With less than a minute left on the clock, big George Mikan steps up to the free-throw line at the Chicago Stadium. The score is tied at 59–59, and he now has the chance to sink the winning shot.
The six-foot-ten, three-time NCAA all-American has had an exhausting evening, scoring 24 points in an effort to keep the Lakers in the game. He pauses and listens to the deafening roar of the near 18,000-strong-crowd.
Mikan takes his first shot, and hears the crowd groan as it bounces off the rim. The second and third go the same way, and a hush settles over the area. As he and his teammates turn, exhausted, back to defend their own hoop, the opposition explode forward in a whirlwind of fast passes and squeaking shoes.
From a knot of flailing hands, Ermer Robinson jumps and takes his shot. The ball sails up as the buzzer goes off. The ball arcs over their heads and drops silently into the basket. 61–59 says the scoreboard. The crowd explodes.
It is 19 February 1948, and the Harlem Globetrotters (sometimes written as Globe Trotters in the early days) have just beaten the Minneapolis Lakers – the odds-on favourites for the World Professional Basketball Tournament and the best white team in America.
That game was not a surprise upset, however, and this isn't an underdog story. The "clown princes of basketball" were themselves former World Championship winners, and no-one back in the pre-NBA era would have written them off as a novelty act. As one Minneapolis sports writer put it the following morning: "What did the game prove? It proved that Mikan can hold his own against the best in the land... 'Goose' Tatum, 'Babe' Pressley and the rest."
This is the surprising origin story of multiple Guinness World Record title holders, and American national treasures the Harlem Globetrotters, who were inducted into the GWR Hall of Fame in our 2024 book.
How it all began
The story begins not in Harlem, New York, but 1,150 km (715 mi) west, in Chicago. More specifically, it begins less than 10 km from the old Chicago Stadium at the Eighth Regiment Armory on South Giles Avenue. Here, in 1926, a former NFL player turned basketball coach called Dick Hudson put together a team he named the "Giles Post American Legion Five".
This team played regularly for around two years, building up a loyal following in Chicago. They also ventured out to neighbouring towns for occasional road games, where reports suggest the basic DNA of the Globetrotters was already there – that distinctive mixture of top-tier basketball and crowd-pleasing showmanship. One paper described them as "Basketeering Comedians" in a glowing post-match report.
As the Giles Post Five grew in popularity, however, the American Legion became increasingly uncomfortable with the team's use of their name and facilities. At the end of 1926 Hudson signed a deal to move the team's home base to the Savoy Ballroom, a jazz club that had just opened a few blocks away.
This choice sounds odd to us today, but the development of jazz and basketball went hand in hand during the 1920s and 1930s. Big ballrooms meant large indoor spaces with high ceilings and polished wooden floors, ideal for basketball as well as dancing. Bringing in a basketball team meant venue owners could draw big crowds on weekend afternoons, many of whom would stick around for the evening's show.
At their new home, the renamed "Savoy Big Five", they often shared the bill with jazz greats like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. The sharply dressed young players, and their smooth-talking manager, would sometimes appear on stage with the bands, and the musicians would play pick-up games with the players during the day.
This early connection between sport and music is exemplified by jazz legend and basketball player Cab Calloway. In 1928, he was living in Chicago, half-heartedly pursuing a law degree at Crane College, while simultaneously singing at jazz clubs and playing for local basketball teams.
A familiar face at the Savoy Ballroom, the lanky and athletic bandleader was offered a contract with the Savoy Big Five in 1928. He turned it down, preferring to focus on his music (the law degree was in a distant, soon-to-be-forgotten third place), but remained a fan of the team. They would go on to sometimes tour together as a double-bill – "Cab Calloway and Basketball's Fabulous Harlem Globetrotters".
A new team is born
Their time at the Savoy gave the team the resources they needed to really hone their skills. Hudson brought in an assistant coach called Robert Andersen, and a sports promoter by the name of Abe Saperstein to act as the Big Five's general manager.
The Savoy era lasted a little under two years, however. In late 1928, simmering disputes over pay between the Big Five and the venue's management led to Hudson, Saperstein and some of their players leaving the organization.
It's not clear exactly what happened next, but it seems likely that Hudson parted ways with the team at this point. He had been working with the ballroom's women's team, the barnstorming Savoy Colts, and appears to have switched over to the women's game full-time. Certainly by 1930 he was managing a successful Chicago team called the Club-Store Co-eds, and doesn't appear to be associated with the Globetrotters.
Back in 1929, Saperstein worked quickly to put together a new team. The two or three players that followed him from the Savoy were joined by familiar faces from the Chicago sporting world. His most important win was signing Albert Pullins, a rising star forward who was gaining a reputation in the city and – perhaps even more importantly – owned a car.
With these crucial pieces in place, Saperstein and his players folded themselves into Al Pullins's station wagon and hit the road. The team that drove out into the midwestern winter in January 1929 had decided to call themselves the "New York Harlem Globetrotters" – a name that associated them with the bright lights of the capital of African-American culture, and the famous skills of the nation's premier all-Black team, the New York Renaissance (better known as the Rens).
Who is brave enough to face the Globetrotters?
That winter, the Globetrotters would play against anyone who'd face them, in front of any crowd that would pay. The creaking station wagon would roll into towns like Muscatine, Iowa, or Hinckley, Illinois, where the team would grab a bite to eat before heading over to the dancehall, YMCA or high-school gymnasium. There the Globetrotters would face off against teams with names like the Killian Oil-o-Matics, the Knights of Armenia or the Streeper and Sons Morticians Five.
Their win-loss record wasn't great at first, but they played hard and made a good impression on the crowds that braved the snowstorms to see them. Within a few months, the team was established as a fixture of the midwestern barnstorming circuit, able to travel in a little more comfort and pick their games more carefully.
Like all barnstormers, the Globetrotters played to entertain, but that doesn't mean they weren't a serious team.
When the opposition was a match for their skills, they'd play a straight game of basketball. A high-scoring, fast-paced game every bit as thrilling as a modern NBA clash. But not many teams could go toe-to-toe with the Globetrotters, and barnstormers had to play a lot of games and draw crowds to pay the bills.
Because a one-sided game is pretty dull, the Globetrotters would do what they could to make things competitive and keep the crowd engaged. In addition to the familiar ball spinning and trick plays, they'd also make some fairly transparent efforts to give the home team a helping hand.
A post-match report from 1939, for example, mentions "Brother" Maupins sitting down in the centre circle and spending the whole fourth quarter reading a book while the game went on around him. Another describes the bumbling antics of Saperstein, who sometimes played the easy games to give one of his players a break. (The coach, who was just 5 ft 3 in tall, usually finished with no field goals, no free throws, no steals and no assists.)
While these performances usually went down well, there were occasions when players or supporters didn't take kindly to being shown up. There were many ill-tempered, foul-heavy games over the years, and a few that ended with what reporters called a "near race riot" (and the Globetrotters having to leave town in a hurry).
Sporting segregation
The 1930s were the heyday of the barnstorming basketball team. In the age before TV, this was the only way that most people could see the sport played at a high level. And in the age before lucrative TV deals and sponsorships, it was also the only way that players (and particularly Black players) could make a living from the game.
Large-scale organized leagues were rare and also, more importantly, only for white men. Competitive basketball, like most American sports at the time, was racially segregated.
This created a strange two-tier system, where a white team could be simultaneously the regional champions and also widely acknowledged as the second or third best team in the state.
The result of all this was a sport that functioned in a similar way to boxing today. There were numerous competing leagues and tournaments, some for teams from a specific region, others national, but for teams from a particular background (college teams, company teams, etc.).
The route to something approaching undisputed champion status was through big-ticket games that were presented like title fights. "Exhibition" games between "Black fives" like the Globetrotters or the Rens, and big-name white teams like the Lakers or the Pistons, were advertised for months in advance and held in enormous arenas.
In theory these games were just held to entertain crowds and make a bit of money, but they often carried more weight with fans of the sport than the top position in any official league.
As the decade drew to a close, however, this chaotic system was beginning to form into something more organized and professional. The two precursor organizations to the NBA – the National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of America – were founded in 1937 and 1946 respectively, and the World Professional Basketball Tournament, which uniquely allowed Black and white teams to play against each other in a competition setting, was first held in 1939.
As these leagues locked down schedules and committed teams to exclusivity, the opportunities for barnstormers began to dwindle. One by one the big white teams signed up with the leagues, while the Black fives that had dominated the game in the 1930s and 1940s – who were excluded by league commissioners – went out of business.
The age of the barnstormer finally came to an end in the autumn of 1949, which saw both the creation of the modern NBA and the collapse of the New York Rens. Basketball was now an organized professional sport, and there was no room for the antics of "basketeering comedians".
Fast Forward
It is 15 February 2018, a cool Thursday evening in Oakland, California, and the Washington Generals are losing again. In front of a thousands-strong crowd, Cherelle "Torch" George (a GWR title holder) kneeslides past two players in the Generals' green kits before tossing the ball up into the hands of one of her teammates. The Globetrotters move forward in a dizzyingly fast series of lateral passes before the ball goes to Donte "Hammer" Harrison (a four-time GWR title holder) who dunks. The crowd cheers as he does a backflip off the rim.
For all their modern glitz and glamour, the Harlem Globetrotters are in some ways a sort of living fossil – the last surviving barnstormers. The crowd at the Oakland Arena have come to watch a thoroughly modern spectacle, but the bones of it, the mixture of basketball, music and comedy would be recognizable to someone from the 1930s who saw the Globetrotters at a YMCA in Sheboygan or a dance hall in Gary, Indiana.
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