Not many people know that the Harlem Globetrotters — arguably the most famous basketball team in the world — was founded by a 5'3″ Jewish immigrant from a London slum named Abe Saperstein. He might have been small in stature and an unlikely face of the franchise, but Saperstein's story is about to get a larger-than-life closeup thanks to an exceptional new biography by brothers Mark and Matthew Jacob.
The co-authors spoke to ClutchPoints about their book, Globetrotter: How Abe Saperstein Shook Up the World of Sports.
If a small, pudgy Jewish guy leading a famously all-Black basketball team in a Model T car on a barnstorming tour through the Midwest during a time of rampant racism and antisemitism strikes you as a head-scratching visual, you're not alone.
Many of the towns Saperstein and the Globetrotters visited in their early days in the 1930s greeted them with at least a degree of prejudice.
But somehow Abe and his Globetrotters team persevered, and grew to have an outsized influence on the global phenomenon of basketball, right up to the modern NBA. As Mark Jacob noted, Saperstein's tale is “a triumph of confidence and audacity.”
Even many hardcore basketball buffs didn't know much about Saperstein to this point — which helps explain why this is the first full-length biography of the man.
As for why it took so long to tell the life story of the founder of a franchise that's nearly a century old, well, like Saperstein himself, it's complicated.
As Matthew Jacob explains, Saperstein always wanted control of his team and his story, and he was constantly on the move touring around the world — making matters difficult for any would-be biographer.
Saperstein also was prone to embellishment at times (particularly in Globetrotters marketing materials), which made crafting a 100% true personal story a tall task.
He also evoked very polarizing opinions from his players.
One Harlem Globetrotters star, Connie Hawkins, was particularly critical of Saperstein in a 1970s book. But another former player, Mannie Jackson — who went on to be the only Black owner of the Globetrotters — spoke reverentially about Saperstein in an interview for the book and in the pages of its foreword.
One particularly famous quote about Saperstein came from former Globetrotters star Meadowlark Lemon, who admitted, “None of us really liked [Abe], but for some reason we loved him.”
The Jacob brothers attributed the conflicting viewpoints to the volatile times in which Saperstein lived.
As Mark elaborated, “His image morphed in American culture. In the 1940s, '50s, early '60s he would have been considered kind of a social justice warrior, showing the talent of Black people in America. And then the Civil Rights Movement comes and Black people don't want to be clowns on a basketball court, they want to be lawyers and doctors and college professors and members of Congress.”
While some saw Saperstein's aim as bringing laughter and joy to the masses, others felt the performances were minstrel shows for a new era.
Another former Globetrotter, Bobby Hunter, may have described Saperstein best: “Abe was about six different kinds of a–hole, but racist wasn't one of them.”
Today, with the benefit of hindsight, the emerging consensus on Saperstein's legacy seems to be that he had a profound influence on basketball and its rise in global popularity — and that, as a person, though he was a tough, demanding boss, he was overall a positive force for change.
Abe Saperstein's rise
Saperstein moved with his family from London to Chicago's North Side when he was five years old. He was one of nine siblings in a dirt poor family. Growing up (and getting evicted multiple times) taught Abe about life on the move. The Ravenswood area he called home was known for being a German and Irish neighborhood, with hardly any Jewish families, which helped Abe learn to get along with people of all different ethnicities.
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Saperstein loved baseball and basketball, but his diminutive frame limited his athletic ability. An early job Abe had working for a local Chicago park facility landed him his first coaching job — and friendships with a number of prominent local Black athletes.
One of those athletes was a highly regarded spitball pitcher from baseball's Negro Leagues named Walter Ball. Ball wanted a white sports promoter to set up a tour for the team to gain the trust of “white folks in small towns.” Saperstein got the gig and, as detailed in Globetrotter, “he did a good enough job that it appeared to be his ‘in' for Black sports promotion.”
But Matthew Jacob is quick to point out that there was more to Saperstein's appeal than simply being white and a sports fan. Local Black teams could see “this guy had the ability to enthuse and arouse and excite sports operators and arena owners and sports writers — and it had real value.”
This led Saperstein down a path to running a Black basketball team that evolved into the Harlem Globetrotters. Though from Chicago, Abe wanted “Harlem” in the name to signal that the team was Black, in hopes of attracting a friendly crowd.
Interestingly, the comedic brand of basketball and entertainment that the Globetrotters perform was part of the team's DNA even from its earliest days. This was largely a remnant of the vaudeville days of entertainment before motion pictures and television emerged. It was also a savvy part of Saperstein's game plan to leave crowds laughing and full of joy — even when his far-superior team was whomping the local team.
Abe Saperstein's influence on the modern NBA
Beyond the show the Globetrotters put on for fans, not many people know about the outsized influence Saperstein and his squad had on the version of the NBA we watch today.
He is the pioneer of the 3-point shot. Steph Curry might never have become Steph Curry without the Harlem Globetrotters and Abe Saperstein.
And his visionary sports skills weren't limited to the hardwood. He was instrumental in encouraging MLB teams to adopt night games at a time when the notion was very controversial. He was also clamoring for ways to speed up a baseball game decades before the pitch clock was finally unveiled in 2023.
These contributions were nothing compared to Saperstein's greater efforts to keep the Negro Leagues alive when it was struggling financially. In addition, Abe was responsible for ultimately getting the greatest pitcher of his day, Satchel Paige, his long-overdue shot in the big leagues.
The State Department even viewed Saperstein and his team as worldwide ambassadors of American goodwill during the Cold War.
“People don't understand — and we didn't when we started doing research for the book — how important Abe Saperstein is to the development of sports in America,” Mark Jacob laments.
Now Abe Saperstein is finally getting the praise he deserves, and the Harlem Globetrotters' complex origin story is explored, in Mark and Matthew Jacob's Globetrotter.