Spinning the Globe (27 page)

There were two minutes left. Now, with the game on the line, the Lakers’ two stars responded. Pollard hit a bucket to make it a one point game, 59–58. The next time down the court, Mikan went up for one of his patented hook shots and Goose hacked him; the shot was good, which would have given the Lakers the lead, but referee Bill Downes ruled that Goose had fouled Mikan
before
the shot. Fortunately, the big man’s woes continued at the foul line, as he missed the free throw, and the Trotters’ fragile one-point lead still stood.

That was Goose’s fifth foul, however, so he and Pressley were
both out of the game, and now it was up to Sam Wheeler and Ted Strong to defend Mikan. Realizing they had a mismatch, the Lakers went right back to Mikan the next time they had the ball, and Wheeler had no choice but to foul him. This time, Mikan hit the free throw to tie the game.

Now there was a minute left. There was complete bedlam in the stadium, as fans for both teams were standing and screaming. The Trotters brought the ball up the court. Some of their fans began yelling “Freeze the ball!”—preferring to run out the clock and go to overtime rather than possibly missing a shot and giving the Lakers another chance to win. But with Goose and Babe Pressley already on the bench, the Trotters did not want to risk an overtime. They were going to play to win.

The clock ticked down to thirty seconds, then twenty-five, twenty, fifteen…

In wartime, they say the first casualty in any battle is the truth, as the fog of war obscures what really happened. Today, fifty-seven years after this momentous battle in Chicago Stadium, there are at least three contradictory accounts of what transpired in the last few seconds. Not surprisingly, as the game has grown in significance over the years, some of the participants have placed themselves at the center of the action, and others now remember it differently than they once did.

In a 1987 interview, for instance, Sam Wheeler, who is now deceased, claimed that he had rebounded a missed shot, then passed the ball to Ermer Robinson, who “took two little pumps and let it go.” Vertes Zeigler, who also played in the game, claims today that
he
snared the final rebound and passed the ball the Robinson, who “wound up and turned it loose.” Big George Mikan has given two different accounts of the final play in two separate autobiographies. Even Marques Haynes, whose memory has proven remarkably accurate in many instances, has recounted slightly different versions of the last seconds. Today, his best recollection is that the final play began with him inbounding the ball on an out-of-bounds play under the Trotters’ basket. “I passed it in to Wilbert King, and he passed it back to me,” he says, “I dribbled around [the key], and Robbie [Ermer Robinson] and I made eye contact. I was going toward him and he
was coming toward me, and I passed it to him, then set a fake screen on [ Jim Pollard], who was defending him. And Robbie, as soon as he got the ball—Wham!—he let it go.”

The only point that all accounts agree on is that the ball ended up in the hands of Ermer Robinson, the slender forward who was known as “Shaky” because of his nervous chain-smoking habit and morbid fear of airplanes. Robinson was a finesse player who disliked rough play under the boards, preferring to launch rainbow shots from outside. He had the purest outside shot of any Globetrotter since another skinny-legged shooter named Sonny Boswell, whom he slightly resembled.

Accounts differ about how far out Robinson was, but he was at least twenty feet, and perhaps as far as the NBA three-point line. He barely had time to set his feet and then let fly with a one-hand push shot—a transition between the traditional two-hand set and the new jump shot that was beginning to come into vogue. Abe Saperstein had never liked Robinson’s one-hander, as Abe was a traditionalist who wanted his players to shoot the two-hand set he had grown up with. But now, in the last second of the most important game in the Trotters’ history, it all came down to Robbie’s one-hand push.

Robinson shot the ball on an incredibly high arc; it was a rainmaker that was still in the air when the final gun sounded. As the reverberation echoed through the stadium, there was a sense that time was standing still, as if the moment had been frozen by a photo strobe. Seventeen thousand people watched, their mouths agape, as the ball slowly descended out of the spotlights, spinning on its axis, and slipped silently through the net.

Some Laker players and coaches thought the shot was no good, that Robinson had released it after the buzzer, but the referee raised his arms, signaling that it was good. The Trotters had won, 61–59.

For a brief moment, there was a hush in the arena, as if people could not really believe that the Globetrotters had won. Then, as the
Herald-American
described it, the place “went mildly insane.” People hugged complete strangers. The Trotters lifted Robinson onto their shoulders, carrying him off the court in triumph. “No story book game could have had any better finish,” the
Chicago Defender
reported.

Most basketball insiders were surprised by the outcome. “I was shocked, even though I knew the Trotters were a very good team,” says Ray Meyer. “I think the Lakers took them as a joke. Then they found out that they could play, and they took them serious [from then on].” The Lakers were stunned. “Our players couldn’t believe what had happened,” Max Winter later recalled. “They were devastated.”

In the Trotters’ locker room, there was jubilation and profound relief. The players hoisted a beaming Abe into the air, and he showed his delight with the win by handing out cash bonuses.
*
George Mikan showed his class by stopping by to congratulate the victors. “One hell of a game guys,” he said.

Most of the Trotters were going out to celebrate, but Marques Haynes was in such pain from his two horrendous falls that he went back to the Trotters’ rooming house and went to bed. The next morning, he could barely move and decided to go to the hospital, where X-rays confirmed that he had fractured the fourth lumbar vertebra. Amazingly, he had played the second half with a broken back. The doctors put him in a full body cast and he walked out of the hospital, but he was through for the season. He went home to Sand Springs, Oklahoma, to recuperate.

That night, the celebration continued until the wee hours on the South Side. The Trotters were the guests of honor at a party in the Persian Hotel, where they ate lobster and listened to Lionel Hampton and his band. Timuel Black, a respected educator and author from Chicago, was at the game that night and recalls the reaction in Bronzeville. “It was an event of great pleasure for those of us who had grown up on the South Side…to see this all-black team playing this all-white team and winning,” he says. “It was a great evening. We went back to our various bars or taverns and talked about it. It was more than just a victory of the Trotters; it was also a victory of the black community over the hostile white community. It was not as big, or as universal, as when Joe Louis defeated Max
Schmeling, but there was a feeling of elation that gave us a sense of achievement and pride.”

There had been other important games in the Globetrotters’ history, including the 1940 world championship and the first College All-Star Classic, but this victory over the Minneapolis Lakers eclipsed them all. The Trotters’ earlier triumphs had established them as a legitimate basketball team and had cracked open the doors to big arenas in big cities, but the 1948 victory over the Lakers pushed the Trotters onto the national stage and blew open the doors to the biggest arenas in the biggest cities in the land. From this point on, there would be no stopping them. The Harlem Globetrotters could legitimately claim to be the best team in the world.

Not surprisingly, some basketball experts believed that the Trotters’ win over the Lakers was a fluke—due either to the Lakers taking the Trotters too lightly or to poor officiating, or both. Even forty years later, in a 1987 interview, Lakers’ coach Johnny Kundla would still be complaining about the referees, who he claimed were Abe Saperstein’s employees and had favored the Trotters. “We should have won if we got any breaks at all in the officiating,” he said. “It really was unfair.” Yet his complaints about favoritism seem unfounded, as the refs had called nineteen fouls against the Trotters, versus only fifteen against the Lakers.

Almost as soon as the game ended, the Lakers started clamoring for a rematch. “Our players wanted a rematch as soon as possible,” said Max Winter. For their part, the Trotters were equally anxious to show the world that the win was legitimate. Very quickly, Abe and Winter agreed to a series of games (they would play a total of eight), both in Chicago and Minneapolis.

Still, the players and fans had to wait a year for the next game, which was scheduled for February 28, 1949, in Chicago Stadium. In the intervening year, the Trotters had improved themselves considerably, as Abe had signed Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton, an agile six-foot-seven former Chicago high school phenom who was one of the most coveted players in the country.

In the meantime, the Lakers had gone on to win the 1947–48 NBL championship, then bolted to the upstart BAA in 1949. They were on their way to winning that league’s championship as well (the two leagues would merge into the NBA by the 1949–50 season).

If the buildup to the first game was intense, the hype for the rematch was even more so. “The Trotters-Lakers game has again gripped the imagination of the entire sports world,” the
Pittsburgh Courier
proclaimed. “With the Trotters again sweeping everything before them in their jaunts here, there, and everywhere; and the Lakers apparently headed for professional league domination once more, it seems certain that the contest will decide for the second year in succession which is the greatest basketball team in the world.” Again, most sportswriters were picking the Lakers to win the rematch, even though their starting forwards, Jim Pollard and Don “Swede” Carlson, could not play because of sprained ankles.

Despite being played on a Monday night, the second game drew an even larger crowd than the first one, with 20,046 people filling Chicago Stadium to capacity. It was the second largest crowd in the stadium’s history, topped only by the 20,583 who had seen the Trotters play the College All-Star Classic in 1940. In another sign of the game’s importance, Movietone News was there with a film crew, documenting the game for its weekly newsreel. No matter which team won, millions of people in theaters around the country would be watching the highlights.

This time around, the Globetrotters had a completely different game plan, because of the addition of Sweetwater Clifton. They now had a man who could cover Mikan one-on-one, at least as much as anyone could handle him. Plus, they were much more familiar with Mikan, as he had played three games against them the previous year (when the Trotters made their third tour of Hawaii, Mikan had flown over and played for the Trotters’ opposition team, the New York Celtics, leading them to two wins out of three games he played).

The game began with Mikan controlling the opening tip to Lakers’ guard Jack Dwan, who pulled up and hit a long-range bomb to give the Lakers a 2–0 lead. Then, for the next few minutes, both
teams were ice-cold, missing badly from outside. The Trotters were particularly inept, repeatedly clanging set shots off the rim.

Goose had started off trying to cover Mikan, but then the big man banked in a hook and got another easy basket off a tap-in, so Clifton switched with Goose. The Trotters still weren’t hitting, however, and the Lakers led 8–1 after the first five minutes. The Globetrotters were even cold at the free throw line, missing nine of their first eleven attempts. On the defensive end, the strategy of fouling Mikan, which had worked so well in the first game, was backfiring; Mikan was red-hot all night from the line, hitting eleven of twelve free throws.

The Trotters finally came to life in the second period. Marques Haynes sank a long two-hander, then Clifton went right over the top of Mikan to steal a rebound, made a beautiful spin move, and dropped in a soft hook. At halftime, however, the Lakers still held a 24–18 lead.

At the beginning of the third quarter, Laker point guard Herm Schaefer hit a basket to extend the lead to 26–18. Then, without any warning, Marques Haynes exploded. He hit four consecutive shots to ignite a 12–0 run, and the Trotters took their first lead. After a Laker free throw, the Trotters went on another 6–0 run. Realizing that Mikan was tiring and getting back slowly on defense, the Trotters started fast-breaking every time they got a rebound, and netted several easy layups. In the third period, the Trotters outscored the Lakers 23–6, to take a 41–32 lead into the final quarter.

It was more of the same in the fourth quarter. Clifton was bottling up Mikan, the Trotters were snaring rebounds and breaking up the court, and Goose hit a sweeping hook in the lane that gave the Trotters a 12-point lead with six minutes to play.

Then something remarkable happened. Against the best white team in the country, the Harlem Globetrotters started putting on the show. The crowd went into a frenzy. In the early years, the show had developed as a way
not
to humiliate their opponents, but to hold down the score against outmanned opponents. Against the Lakers, however, it became a symbolic act of triumph. For a proud Lakers team, this was the ultimate humiliation. As their hometown paper,
the
Minneapolis Star,
described it: “Things got so bad for the Minneapolis Lakers here Monday night that old Globetrotter fans started hollering for ‘baseball.’”

Marques Haynes began the festivities. Holding the ball on the wing, he wound up like he was going to throw the ball cross court, then spun around in a complete circle and caught the ball behind him. The crowd roared. A moment later, he launched into his full-blown dribbling routine. First, while strutting around like a banty rooster, he dribbled the ball higher than his head, then ran in place, dribbling no higher than his shoelaces; then he raced a few paces to his right, slid down on one knee, actually crawled on his hands and knees, leaped up and ran three feet the other way, stopped, reversed direction, backed up, lurched forward, repeated that twice more, almost too quickly to see, then spun around in a circle and ran all the way across the court. At first, Laker guard Tony Jaros refused to take the bait, but when Marques went down on one knee, taunting him, Jaros couldn’t help himself: he came after the ball. Marques jumped back up and started double-clutching, going back and forth, changing directions every other step. A second Laker, Don Forman, drifted over to double-team him. Marques toyed with both players for a few more seconds, then reared up and passed the ball to a teammate.