Location: Harlem, New York City
Home Court: Manhattan Casino
Nickname: “The All Stars”
Colors: Team Red, Ivory, College Blue
Manager: Major A. Hart
The New York All Stars
®, an all-black basketball team of the 1910, paved the way for professionalism in the sport.
In 1910, playing basketball for pay was widely considered an unthinkable taboo among the game’s authorities as well as with the general public. Even well established white professional basketball leagues were criticized by the inventors of the game.
It was thought that basketball, which had been invented in the realm of Christianity by the YMCA, ought to be reserved exclusively for balancing one’s “mind, body, and spirit.” Such practices as “player jumping,” where a given player jumped to another team to stack their lineup for one game, were
severely criticized or sanctioned.
So when a black man named Major A. Hart left his position as coach, manager, and promoter of the St. Christopher Club, and took the team’s best players with him to form a new African American basketball team called the New York All Stars, the Negro press immediately suspected the “evils of professionalism” and the area’s local amateur clubs were outraged.
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