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1. The Harlem Globetrotters are from Chicago
Despite the name of the team, the team was born 800 miles west of Harlem on the south side of Chicago.
In 1926, a group of former basketball players from Chicago’s Wendell Phillips High School got together to play on the basketball team Giles Post American Legion that swept across the Midwest.
The following year, the team became known as Savoy Big Five while playing home games as pre-dance entertainment at Chicago’s newly opened Savoy Ballroom.
After a salary dispute, several players left the Savoy Big Five at 1928 to form a new team known as Globe Trotters.
two. A white Jewish immigrant named the team after him.
Abe Saperstein from the North Side of Chicago became the manager of the newly formed Globe Trotters.
Saperstein, a master promoter, renamed the team the New York Harlem Globe Trotters in the belief that the name would make the team more attractive in Illinois and Iowa by giving the impression that they had traveled a long way to be there.
The shortest member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, he also thought that attaching Harlem to the team name would help promote it as a basketball team totally black at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. It wasn’t until 1968 that the team played a game in Harlem.
3. The Harlem Globetrotters played basketball seriously in their early decades.
Although now known primarily for their on-court antics, the Globetrotters they played straight basketball games at first.
The team lost the national championship game in 1939 against another all-black team, the New York Renaissance, but defeated the Chicago Bruins to capture the prestigious World Professional Basketball Tournament the following year.
The Globetrotters did not begin to incorporate tricks with the ball and displays of dribbles in their games until the end of the decade of 1930.
In 1948, The Globetrotters shocked the basketball world by defeating the Minneapolis Lakers, champions of the National White Basketball League, forerunner of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The following year, they showed that it was no accident by beating the Lakers again.
4. The first African-American players in the NBA were the Harlem Globetrotters.
The Globetrotters’ victories over the Lakers demonstrated the talent of African-American basketball players at a time when the NBA, as opposed to professional baseball and football , had not yet been integrated.
That changed in May of 1958 when Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton of the Globetrotters became the first African-American player to sign a contract with an NBA team by signing a contract with the New York Knicks.
Earl Lloyd and Chuck Cooper, who also broke the color barrier in 1950, they also briefly played with the Globetrotters.
5. Wilt Chamberlain began his professional career with the team.
Chamberlain, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, signed a one year contract with the Globetrotters worth $ 50, after leaving the University of Kansas at 1958 after his junior year.
Chamberlain used to say that his year with the Globetrotters was the most fun of his career. He joined the team on a historic 1959 tour of the Soviet Union during which he grew closer hand of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. He was the first Harlem Globetrotter to have his number withdrawn.
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