A few questions about the Harlem Globetrotters (exhibition basketball team):
I assume they have more than one “team” (e.g. they are scheduled for both Montreal and Orlando today). How many “teams” do they have? They have a roster of over 30 players - are they rotated between teams?
How about the opposition? Are they always the “Washington Generals” no matter which HG team they are facing? No mention of their roster on the HG web site.
There are females on the HG roster. Do they play with the men, or are there enough that they could put five women on the court at once? Likewise - does the opposition have female players?
Do they play year round? What is the average player’s schedule over a year?
Haven’t seen em in a while, so these aren’t perfect answers.
1 - 2 looks right. Assume it’s 2 distinct rosters, with occasional sub ins from a pool of swing players (kinda like how Broadway shows with two tours do it.)
2 - Yep. They used to play colleges in preseason exhibitions (and the Generals the rest of the time) but the NCAA seemed to think losing to guys who mostly practice trick shots and confetti pranks was a bad look and banned it 20 years ago.
3 - Broken up between the teams (The Generals also have one woman) and just sub in as normal.
4 - 400 a year. So 200 per tour? Lotta bus time.
The Washington Generals (the basketball team, not the NFL team) have for most of their history been an independent organization owned and created by Reid Klotz. The team was recently purchased by the Globetrotters.
When they were first organized, the Globetrotters would play against just about anybody who could field a team – high school, college, semi-pro, and the occasional pro team. They also played wherever they could; an empty swimming pool even stood in for a basketball court for one game.
I had a biography of the 'Trotters a long time ago.
This reminds me of an event over 10 years at the school I worked at. We had this huge assembly and all we were hearing was that the Globetrotters were coming. Honestly, it was kind of a big get.
I supervised the assembly and the team came out, about 4-5 of them anyway. It felt…off. They were all really young and honestly, not quite amazing in the way you would expect the Harlem Globetrotters to be. It wasn’t any of the famous guys, but even if they were low-level guys, it felt less compelling than it should.
I got their literature and looked them up in more detail. They were a scam group, basically. I forget their exact name, but they danced around the “Globetrotter” name on their website and simply had extremely similar uniforms, emphasized the Harlem part and somehow made a pretty compelling case they were the Globetrotters or at least associated.
Way on the bottom of the website, they had a small note “Not affiliated with the Harlem Globetrotters in any way”.
I’ve never seen or heard of them again, not even sure what name they were using.
Meadowlark Lemon, well known for playing on the domestic Globetrotters team as seen on Wide World of Sports, also had his own exhibition team under the name The Harlem Bucketeers, and some other variations. I know someone who saw the Bucketeers play and he said it was very much the same performance as he’d seen from the Globetrotters on TV.
No, much more scandalous. This group wore a uniform much closer to the real Globetrotters one that looks like this:
It wasn’t identical, of course, but was red-white-and-blue themed and had stripes, etc.
This was probably around 2010 or so. Wish I could remember the name of the group. Harlem was definitely in the name, since that is just a place and they could use that freely. Don’t remember what they went by beyond that.
Possibly. The website was a lot different back in 2010 or so. It looked a lot more red, white, and blue and very much looked like the Harlem Globetrotters, though you are right their uniforms look the same.
Anyway, I’m guessing the one my school got was a relatively fly-by-night production that just tried to make some bucks of schools with generic “stay in school” and “behave for your parents and teachers” messaging.
Honestly, they barely played much basketball when they were with us. The whole thing was kind of a mess.
A lot of players moved between teams. These are exhibition basketball teams that operate outside league regulations. I think disclaimer of any association with the Harlem Globetrotters is more to avoid problems with customers believing they’re seeing the well known team seen on TV in live action and cartoon form.
The NBA emerged from a time when the early professional basketball teams began operating in loosely formed leagues. Jim Thorpe performed in basketball exhibitions.
Probably to avoid getting taken to court, thogh I think they were definitely presenting themselves as the real deal Harlem Globetrotters. It’s quite possibly they got a legal notice and just took their cash and shut down.
Yeah, I could see that happening. Professional wrestling promotions often are at loggerheads over naming. Wrestlers and promoters now routinely copyright names and phrases. I know this has happened with band reboots too.
