court. “Oh, shit, he’s gonna get us lynched,” the player muttered. By now, the entire crowd was watching. People on their way to the concession stand had stopped and were asking the same thing as his teammates, “What the hell is he doing?” He took the little boy down to one basket and showed him how to shoot a hook, but no matter how hard he tried, the boy couldn’t make it. So finally Goose picked him up, put him on his shoulder, and the boy dropped the ball in the hoop. The crowd cheered wildly. But Goose wasn’t finished. He led the boy over to the Globetrotters’ bench and sat him down, then grabbed one of the Trotters, took
him
up in the stands and sat him down beside the boy’s parents. The crowd was in hysterics.

One of his classics was a pantomime fishing skit in which Goose would amble out with a cane pole and a straw hat. He’d carefully step into his imaginary boat, row out to center court, toss out his line, and wait for a bite. When he hooked a big one, he’d start reeling it in but end up capsizing the boat and floundering around like a drowning man. Some of the other Trotters would “swim out” to rescue him, drag him to shore, pump his chest to expel the water, and end up reviving him by taking off his sneaker and putting it under his nose. Goose would leap straight up, a saved man! It was Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Marcel Marceau on a basketball court.

Many of the reams that Goose created would be imitated by Globetrotter showmen for decades to come. He designed a “string-ball,” for instance, which had a long rubber band attached to it and would spring back to him when he shot a foul. Or he’d hide behind the Trotters’ basket while the opposition team had the ball, then catch a full-court pass and, instead of dropping in an easy layup, kneel down and calmly tie his shoes. As the opposition players came thundering downcourt toward him, he would calmly stand up, put on a
couple of extraordinary fakes, and toss in his soft hook. During a time-out, he would sneak up behind the opposing team’s huddle, pretend to be eavesdropping on their strategy, then tiptoe back to the Trotters’ bench and whisper the “big secret” to his teammates. Sometimes, he would go sit in the stands, or in a woman’s lap, while the action was going on at the other end of the court, then swipe a floppy hat off some guy and race out on the court, waving and hollering for the ball.

With all of this talent at his disposal, Abe had completely overshadowed his competition. The New York Rens were still around, but Bob Douglas could no longer seriously compete with Abe for the best African American players, and could not even come close in ticket sales. The white pro leagues were no competition either. The more-established National Basketball League (NBL), which had been around since 1937, was limited to small and medium-sized cities, such as Sheboygan, Oshkosh, Rochester, and Youngstown. And the fledgling Basketball Association of America (BAA), formed in November 1946, had seen four of its original eleven teams go bankrupt the first season, and the surviving clubs were hemorrhaging red ink. The BAA was staying afloat partly because Abe had agreed to play doubleheaders in BAA cities, in the hope that the crowds that turned out to see the Trotters would hang around to see the white pros.

In the seven years since their world championship of 1940, the Harlem Globetrotters had achieved far more than Abe could have envisioned a decade earlier, but he was already dreaming of even greater challenges and mightier rivals to vanquish.

I
n 1948, George Mikan, the six-foot-ten center of the Minneapolis Lakers, was dominating the sport like no other big man ever had. When Mikan had first arrived at DePaul University in 1942, he was a clumsy, slow-footed freshman who was so blind (with 20/300 vision) that, even wearing Mr. Magoo glasses, he had to ask teammates to read the game clock. But first-year DePaul coach Ray Meyer recognized the youngster’s fierce competitiveness and put him through a rigorous, unorthodox training program: he made him shoot thousands of hook shots with either hand, hired a female dance instructor to improve his footwork, and engaged a boxing coach to help him develop better hand-eye coordination. Once Mikan mastered the hook shot, he was unstoppable. The foul lane was only six feet wide at the time, so he could camp out within easy range for his hook. During his college career, he led DePaul to an 81–17 record, was a three-time All-American, twice led the nation in scoring, and was selected as the National Player of the Year in 1946. His senior year, he carried DePaul to the NIT championship, averaging 40 points a game in the tournament, including a record 53 points in the semifinal game, in which he outscored the entire Rhode Island team. He was the charter member of an exclusive club (which later included Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, and Julius Erving) of ballplayers who single-handedly changed the sport. Mikan blocked so many shots that the NCAA instituted its first goaltending rule, and in 1951, the NBA widened its foul lane to twelve feet to neutralize his hook.

After graduating from DePaul, he played one year with the Chicago American Gears, then signed with the Minneapolis Lakers of the National Basketball League (NBL) in November 1947. The Lakers had recently signed another college All-American (and future NBA Hall of Famer), Jim Pollard, a six-foot-five slasher from Stanford University who, on any other team, would have been the franchise. Pollard was a more complete player than Mikan, as he could score inside or outside, had great improvisational skills, and was one of the first pros to play “above the rim,” as reflected in his nickname, the “Kangaroo Kid” (he once injured his elbow by hitting it on the backboard). Over the next seven years, Mikan and Pollard would carry the Lakers to six league titles (one in the NBL, one in the BAA, and four in the newly merged National Basketball Association) and establish the NBA’s first dynasty. In 1950, Mikan would be voted the Greatest Player in the First Half Century by the Associated Press.

In early 1948, however, all of that glory was in front of them. The Laker team was less than a year old and was looking to establish its credibility in the pro ranks. When Arch Ward, venerable sports editor of the
Chicago Tribune,
wrote that the Harlem Globetrotters were the best basketball team in the world, Max Winter, the general manager of the Lakers, took it as a personal affront. He called up Abe, who was a friend, and challenged him to a game.

Abe quickly agreed. He and Winter both recognized that a Lakers-Trotters matchup would be a sure moneymaker. Whatever symbolic questions of racial superiority might be settled, the game was certain to reap huge profits. They scheduled a one-game showdown at Chicago Stadium for February 19, 1948. As Winter would recall years later, “Little did Abe, or I, or anyone else connected with it, realize that it would turn out to be one of the most memorable basketball games of all time.”

On the surface, it should have been just another big game. After all, the Globetrotters had been playing white pro teams for years, including other members of the National Basketball League. They had waged fierce battles with the Oshkosh All-Stars and other NBL teams in the World Pro Tournament in Chicago, had held preseason training camps with the Sheboygan Redskins, and had taken on the best white team in the East, the Philadelphia Sphas. Further, the NBL
had already integrated in 1942–43, when the Chicago Studebakers played that season with current and former Globetrotters Sonny Boswell, Duke Cumberland, Hilary Brown, Bernie Price, and Roosevelt Hudson. In the 1946–47 season, four additional black players had played in the league, including Pop Gates and Willie King, who also played for the Globetrotters. And the New York Rens would actually join the league during the 1948–49 season, playing under the name of the Dayton Rens, thereby becoming the first black team in a white pro league.

What made this game special was George Mikan. He was the first dominating big man of the modern era in basketball—a center who could take over a game, scoring at will and controlling the defensive end of the court. And the fact that he was a local boy, raised in nearby Joliet and graduated from DePaul, made a Lakers-Trotters showdown in Chicago even more sensational.

Although the racial dimension of the game was never explicitly mentioned in the white press, it was an all too obvious subtext: the best white team in the country versus the best black team. The fact that Jackie Robinson had just completed his first season with the Brooklyn Dodgers in October added extra traction to the racial issue. Labeling George Mikan a “Great White Hope” would depreciate his impact on the game, as he was reshaping modern basketball on the basis of his size and skills, not his color, but he undoubtedly carried the weight of white assumptions of superiority on his shoulders. Indeed, the game was being characterized in the press as a “private duel” between Mikan and Goose Tatum, each of whom was revolutionizing the game in his own unique way. Simply put, there was no one else like Goose
or
Mikan—and now they would be going head to head. The
Chicago Sun-Times
predicted it would be the “toughest test of Mikan’s brilliant career.”

More broadly, the game would represent a showdown between two contrasting styles of play—the white style, of which the Lakers were the ultimate prototype, and the black style of hoops played by the Trotters. Conventional wisdom among white sportswriters was that the machinelike efficiency of the Lakers’ half-court offense and their structured man-to-man defense would triumph over the “undisciplined” school-yard style of the Trotters.

As game day approached, the bookies made the Lakers an 8-point favorite. The pregame hype for the contest was building not just in Chicago but in Minneapolis, where the
Minneapolis Morning Tribune
called it pro basketball’s “dream” and the “Game of the Year.”

Oddly enough, the players on both teams might have been paying less attention to the hype than anyone else, as they were playing a full schedule leading up to the game. The Globetrotters arrived in Chicago only the night before the game, after a three-week tour of California. They came to town riding a 103-game winning streak. The Lakers arrived with an 8-game winning streak but, more impressive, a 91/2-game lead in the NBL’s Western Division over the Tri-City Blackhawks, whom they had defeated two nights before the game against the Trotters.

George Mikan was eager to establish bragging rights in his hometown, and Marques Haynes was anxious to disprove the perception of the Lakers’ superiority, but not all the players on either team were looking forward to the game. Ermer Robinson, the Trotters’ sharpshooter from San Diego, couldn’t understand why Abe had scheduled a game against such a formidable opponent; and some of the Lakers felt they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by playing the Trotters. Years later, Jim Pollard would complain that the game was “for the owners, not the players. I didn’t take it seriously…it was a pain in the neck.” And the Lakers’ coach, Johnny Kundla, who had played against the Trotters in the early 1930s, didn’t consider the Trotters a serious threat, but merely a show team.

Few sportswriters gave the Trotters a chance, and even Abe was having doubts. In public, he maintained his usual breezy optimism, but he admitted to his family that he was worried about the Lakers’ height advantage. The tallest Trotter was Goose Tatum, at six-foot-three-and-a-half, but Mikan was six-foot-ten, and Pollard was six-foot-five. In an effort to shore up his bench, Abe brought in the best players from the second unit, including center Sam Wheeler, Vertes Zeigler, and the diminutive shooter Wilbert King.

Even though the game was held on a bitterly cold Thursday night, 17,823 fans showed up at Chicago Stadium. The crowd included more whites than blacks, but not many. “The whole South Side of Chicago came out for that ball game,” recalls Marques
Haynes. The Lakers and Trotters matchup was actually the first game of a doubleheader, with the BAA’s Chicago Stags and New York Knicks playing the nightcap, but there was no doubt which game the fans had come to see. In addition to those watching in the stadium, thousands more were listening on radio, as the game was being broadcast back to Minneapolis.

In the Trotters’ locker room before the game, Abe gave a brief pep talk, then turned the floor over to player-coach Babe Pressley, who laid out the game plan. The Globetrotters realized that there was no way Goose could handle Mikan one-on-one, as he was giving up seven inches and fifty pounds, so other players were going to have to sag on the Lakers’ center, double-teaming him whenever he got the ball. Additionally, Pressley told them not to hesitate to foul Mikan hard and often. There was no “one-and-one” rule at that time, so a nonshooting foul drew only one shot.

The game plan, which had sounded plausible in the dressing room, fell apart completely when the game began. Mikan was stronger and quicker than the Trotters had expected, and he was simply overwhelming Goose, who had never been noted for his defensive prowess, even with an opponent his own size. The Lakers jumped out to a 9–2 lead, and were threatening to run away with the game. Pressley, known as the “Blue Ox” because of his great strength (“He’d make Muhammad Ali look like a little boy,” teammate Sam Wheeler would say years later), was the Trotters’ best defender, so he began switching off his man to help Goose, trying to deny Mikan the ball. But then Pollard started hitting from the baseline, and the Trotters fell further behind.

At halftime, the Lakers held a 32–23 lead, and it would have been worse if Marques Haynes and Ermer Robinson had not been scoring from outside. Mikan had put on an awesome display, racking up 18 points and completely embarrassing Goose, who had yet to score.

In the locker room at halftime, the Globetrotters realized that their game plan had failed miserably and they would have to come up with a new strategy, or they were doomed. One problem in the first half was that Abe had insisted that they run their trademark Globetrotters offense, with three players running a weave out front and working the ball into Goose. But Mikan was smothering Goose
in the pivot, and even when Goose managed to get off a shot, he was ice cold. Babe Pressley and Marques Haynes spoke up, insisting that the Trotters abandon their standard offense and start pushing the ball, to take advantage of their speed, and shooting from outside, instead of trying to work inside against the taller Lakers. “We had a lot of good outside shooters,” Marques recalls, “particularly Ermer Robinson, Wilbert King, and myself.”

They made one other halftime adjustment. For the rest of the game, they were going to hammer George Mikan every time he touched the ball. It was a risky tactic, as Mikan was a 78 percent lifetime free-throw shooter, but the Trotters gambled that he couldn’t hurt them any more at the foul line than he was from the field.

Both strategies worked. The Trotters started fast-breaking every time they got the chance, and when fast-break opportunities weren’t there, Wilbert King, Ermer Robinson, and Marqus Haynes started connecting from the outside. The Globetrotters began the third quarter with a 10–2 run, cutting the Lakers’ lead to 34–32.

On defense, the hack attack against Mikan was taking its toll. “We were doing
everything,
” Sam Wheeler recalled in a 1987 interview. “If we’d had hatchets in our hands, he would have had scars on him—they would have taken 100 stitches.” Once, Mikan got so frustrated with Goose’s pushing and shoving that he lost his temper. His old college coach, Ray Meyer, could see the explosion coming. “I was sitting at the scorer’s table and Goose was really roughing up Mikan,” he remembers. “I saw Mikan’s face get real white and I thought, ‘Omigod, here it comes,’ and Mikan leveled Tatum with a vicious elbow.”

The flagrant foul earned Mikan a technical, and the Trotters, sensing that they were getting to him, kept up the pressure. “When we fouled him, we fouled him
hard,
” recalls Vertes Zeigler, who played a reserve role. “We said, ‘If they’re gonna call a foul, be sure to make him bleed.’ And that’s what we did. We went to beating on him and slapping them glasses off him.” Ultimately, the Trotters rattled Mikan, and the usually reliable free throw shooter missed seven of eleven attempts from the line.

At the same time, Goose finally started having success against Mikan on offense, hitting for 9 points in the second half and helping
the Trotters take their first lead, 38–36. But their strategy of fouling Mikan was starting to cost them dearly, as Goose, Babe Pressley, and Ducky Moore were all in foul trouble.

Shortly before the end of the quarter, there was a frightening moment in the game. Mikan and Marques Haynes went up together for a rebound, and as they wrestled for the ball in midair, Marques’s hands slipped off and he fell hard to the floor, landing flat on his back. He was able to continue playing, but a few minutes later the exact same thing happened again. This time, Marques hit the floor with a sickening thud, and Mikan landed on top of him. The two men lay sprawled in a heap on the floor. As Marques lay motionless on his back, not moving, the crowd fell silent, fearing a serious injury. Eventually, Marques was able to struggle to his feet and, despite being in obvious pain, refused to come out of the game.

The fourth quarter was a seesaw affair, with the lead repeatedly changing hands. The fans were on their feet for nearly the entire period, too excited to sit down. Marie Linehan, who was sitting at courtside, would say later, “I couldn’t talk for a week, I screamed so hard.”

With seven minutes to go, the Trotters led 50–48, but then Babe Pressley fouled out and was replaced by the old veteran Ted Strong, who was past his prime and too slow to contain Mikan. The Lakers surged back into the lead, 56–55, when Mikan hit another field goal, his twenty-third point of the night. Then, Wilbert King and Marques Haynes made consecutive baskets to send the Trotters back on top, 59–56. All night long, the outside shooting of Marques and Ermer Robinson, with 15 points apiece, and King, with 12, had kept the Trotters in the game.