Abe Saperstein and the Harlem Globetrotters
Basketball is, today, one of the world’s most popular sports. Michael Jordan, Glen Rice and Shaq are household names and, from their London Arena base, the Leopards are winning games and fans as one of the fastest growing teams in Britain. But 70 years ago the game was very different. It was American, it was small time – and it was white. The reason basketball evolved into the billion-dollar business of today was a young Jewish lad from Whitechapel with a big cigar and bigger ideas.
Abe Saperstein’s parents left Whitechapel in the early 1900s looking for a new life and fortune in the New World, taking their four-year-old boy with them. But it was Abe who was to make the fortune. In 1927 Abe was 24 and living in Chicago when he noticed the opportunity he’d been waiting for. In those days, black players weren’t allowed in the professional basketball leagues, they had to play in separate “junior” leagues. When Abe’s local black team, the Savoy Fives, broke up, he took them over. Abe’s idea was that the team wouldn’t play the small leagues, with their limited market, but go out on the road, play one-off exhibition matches followed by a challenge match against a local amateur white team. It was a winning formula – each match was a novelty that would pull big crowds, and the black-white clash added an extra edge in the often segregated American towns. The Harlem Globetrotters were on their way.
Of course they weren’t from Harlem, but that was the black centre of New York, and added to the image. The band travelled in a Stars and Stripes painted bus, they adopted the theme song Sweet Georgia Brown and, playing exhibition matches between their own two teams, they had plenty of opportunity to develop their jokey style and trick shots. The last part of the mix was a happy accident. During a game a player managed to set his vest on fire and, grabbing a bucket of water, he put it out. The crowd loved it, and Abe ensured clowning was worked into the act. By the 1960s the Globetrotters were literally that and were hugely popular all over the world. They went on to have two audiences with the Pope and visited the White House to be made “Ambassadors of Goodwill” by President Ford.
The Globetrotters were huge in Britain, filling Wembley again and again. And before his death in 1966, Abe returned to his native Whitechapel and, ever the showman, was photographed leaning on a Rolls Royce and toting his trademark Havana. The monster he had created rolled on without him – 250 shows a year at its peak, but the game had changed. By the late 1970s the pro leagues, no longer segregated thanks to Abe, were fast catching the traditional American sports of gridiron and baseball in popularity. TV was making the teams world famous and the biggest stars – thanks to Abe – were black. The Globetrotters had become a novelty act and no longer lured the best players. All the tricks they had pioneered were being outdone in the regular leagues, where stars like Michael Jordan would soon command salaries of 20million dollars a year.
They last visited London in 1991. It was a fitting tribute to Abe that their last game should be in the East End. – and they said goodbye to English basketball at the London Arena, soon to be home to the Leopards. The ‘Trotters day was over, but another chapter was just beginning.
Since this piece was written in 1997, the Globetrotters have been reborn! Visit the official website of the Harlem Globetrotters.