The Legacy of Blacks in Basketball
The beyond-just-tall tall young man stands and thanks Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for being a role model and for educating him about a slice of American cultural history he had previously not known about.
He asks about Abdul-Jabbar’s choice to play for UCLA and John Wooden in 1966. Did Abdul-Jabbar (then known as Lew Alcindor) consider playing for a black coach?
Abdul-Jabbar answers by telling a story. In 1947, Wooden was coaching the Indiana State Sycamores and they received an invitation to play in the NAIB national tournament in Kansas City, Mo. But the invitation was for only the white players on the team. Black players were banned from the tourney.
Wooden said if the Sycamores’ Clarence Walker couldn’t participate, Indiana State would take a pass.
The following year, the NAIB changed its policy. ISU made it all the way to the championship game before losing to Louisville.
That, explained Abdul-Jabbar, was the kind of man John Wooden was.
The best team you’ve never heard of
The Q-and-A followed a screening at the Siskel Center last Friday night of “On the Shoulders of Giants,” one of the most inspirational, entertaining and enlightening sports documentaries I’ve ever seen. It tells the amazing story of the Harlem Rens, an all-black basketball squad that was birthed during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and forged a record of 2,588 wins and 529 losses — an 83 percent winning percentage — over a 25-year period.
Led by future Basketball Hall of Famers such as Willie Smith, Zach Clayton and Charles “Tarzan” Cooper, the Rens redefined the game by playing a fast-moving, team-oriented, pass-first game, whipping the ball around with a precision and grace that would be the envy of a 21st century NBA team. They played a smart, strategic style of ball, emphasizing tough defense and a patient offensive strategy.
The Rens played their home games at the Renaissance Ballroom in the heart of Harlem. Clear the dance floor, put up a couple of baskets and you had your home court. The balcony seating provided a perfect perch to watch the action.
Based on Abdul-Jabbar’s book of the same title and narrated by Jamie Foxx, “On the Shoulders of Giants” (available on Demand in February) is a vibrant and kinetic film, despite the limited available footage of the Rens. Through interviews with basketball greats, artists such as Maya Angelou and Spike Lee, still photos and breathtakingly creative animation from Chicago’s Calabash studios, “Giants” transports us to the Harlem Renaissance, when black culture was widely celebrated — but the Rens were met with bigotry when they played on the road. They weren’t allowed to play in the professional basketball associations that predated the NBA —but they did play “exhibition” matches against teams such as the Original Celtics, holding their own.
On March 28, 1939, the first-ever World Professional Basketball Tournament was sponsored by the Chicago Herald American newspaper and held at the Chicago Coliseum. Teams from the National Basketball League and barnstorming squads such as the Rens and the Harlem Globetrotters were invited to participate. (The Globetrotters were from Chicago. Their founder put “Harlem” in the name to tell white America the team was black.) With a record of 111-7, the Harlem Rens took the floor in the championship against the Oshkosh All-Stars, the Western Division champions of the all-white National Basketball League.
The Rens had won 16 Colored Basketball Championships but until 1939 had never been allowed to square off against white teams in sanctioned championship games. But on this March night in Chicago in 1939, the Rens defeated the All-Stars 34-25, becoming champions of the professional basketball world more than a decade before the first black player was drafted into the NBA.
At the Q-and-A (moderated by yours truly), Jerry Reinsdorf acknowledged that the NBA hasn’t done as much as Major League Baseball has to recognize its pioneers. There was considerable talk about the importance of today’s players and fans understanding the legacy of teams such as the Rens. As Charles Barkley says in the film, the modern NBA superstar is making tens of millions of dollars because he is immensely talented — but also because he happened to be born at the right time.
Maybe not all of today’s young stars understand that, but some do. The tall man in the audience who asked Kareem Abdul-Jabbar about his collegiate choice was Joakim Noah, Chicago Bull.
BY RICHARD ROEPER rroeper@suntimes.com // Jan 24, 2011 02:35AM