Basketball | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

“In basketball’s storied history, there may be no single organization more synonymous with the game than the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters.” (Basketball Hall of Fame)

The Harlem Globetrotters began in 1926 under the banner of the South Side’s Giles Post of the American Legion and then became known as the Savoy Big Five after Chicago’s Bronzeville’s Savoy Ballroom hired the team to play as pre-dance entertainment. Most of the players were from Wendell Phillips High School in Chicago’s South Side.

They started touring small farm towns in the Midwestern US. For Midwest audiences, the game of basketball was still novel and, from early on, this team brought an entertaining style of play to the sport. (History)

Seizing on a golden opportunity, sports promoter Abe Saperstein purchased the team and became the manager and coach. Saperstein, a short-statured Jewish man from Chicago’s North Side, even pitched in as a player from time to time when a team member was ill or injured.

At a time when only whites were allowed to play on professional basketball teams, Saperstein decided to promote his new team’s racial makeup by naming them after Harlem, the famous African American neighborhood of New York City.

On January 7, 1927, the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team traveled 48 miles west from Chicago to play their first game in Hinckley, Illinois. (History)

Before they became known for their on-court antics, the Globetrotters were highly competitive in professional basketball and introduced a flashy, schoolyard style of play. They popularized the slam dunk, the fast break, emphasized the forward and point guard positions, and the figure-eight weave.

The Globetrotters won 101 out of 117 games that first season and introduced many Midwestern audiences to a game they had not seen played before.

By 1936, they had played more than 1,000 games and appeared in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, Washington and North and South Dakota. (The Globetrotters didn’t actually play a game in Harlem until the late 1960s.) (History)

“The world-famous Harlem Globetrotters were the first professionals to play in Hawaii. Coach Abe Saperstein’s team made their debut at Honolulu’s Civic Auditorium in April of 1946 against the Coca-Cola Athletic Club. The Cokes were no match for the Trotters …”

“Island players gained revenge the following year when [the] Hawaii All-Stars, led by the scoring of Red Rocha, broke the Globetrotters’ 128-game winning streak with a 44-41 win at the Civic.” (Ephraim ‘Red’ Rocha, a graduate of Hilo High, was Hawaii’s first player to play in the National Basketball Association.) (Cisco, Hawai‘i Sports)

Then, “Coach Art Kim and his Honolulu Surfriders will open their ninth annual basketball tour with the famed Harlem Globetrotters October 28, at Des Moines, Iowa.”

“The Surfriders, who will be publicized as the Hawaii 50th Staters this year, will play a 130-game schedule in most of the major cities on the Mainland and also in Canada during the next five-and-a-half months.” (SB, Oct 11, 1958)

“America’s sporting scene once more is being graced by the colorful Honolulu Surfriders basketball team and its accompanying troupe of hula dancers and entertainers, all scheduled to be part of the big show at Greenwood YMCA. … They are part of the 4-team show featuring the Globe Trotters.”

“These annual tours of the islanders have come to be looked forward to by mainlanders, who find in the visitors from the Paradise of the Pacific a refreshing sports tonic. The add considerably to every program, they grace with stylish basketball playing, interesting appearance and the enchanting presentation of the entertainers.”

“Hawaiian teams have been coming over to the mainland for some years now … Again at the helm is coach and manager Art Kim, veteran mentor formerly cage coach at the University of Hawaii, who has brought over the last half dozen or so teams from the islands. …”

“They come from various islands of the Hawaiian group and for a veritable all-star team of the best players.” (Index-Journal, South Carolina, Feb 22, 1954)

“Coach Kim said last night that the Surfriders will be playing against fabulous Wilt (The Stilt) Chamberlain, the Kansas Jayhawk All-American who has left school to headline the Harlem Globetrotters.” (SB, Oct 11, 1958)

“The 7-foot Chamberlain, twice an All-America at the University of Kansas, quit school as a junior to turn pro for Abe Saperatein’s Globetrotters. He made his first appearance as a pro in this area Thursday night and scored 30 points as the Globetrotters defeated the Hawaii 50th Staters 69-59.” (Herald-Palladium, Michigan, Oct 31, 1958)

The Harlem Globetrotters have historically used various designated opponents that toured with them to stage their exhibition games. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the “Hawaii 50th Staters” made the tour; they became the New York Nationals, and the Washington Generals. (Association for Professional Basketball Research)

Over the years, the team losing to the Globetrotters was called the Boston Shamrocks, the New Jersey Reds, the Atlantic City Gulls, the New York Nationals, International Elite, and Global Select.

None of these were real teams: Just costumes the Generals wore to give the appearance that they were playing a slew of opponents rather than just the same retreads. (SB Nation)

“A very interesting game is indulged in during an intermission, which is taken for rest and amusement combined. It is basket ball. A small wire basket is fastened to the wall on either end, about twelve feet from the floor.”

“Sides are chosen and each attempt to land a small rubber ball in the goal of the other team. The tactics involved in football are used with the exception that there is no kicking of the ball or tackling of players.” (Hawaiian Star, December 3, 1896)

“In the winter of 1891, Luther Gulick, the head of the physical education department at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, persuaded a young instructor named James Naismith to create an indoor game that could be played during the off-season.” (Basketball Hall of Fame)

Gulick’s first intention was to bring outdoor games indoors, namely, soccer and lacrosse. These games proved too physical and cumbersome.

At his wits’ end, Naismith recalled a childhood game, that he had referred to as “Duck on a Rock”, that required players to use finesse and accuracy to become successful. (SONAHR)

Gulick and Naismith developed the game we now call Basketball. The first formal game was played on December 29, 1891.

That day, 18 men at the School for Christian Workers (later the International YMCA Training School, now Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts played a match in the Armory Street court: 9-versus-9, using a soccer ball and two peach baskets. (SONAHR)

“A major force in the early development of the sport, Gulick oversaw Naismith’s creation of the game, led basketball’s move to the national and international level, and in 1895 became the chairman of the Basketball Rules Organization.”

“Among his other achievements, Gulick developed the YMCA triangle symbol (signifying the YMCA’s physical, emotional, and intellectual pursuits that still remain today), served on the Olympic Committee for the London Games in 1908 …”

“… and is credited with forming such notable youth organizations as the Public School Athletic Leagues (PSAL) in New York, the Boy Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls.” (Basketball Hall of Fame)

Luther Halsey Gulick was born on December 4, 1865 at Honolulu, Hawai‘i, the fifth of seven children of Congregationalist missionaries, Luther Halsey Gulick and Louisa Lewis Gulick.

Young Luther spent the first fifteen years of his life abroad in Hawai‘i, Spain, Italy and Japan. Upon return to the US in 1880, he enrolled in the preparatory department of Oberlin College until 1882.

Luther was enrolled in Hanover High School in Hanover, New Hampshire, from 1882 to 1883. In 1884, he returned to Oberlin, where he studied physical education.

However, plagued throughout his life with heart problems and chronic headaches, Gulick had to leave Oberlin due to illness in 1885. He resumed his education the same year, however, when he joined the Sargent School of Physical Training, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The following year, Gulick became a student at the Medical College at the City University of New York where he was awarded the MD in 1889. He married Charlotte Emily Vetter on August 30, 1887. Together they had six children, Louise, Frances, Charlotte, Katharine, Luther, and John Halsey.

Throughout his life and career, Luther Halsey Gulick was greatly interested in physical education and hygiene. He also kept himself intensely busy.

While pursuing his medical degree between 1886 and 1889, he began his career as the physical director of the Jackson, Michigan YMCA in 1886.

In 1887, Gulick became head of the gymnasium department of the Young Men’s Christian Education’s Springfield Training School. It was there, in 1891, that the game of basketball was created. (Winter)

“He was recognized as an authority upon physical training in the public schools and the author of many books on this subject. A series of lectures at the St Louis Exposition in 1904 won him international recognition as an expert in such matters.”

“He was Chairman of the international Committee on Physical Recreation of the War Work Council of the YMCA until he had to give it up on account pf his health.” (NYTimes)

Luther’s sibling Edward Leeds Gulick and his wife Harriet Marie Gulick settled in Vermont and started the “Aloha Camp” there in 1905.

Fifteen years before women were allowed to vote, when floor length skirts and lace up boots were mandatory for playing any sport; when popular conduct books for girls encouraged a “retiring delicacy” …

… and declared that “one of the most valuable things you can learn is how to become a good housewife” – Harriet and Edward Gulick created a world in which every girl could discover her most adventurous self.

Aloha Camp afforded young women the knowledge, skills and freedom to explore wild nature on foot and on horseback, by skiff and by canoe; to kindle campfires in the woods and cook meals in the open air; to pitch tents over rough ground and sleep out of doors under the stars.

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