Our ranking of the most deserving Black Fives Era players and contributors who are not yet enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, below.

Note that John Isaacs has been a Hall of Fame Finalist twice, and that Cumberland Posey, Jr. is enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Players:

1. Clarence “Fats” Jenkins
   The team captain of the New York Rens for 25 years, Jenkins was unstoppable and played pro basketball spanning four decades (’10s, ’20s, ’30s, ’40s) culminating with the Rens title victory in the 1939 World Pro Basketball Championship, his final season with that team.
2. Cumberland Posey, Jr.
   Among sportswriters and his contemporaries, Posey was unanimously considered the best African American basketball player from 1910 to 1925, during which time he won five Colored Basketball World Championship titles including four straight with his Loendi Big Five team of Pittsburgh.
3. Ora Mae Washington
   The biggest star of the best black female basketball team of all time, the Tribune Girls of Philadelphia, which won 11 straight Colored Basketball World’s Championships in the 1930s and ’40s.
4. Hudson Oliver
   Four time winner of the Colored Basketball World Championship with three different teams, the Smart Set Athletic Club, the Washington 12 Streeters, and Howard University, universally considered the best black basketball player prior to the early 1910s.
5. John “Boy Wonder” Isaacs
   Star player and emotional leader of the New York Rens and Washington Bears, which won the 1939 and 1943 World Pro Basketball Tournaments, respectively.
6. Clarence”Puggy” Bell
   Most valuable player of the first World Pro Basketball Tournament, won by the New York Rens in 1939, his first of 9 seasons as the anchor for the Renaissance, taking over where “Fats” Jenkins had left off.

Contributors:

1. Edwin B. Henderson
   Introduced basketball to African Americans on a wide scale organized basis, and set up a structure in which the game could spread throughout the Mid-Atlantic, including the first black athletic conference, the Inter-scholastic Athletic Association.
2. Will Anthony Madden
   Four time winner of the Colored Basketball World’s Championship with two different teams (St. Christopher, Incorporators), introduced publicity and media relations as a promotional tool., in-arena marketing, merchandising, national promotion, and inter-city rivalries.
3. Cumberland Posey, Jr.
   Architect of black basketball in Pittsburgh, created and led four-time champion Loendi Big Five, introduced professionalism, barnstorming, the black-white rivalry model, naming rights, and sponsorship to black basketball.

A list like this is bound to cause debate, and we hope it does!

Jenkins.

Posey.

Washington.

Oliver.

Isaacs.

Bell.

Henderson.

Madden.