Duquesne honors Chuck Cooper, among first blacks in NBA, by staging inaugural Chuck Cooper Classic, a hoops doubleheader featuring HBCU teams. How cool is that?
Henry “Hank” DeZonie, who was a star basketball player with the Harlem Yankees, New York Renaissance, Dayton Rens of the National Basketball League, and Tri-Cities Blackhawks of the National Basketball Association, died January 2, 2009, at Lenox Hill Hospital in Harlem. He would have been 87 years old yesterday.
Isaacs’ biggest contributions came well after his playing days ended. For decades, he mentored youth in the South Bronx at the Madison Square Boys and Girls Club, the kids not aware at all (usually, until they saw him on TV) that the still-fit elderly man was a trailblazer and a vocal critic of the conditions he and his teammates had to endure, on and off the court. Future NBA legends like Tiny Archibald came through the Madison Square Club as kids, shaped by Isaacs’ big voice and reservoir of stories.
Today is the anniversary of the first black players to play in the N.B.A. From the Chester (Pa.) Times, on October 20, 1950:
Several Negro basketball stars will be members of the teams in the National Basketball Association for the first time this winter. Nat (Sweetwater) Clifton of the Harlem Globetrotters, and Chuck Cooper, Duquesne great last year, the most prominent. Clifton is with the New York Knicks and Cooper with the Boston Celtics. Others include Johnny Rucker, New York schoolboy, with the Knicks; Rabbit Walthour, of the Harlem Yanks, with the Celtics; Bucky Hatchett, of Rutgers, with Baltimore; and Harold Hunter, North Carolina College, and Earl Lloyd, West Virginia State, with the Washington Caps.
Earl Lloyd.
If you’re a basketball aficionado, you likely have heard of Clifton, Cooper, and Lloyd. And, possibly Hunter. But you may be surprised by the other names on this list: Rucker, Walthour, and Hatchett. You may also be surprised that Hank DeZonie isn’t mentioned in the Chester TimesRead the rest of this entry »
Western Pennsylvania Politics People here are honest, hard working, no-nonsense folks. In order of priority they love the Steelers and football first, then everything else. Money and labor issues are big. Racial issues matter, but they aren’t as important as Read the rest of this entry »
Adrian Dantley finally got elected into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
He’ll be enshrined on Friday in a ceremony in Springfield, Massachusetts, along with several other players, coaches, and contributors Read the rest of this entry »
The roots of the sport (especially among black folks) trace back to the Hemenway Gymnasium on the campus of Harvard University, and a guy named Dudley Allen Sargent. I’d known about it but never seen the Hemenway Gym until I stumbled upon it this week while driving by on the way to Boston Garden. I couldn’t resist going inside to look around. It’s a modernized 4-story structure inside a vintage shell. “Is this the old Hemenway Gymnasium?,” I asked. “Yes, but they’ve renovated it and there’s nothing left,” said the staffer. “But, isn’t there anything historical remaining?,” I asked. “Well, the only thing left is the original basketball court,” she said, apologetically. “Oh, really?,” I asked. “Can I see it?” Isn’t persistence great? Sargent was one of the earliest advocates of of the link between “bodily vigor” (that is, athletic competition) and Christian virtues. In the mid-1800s this was known as ‘Muscular Christianity.’ It was a forerunner of the physical fitness movement. Sargent’s way of thinking:
Some of the specific mental and physical qualities which are developed by athletics are increased powers of attention, will, concentration, accuracy, alertness, quickness of perception, perseverance, reason, judgment, forbearance, patience, obedience, self-control, loyalty to leaders, self-denial, submergence of self, grace, poise, suppleness, courage, strength and endurance. These qualities are as valuable to women as to men.
The Black Fives Blog
Earl Lloyd.
John Isaacs.
Hemenway Gymnasium today.
