On December 19, 1948, the Harlem Rens made history by replacing the Detroit Vagabond Kings of the National Basketball League and debuting as the new Dayton Rens. But, was it a raw deal?
Dayton Rens, 1948.
Was this symbol of racial progress a bad move for Bob Douglas and his New York Rens? Did it lead to their imminent demise? And, what can we learn from this today?
On December 19, 1948, the Rens made history by replacing the Detroit Vagabond Kings of the National Basketball League and debuting as the new Dayton Rens.
The game took place at the Dayton Coliseum, making the Rens the first all-black basketball team to play in a professional league.
Turns out it wasn’t such a good deal. Here’s why.
The Vagabond Kings were replaced because they were financially troubled and, well, they sucked.
The league not only moved the franchise from Detroit to Dayton (where the Rens previously had drawn big crowds) but also forced the Rens to inherit the Kings’ won-lost record in the standings.
So, before playing a single game the Rens were in last place with a 2-17 record. Having an outside shot at the playoffs would have meant winning every single remaining game (40 total).
Wasn’t it really just a royal pimping of the “famous Negro team?”
For one thing, Dayton’s basketball fans didn’t support the team.
Team owner Douglas recognized all of this, so he often split his squad and continued touring as the New York Rens with one half, while the other half played as the Dayton franchise.
The move by the Rens made headlines.
This strategy had regrettable results, with the Rens winning only 14 or the remaining games.
But the N.B.L. needed the Rens. They were failing as a league. Their best team, the 1947-48 N.B.L. champion Minneapolis Lakers, had jumped to a competing league, the Basketball Association of America. So did the Fort Wayne Pistons, Rochester Royals, and Indianapolis Kautskys.
The N.B.L.’s Eastern Division was down to just 3 teams. Balance was needed. And money. The Rens name was popular throughout the Midwest, so the league invited them “in”.
The 1948-49 season would be the N.B.L.’s last.
But the B.A.A. was also collapsing. And they were pimping the Rens as well.
According to historian Susan Rayl, “with the Rens, B.A.A. doubleheaders drew 7,000, but without the Rens, they barely drew 2,000″
“The lily-white B.A.A. will gladly use the Globetrotters or the Rens to draw in the crowds, but draws a rigid line on Negro players or Negro teams playing in the league,” complained the People’s Voice, according to Rayl.
The 1948-49 season would be the B.A.A.’s last one too.
That’s because the two leagues agreed to merge, forming National Basketball Association.
In the merger talks the N.B.L. pushed it’s weight around, insisting “only on a merger, not any other type of agreement.” But when it came to insisting on which of its teams would be included in the merger, the N.B.L. chose only 8 of its 9 teams.
Care to guess which one was left out?
To justify their omission, the N.B.L. simply voided the franchise agreement it had with the Rens, citing their last place finish.
For his Dayton Rens, Robert “Bob” Douglas had a fantastic lineup that included future Hall of Fame member William “Pop” Gates, future N.B.A. player Hank DeZonie, “Duke” Cumberland, William “Dolly” King, and George Crowe.
This makes me wonder … what if Douglas had saved his best lineups for N.B.L. games?
The Rens had won 88 straight games once before as an independent team, why not at least give your best try to 40 straight in the N.B.L.?
Instead, the Syracuse Nationals made the Eastern Division playoffs with just 40 wins.
Had the Rens been there, maybe the N.B.L. wouldn’t have had any excuses. Then, in the merger, the Rens could have joined the N.B.A.
Wow!
Except for one minor detail.
Douglas and everyone else knew that racism had already neutered the B.A.A. into turning down the Rens during the previous season, despite pleas from future Hall of Fame member Joe Lapchick, then the head coach of the New York Knickerbockers.
Douglas was at the meeting and was asked to leave the room for the owners’ vote.
He was reportedly crushed by the decision.
Was this just too much of an uphill struggle?
Apparently so. Because meanwhile, Douglas didn’t want his Rens to clown like the Globetrotters, following the wishes of Abe Saperstein, their owner. But the Globetrotters were succeeding financially with this approach and Saperstein was already in bed with the B.A.A. and N.B.L. owners.
The best black players were jumping to the ‘Trotters. And Douglas couldn’t compete with their salaries. Saperstein had back room agreements with those same owners blocking the Rens from booking big capacity arenas they controlled.
So that’s how it went down.
After masquerading as the Dayton Rens for a failed season, Douglas retired from pro basketball ownership.
And the real New York Renaissance faded away into history.
Should Douglas have gone with the tide and created a clowning team too? Could he have fought the tide of racism? Was it racism, or just the profit motive? What did this say about collective African American economic strength?
How is the situation the same, or different, today?
It’s puzzling as to why the 1949 Rens went 14-26 against the NBL field. They shouldn’t've felt like fish out of water in MidWestern Dayton; a number of Rens like Big George Crowe, Lenny Ford, & Wee Willie Smith were natives of Indiana, Michigan, & Ohio respectively. Perhaps they were worn thin professionally — the team split to make previous commitments from the barnstorming days — & financially — the players were never paid their final month’s salary.
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It was due to their split squad, otherwise we would agree because they had a killer lineup.
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Claude,
In your statement, “Was it racism, or just the profit motive?” My question is, “…or was it both?”
The exclusion of Bob Douglass from the room while the other owners cast their votes, which excluded the only Black professional basketball team from the league seems racist to me. And, when looking at the lucrative business of owning a professional sports franchise in terms of ticket sales, media revenue, merchandising, etc. How could it not be about economics.
We all applauded when Jackie Robinson shattered the color barrier in baseball. However, if we look at what that meant to the Negro Baseball League, it was beginning of the end. In the 1950′s, with the advent of television, professional sports began to become cash cows for the owners of these teams. The Negro Baseball league folded after the 1955 season. Leaving all ownership of professional sports teams in the hands of white owners.
The old Negro Baseball League was a economic girdle to the black communities, in that it infused dollars into the black communities around the country. The problem with integration in America is that old standing black institutions (The Negro Baseball League included), was that blacks stopped supporting them. When blacks were no longer restricted to living in all black communities and were able to buy into communities that had previously “whites only”, look at the decay that then followed.
This was not only the case in sports and real estate, but all black institutions were effected. Everything from businesses, to churches, to colleges, and all black segregated institutions started to decline. Once those who could afford to move into white communities did so, Only those who could not afford to move were left behind. Is it any wonder that inner cities in America fell into decay?
Maybe it is a case of not knowing what you have until you lose it. Today, many of those formerly black inter city communities are the trendy places to move into from the outer limits of the suburbs. Look at Harlem today. Look at the U Street corridor in Washington, DC. Today, most blacks cannot afford to move back into these communities where it would have been rare to even see whites a decade ago.
Don’t get me wrong. Integration opened a lot of doors for blacks to work, but black ownership of institutions has declined since integration. At least per capita. And, in capitalistic society, ownership not only has it’s privilege. It is the privilege.
With ownership comes control. Control of ones destiny. Control of ones earning power and potential. Everyday, blacks own less and less. And because of that, they are less and less in control of their day to day lives.
Integration started a trend of decline for African Americans. One that must be recognized and reversed. And with the price of everything going higher and higher, reversing the trend is getting harder and harder.
I would wish that those of us who are making the big bucks, such as athletes and musicians and the like, would stop buying “Bling Bling” and starting buying land and buildings and starting businesses that will help to employ the masses that need to earn a living, so they can survive in these inflationary times. That is why I really admire Magic Johnson.
I wish more athletes, who are earning the multi-million dollar contracts would somehow grow a conscience, and give back in ways that would help to rebuild and reverse the trends that have torn down the communities where they came from.
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Edwin Henderson says black ownership of institutions has declined per capita since integration. We should add all per-capita ownership, black as well as white, of institutions has declined since integration. Not so long ago America was a land whose population was 1/3 farm families. Rural folk, white as well as black, used to hoop it up in the cold winters!
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Keith:
The great Len Ford was an East Coast boy, he’s a product of the strong football tradition at DC’s Armstrong Vocational H.S.
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BCB:
Thanks for the info. Dr Rayl’s dissertation/thesis/bound volume labels Lenny Ford from Michigan. Wonder where she got that from — college ball? At any rate, the point remains that the Dayton Rens weren’t composed entirely of New Yorkers playing in shock over MidWestern racism.
Claude’s mentioned a “split squad” as if the Dayton Rens went 14-26 at half-strength. I don’t have my Neft & Cohen handy, but thought the squad was split only on a few occasions to honor previous commitments for exhibition games. How many exhibition games did the NY/Dayton Rens play after they took on the NBL commitment?
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its too bad these were the best players during that era of basketball-also i think len ford played football if it is the same person..for the cleveland browns..
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I wonder if Mr.Crowe is any relations to Coach Crowe of Indianapolis Attucks, who coached Oscar Robertson.
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[...] in 1946) and the National Basketball League (formed in 1937) merged most of their existing teams (except the all-black New York Rens) into a new league they called the National Basketball [...]
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Len Ford is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and played college football at Michigan, but did not play basketball there.
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Hey Rod, that was his brother, Ray. To follow that further, please see this new blog post from today:
Happy Birthday To George Crowe, Last Survivor Of Legendary Harlem Rens Basketball Team
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