GLOBETROTTER

Abe Saperstein changed the face of American sport, says this account.

It might be hard to believe now, but there was a time when basketball was a somewhat marginal sport. A key figure in taking it to popular, professional status was Abe Saperstein, best remembered as the owner and promoter of the Harlem Globetrotters team. The Jacob brothers, both experienced sportswriters, set out to tell his story, admitting that the task was made difficult by Saperstein’s tendency to embellish, exaggerate, and invent. In fact, it is not even clear when the team was founded, although it was sometime in the late 1920s (and the team was from Chicago, not New York). Saperstein, the son of Jewish immigrants, saw a wealth of talent in the Black community and took his team on a series of grueling cross-country tours, including to the segregated South. It was tough going, but the team, combined with Saperstein’s talent for marketing, slowly climbed to the championship level. When the Trotters started doing entertaining tricks at halftime, the spectators loved it. The show became a trademark, and Saperstein developed tactics that turned the game into a dynamic, crowd-pleasing spectacle. He was a tough and often paternalistic boss—and sometimes criticized for playing up Black minstrel stereotypes—but when Saperstein died in 1966, he left a legacy of breaking down racial barriers and changing the nature of the game.

The Jacob brothers provide a fast-paced narrative of an underappreciated game changer.