On the Shoulders of Giants by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Author:Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2007-03-19T04:00:00+00:00

JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN author of Brothers and Keepers

The First World Championship

of Basketball

On March 28, 1939, eight young black men from Harlem anxiously stood on the polished wooden floor of the Chicago Coliseum facing eight white men in the final championship game of the first-ever World Professional Basketball Tournament. Surrounding them was a sold-out crowd of three thousand raucous fans—most of them white, most of them shouting out the name of their favorites: the all-white Oshkosh All-Stars.

The black team, the New York Renaissance Big Five, known in Harlem as simply the Rens, tried to ignore the boisterous crowd while waiting nervously for the game to begin. After all, they had finished the season with a remarkable record of 112 wins against only 7 losses. So far in this tournament they had beaten two other all-white teams as well as their archrivals, the Harlem Globetrotters. But the Oshkosh All-Stars had an impressive record, too. And not only were they the National Basketball League’s Western Division Champions, but they were local Midwestern sons with the crowd enthusiastically behind them.

The stakes had never been higher for these young players. The winning team would receive $1,000—and be crowned the first-ever World Champions of Basketball. Even though 1939 was at the tail end of the Great Depression, $1,000 still wasn’t a huge sum, only about $13,000 in current money. Today’s NBA players make that much just for lacing up their endorsement shoes before a game. But these two teams couldn’t have been more determined to win if they’d been playing for $10 million. At stake was something far more precious than money; because this was the first ever basketball tournament that included both white and black teams, the winners would be the acknowledged basketball champions of the world.

For the Oshkosh All-Stars, a victory would be a fitting culmination for the team that had been perpetual bridesmaids: for the past three years they had been Western Division Champions in the racially segregated National Basketball League, but had yet to win a national title. If they were ever going to be national champions, it would be today, with the crowd solidly behind them. For the Renaissance Big Five, winning would be a vindication for sixteen years of capturing many Colored Basketball World Championships, but never being allowed to play against white teams in national championship games because no professional leagues wanted to see a black team as champions.

For the sixteen players awaiting the opening whistle, this game was the climax of a sports rivalry dating back several years. But for the enthusiastic crowd screaming and stomping from the stands, this game was a race rivalry dating back hundreds of years. Each side knew exactly whom they wanted to win. And, for most, their reasons had nothing to do with basketball.

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