February 19, 1948: A game for the unofficial world championship of basketball is played. It lives up to the hype.
It was the opener of a doubleheader at the Chicago Stadium. In the nightcap, the host Chicago Stags, Finalists in the Basketball Association of America the season before, beat the New York Knicks, 82-74. But the opener turned out to have big implications for the future of basketball.
Abe Saperstein was the owner and head coach of the Harlem Globetrotters, the all-black traveling team (who, despite their name identifying them as all-black, were actually based in Chicago) known for their trick plays, but also for being superb when playing it straight. The dichotomy of these tall black men being led by a short white Jewish man caught people's fancy, but it worked. Going into the game in question, the 'Trotters, led by Reece "Goose" Tatum and dribbling wizard Marques Haynes, had won 102 straight games.
Max Winter was the general manager and part-owner of the Minneapolis Lakers of the Midwest-based National Basketball League. He and the other owners had bought the Detroit Gems, who consisted of superstar center George Mikan and 11 slow, short white guys. Winter moved the team, hired John Kundla to coach them, and turned them into the best team in the NBL. Later, Winter would become the founding owner of the NFL's Minnesota Vikings.
Saperstein and Winter were friends, and each one believed he had the best basketball team in the world. But the idea of the teams playing together was absurd. Being all-black, the 'Trotters were not eligible for membership in the NBL, or in the Northeast-based BAA. The BAA had not yet admitted a black player. The NBL had admitted 4 of them, but quietly phased them out after a fight in a game in Syracuse, New York.
But 10 months before this game, what would later be called Major League Baseball ended a 63-year ban on black players, when Jackie Robinson played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. And 7 months before that, Kenny Washington and Woody Strode of the Los Angeles Rams ended the 12-year ban on black players in the NFL. At the same time as that, Marion Motley and Bill Willis of the Cleveland Browns made sure that the All-America Football Conference would be integrated from the start. Professional basketball was going to be re-integrated.
All it needed was a spark. And that spark would be the game between the Lakers and the Globies. The Chicago Stadium, the largest arena in the Midwest. Nearly 18,000 fans filed in, twice as many as had yet attended a Stags game there -- or a DePaul University game there.
The Lakers having a noticeable height advantage, and rode that to an early 9-2 lead, and led 32-23 at the half. By this point, Mikan had scored 18 points, Tatum none. Saperstein changed tactics, ordering that Mikan be double-covered, and to wear the Lakers out with the fast break every time they got the ball.
It worked: Mikan only scored 6 points in the 2nd half, while the Trotters tied the game in the 3rd quarter. Then it stopped working: Both Tatum and Pressley fouled out from guarding Mikan too closely. With a minute and a half left, Haynes got the ball, and ran out the clock, since there was no shot clock at the time. As the game clock inched toward zero, Haynes passed to Elmer Robinson, who nailed the buzzer-beater.
Final score: Globetrotters 61, Lakers 59. The Trotters had proven their point. The Lakers went on to win the 1948 NBL title, which made the Trotters' point all the more. The Lakers were admitted to the BAA, and won the title there in 1949. The BAA then took on some of the NBL's teams in a semi-merger, and became the National Basketball Association. The Lakers won the title again in 1950, 1952, 1953 and 1954 -- 6 league titles in 7 seasons.
But the Globetrotters were still on their level. In 1949, the Lakers and Globetrotters met for a rematch, with the Globetrotters again winning, this time 49–45. The teams met 6 more times after that, with the Lakers winning each of those games.
At the start of the 1950 season, 3 black players came into the NBA. The way things worked out, Chuck Cooper of the Boston Celtics was the 1st to be drafted, ex-Globetrotter Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton of the Knicks was the 1st to be signed, and Earl Lloyd of the Washington Capitols was the 1st to get into a game, before the Celtics or the Knicks could play their season opener.
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February 19, 1948 was a Thursday. Tommy Iommi, the lefthanded guitarist for the band Black Sabbath, whose work-related finger injury cause him to, some say, invent heavy metal, was born on this day.
Baseball and football were out of season. There were 4 games played in the Basketball Association of America, the league that would become the NBA for the 1949-50 season. In addition to the Stags' win over the Knicks:
* The Baltimore Bullets beat the Boston Celtics, 79-76 in overtime at the Boston Garden.
* The Philadelphia Warriors, defending BAA Champions, beat the Washington Capitols, 84-76 at the Philadelphia Arena. The Bullets would dethrone the Warriors as Champions.
* And the St. Louis Bombers beat the Providence Steamrollers, 78-69 at the St. Louis Arena.
There was 1 game in the NHL: The Montreal Canadiens beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
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