Episode 32: Hoops History with Claude Johnson

The founder of the Black Fives Foundation chats with Chris about his new book on the earliest days of basketball and his journey tracing the roots and spreading the word about the groundbreaking African American basketball teams.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey, what's going on. This is Chris Carino. This is
the voice of Bennett's a podcast Today, a chat with
Claude Johnson, author of the book The Black Fives, the
epic story of Basketball's Forgotten Era. And it's a really
interesting story because you know, the NBA is it doesn't
go back as far as Major League Baseball, the NFL,

(00:31):
that kind of thing. I mean, it's it's it's relatively
it's a baby compared to those and it came along
and the basically the mid forties late forties integrated fairly
quickly compared to the other leagues. But there's a rich
history of basketball, especially in New York City, especially amongst
the African American community, and Claude Johnson does such an

(00:53):
amazing job of detailing that in his book and the
Workers Foundation, and we'll get into that a little bit.
We're it's gonna bring in Tom Doubt, our produce user
who had done extensive work for his New York City
basketball podcaster, is going to be coming out a little
bit and talked to Claude Johnson as well. So I'm
going to bring in TD here in a minute. But
first I just want to touch on what's going on

(01:13):
with the Nets right now. I just got back from Atlanta.
It's never fun as the Nets broadcast should be in
another team's building when they beat at the buzzer. Unfortunately,
that's what happened with Trey Young's buzzer beater to hand
the Nets their second straight loss. After the All Star break,

(01:34):
things are going to take some time right now with
all the new faces, jacque Vaughan has got a lot
of puzzle pieces to try and fit together. But something
that happened during the All Star break, significant for the
organization and for jacque Vaughan, is that he got a
contract extension. Now we know the kind of year it's

(01:54):
been with jacque Vaughn. He went from being an assistant
coach to being the interim coach, to not knowing what
his future was going to be, to becoming the head
coach for we don't know how long. And then this
happens where the organization has committed to jacque Vaughn long term,
and why would they do this at this moment They're

(02:18):
showing a commitment to jacque Vaughn because during a very
difficult time for the franchise, Jacques Vaughn stepped forward and
was a calming influence, was an incredible representative of the organization.
He was the guy that had to go out there

(02:39):
every day and answer those questions, and he did it
with his infectious positivity. There is just a sense of
calm with Jacques. There's a sense of everything is going
to be okay. He's got incredible leadership skills, humor, He's

(03:01):
just an amazing person. And I think all of those
things are the things that you want as the face
of your organization, especially when you're trading away superstars who
were who kind of were the face of the organization.
Now you have that void, and Jack Vaughn has stepped
into that void, and he is a guy that you

(03:22):
can be proud of to get up there and represent
your organization each and every day. Sean Marks had the
foresight to bring in jacque Vaughn as a part of
Kenny Atkinson's staff, and when they parted ways with Kenny Atkinson,
he stepped up then. Remember he coached the nets in
the bubble and when there were guys who were not playing,

(03:44):
guys were injured, jacque Vaughn got them along the way.
You know, he got them to the playoffs that year
in the bubble. He had his little bamboo plant that
he took with him to Orlando and he used that
as a metaphor for his team. And and you saw
right there that Jacques Baun is a head coach in

(04:05):
the NBA. He deserves to be. He had gotten a
chance with Orlando a while back. He really kind of
jumped at any opportunity. It wasn't a good opportunity. He
made the most of it for a couple of years.
It didn't last. He went back to being an assistant coach.
As we mentioned, he's under Kenny Atkinson's staff and when Steve,
when Shawn Mark's decides to bring in Steve Nash, Jacque

(04:27):
Buon had other opportunities to be a head coach, but
his family had taken some roots in Brooklyn. He had
kids are in that age of like middle school about
to go to high school. They were they were enjoying
their time in Brooklyn. He had an opportunity to stay
with the Nets and work under Steve Nash, and he

(04:48):
did it. If you've listened to the podcast, we had
a we had an episode with Roy Williams after Jacques
Baun took over. Roy Williams was his coach at Kansas.
He's the guy that recruited in the Kansas. He's a
big reason why Jacque Vuon went to Kansas. And he
just talked about the character of Jacque Vaughn. And sometimes
coaches will say I'm about family. I don't know if

(05:10):
they mean it. They jump around, they go from one
job to the next, one city to the next. It
meant something to Jacque Vaughan to let his family get
some roots in Brooklyn. Despite some other opportunities. He stayed
with the Nets as an assistant coach after even having
been an interim head coach. And when it wasn't working
out and Steve Nash was let go, jacque Vaughn jump

(05:36):
in with both feet, his infectious smile at that podium
and just let everybody know that everything was gonna be
okay and he was going to guide everyone through these
tough times. And in the end he has been rewarded
with a commitment from the organization that Jacque Won is
our guy going forward. There were rumors of other guys,

(06:00):
there was there was a lot of questions as to
what direction the next would go. But once they saw
how Jacques has handled the situation, they decided he is
our guy going forward. We're not gonna let anybody else
get a crack at him. And Jacques Bon's going to
get to stay in Brooklyn for a little while. I
mean this is going on eight years now. I think
he's been with the organization. That's unheard of when it
comes to being able to stay with one NBA team.

(06:23):
Coaches get hired to get fired, right the great Luke
carnessecond line. Today's peacock is tomorrow's feather duster. They love
a coupe. We were just in Atlanta, where it wasn't
even two years ago. Nate McMillan was being given credit
for turning around the franchise and a lot of their

(06:43):
good star young players that they had. He turned it around,
got them to the playoffs, started making them think about
you know, they got to the conference final, and less
than two years later he's out. Coaching is a fickle business,
but they are also The head coach is the guy
that you put out there each and every night to

(07:04):
answer the tough questions, and Jacques is a guy that
you want up there answering those questions. Jacques will use
some great lines sometimes, and there was one recently. You know,
when someone shows you who they are, believe them. That's
a stoic philosophy. Is stoic quote. I would talk to
him about it afterwards, and we talk about Ryan Holliday,

(07:24):
the author one of the great books that I've read,
and I would recommend it. Will give you a book
recommendation from off the bat from Ryan Holliday. The obstacle
is the way. That's another stoic philosophy. Jacque Vaughan his
mantra from day one has been no excuses. Right, There's

(07:46):
been a lot of excuses and a lot of times
you're you don't want to make excuses for a team,
You're just pointing out reasons why. But jacqu Vaughn doesn't
want to give his team any excuses. And the whole
idea of the obstacle is the way is that sometimes
things look at such a challenge, but that's really the

(08:07):
way through it. And it looked like a very difficult
time when Jacque baun was taking over for Steve Nash,
but he didn't look at it that way. He looked
at it as an opportunity, an opportunity to show off
his skill set as a head coach. You know, anyone
can steer the ship and calm waters, right, but a

(08:29):
good captain knows how to get you through a storm.
And Jacques Baun was able to transform the way the
Nets played. And now that the Stars are gone, it's
a different job. He's got a different set of puzzle
pieces to try and fit together, and it's gonna take
some time. It's gonna take some time. These two games

(08:50):
out of the All Star Break is showing you that
even though there's some really good young players that are
thrown into the mix, there's some challenges ahead here. Cam
Johnson after the game in Atlanta said it very eloquently.
You know, him and mckel bridges came from a system
the last four years on the defensive end where there
are principles that were ingrained in them that became instinctive.

(09:15):
But at the same time opposite from kind of the
principles in the instincts that the Nets have been imploring
over the last couple of years. So even the terminology
and just trying to be instinctive, it's different. It's going
to take some time, but he says they're growing each
and every game. The problem is the Nets are getting
so late into the season right now to try and

(09:36):
figure this out. Sometimes you get twenty twenty five games
just to figure out who you are as a team.
After the All Star break, the Nets are facing twenty
four games. It's not a lot of time to really
get on the same page and figure out who you
are with all these new faces. But as Cam Johnson said,
it's getting better. Jaquan is a great communicator. It's going

(09:57):
to get better. They will be a better team by
the end of the season than they are right now,
and hopefully they can hang on to one of those
top six spots in the Eastern Conference and make some
noise after that. You know the fact that Jacque Vaughan
chose to take route in Brooklyn with his family and
he's been rewarded by a commitment from the organization. Having

(10:20):
an African American head coach in a place like Brooklyn
so diverse, I think is also significant. The Nets and
Barkley Center have always embraced that embraced that history. When
you come into Barkley Center, there are murals on the
walls and they depict this era predating the NBA, but

(10:45):
part of the intrinsic New York City basketball history and
the history of African Americans in the borough of Brooklyn.
All of that we cover with Claude Johnson and his
book The Black Five is the epic story of Basketball's
Forgotten era. My producer Tom Dood has done extensive work

(11:06):
on a podcast series about the history of basketball in
Brooklyn especially, and he worked and talked to Claude Johnson
for this project and t D When you go through
Barkley Center, you see the smart set athletic club photos
that are in that mural, and they tell so much

(11:30):
about the history of basketball that I think a lot
of people don't know of. It's not like the Negro
leagues that ran concurrent to the major leagues. This is
like a those are the founding fathers of the NBA
in New York City basketball. Yeah. Absolutely, And I'm so
glad we were able to get Claude on because, you know,
when I talked to him, we mostly talked about Brooklyn,

(11:51):
and his book goes a lot beyond that, and you're
able to get with him about all of New York
City and Chicago and pitts Burg. And like I said,
the NBA is a young league compared to the NHL,
the NFL, major League Baseball, and we tend to measure
the history of these sports with those leagues. But basketball

(12:11):
has this really deep history that goes fifty years back
before the NBA really got started, and it's a little
bit of a wild West. There's a lot of small
leagues and some slightly bigger ones like the American Basketball League,
the original National Basketball League. There's a lot of independent teams,
the original Celtics, the New York Renaissance, and so a

(12:34):
lot of that history has kind of been forgotten. And
we highlighted on the walls at Barkley Center, and claud
did a wonderful job really digging into it in his book. Yeah,
and he's a he's dedicated his life's at former NBA executive,
worked for Nike and then has dedicated his life now
to you know, they had as a foundation of the

(12:57):
Black Fives Foundation. We'll talk about all of that. It's
really it's an amazing history. Some of the imagery of
things we'll talk about during the course of this h
this interview with Claude Johnson of this majestic time in
New York City basketball. The college game goes back a
long ways and but yeah, you like you said, I

(13:20):
had a hard time just China. I was just trying
to corral all this these different things in leagues and
basketball clubs and just try and get a sense. It
was good that I didn't know as much about it
because it was able to get Claude to kind of
wrangle this all in this, like you said, the wild

(13:40):
West of this forgotten era. So Tom, why don't you
stick around with us afterwards? We'll talk a little bit
more about the podcast series you have coming up. Sounds
good in our post game and our postgame show for
Claude Johnson, But right now here on the Voice of
the Nets, the author of the Black Fives here is
Claude Johnson. Claude, you're the author of the Black Fives,

(14:04):
the epic story of basketball's Forgotten Era. And I got
to admit the most I knew was going into Barkley
Center for the first time and walking around the concourse
and seeing that that team photo of the New York Wrens,
and uh, you know, then I've gone back and looked
at you know what that is, try and investigate it

(14:25):
a little bit. So I guess that's a proposed but
it is a forgotten era. Could you tell us what
are the Black Fives? First of all, yeah, thank you
and Chris First, I mean, it's a real honor and
really great to be on with you and to be
on the air and meet you and spend this time together.
So thank you for that. No, so the Black Fives

(14:47):
that refers to the African American basketball teams that were
that existed prior to the NBA. So the era has
to do with all of the teams, the players that contributors, coaches, etc.
Both men's and women's teams. And this period took place
from around nineteen oh four, when the game was first

(15:08):
widely introduced in the Washington, DC area by a man
named Edwin Bancroft Henderson, who's considered the grandfather of black basketball,
till nineteen fifty when the NBA signed its first black players.
And so that time in between is this historic period
that people just forgot about. It wasn't intentionally paved over.

(15:29):
It's just that for different reasons, you know, this history
got buried, and you know our role has been to
try to unbury it and get proper recognition for that
important history. So it's referring really to it. It's not
any one team or league it's just an era. You know,
it can be a little confusing because it's trying to

(15:51):
sort of encompass all these clubs and programs. But let's
go back just to that time period. You're talking about
the turn of the century, the early nineteen hundreds. What
was the state of basketball? Was their professional basketball? Let
you know, whether it be segregated or integrated. What was
kind of the world of basketball at that time. Yeah,

(16:16):
so there were there was no reason for African Americans
to play sports during that time because I remember this
is coming out of the post reconstruction era where people
were just trying to survive Chris. You know, people were
trying to figure out how to how to get by,
and a lot of folks were migrating from the South
to escape the oppressive way of life down there. And

(16:38):
so as they came up north, they began crowding into cities.
So the focus of my book is on how the
game evolved out of that in really four different areas
New York City which includes Harlem and Brooklyn in Manhattan,
and then Washington, DC area, and then Pittsburgh and Chicago,

(17:00):
and how the game emerged and why in those specific
locales and so in New York City, just as an example,
when I started writing about it, I realized, okay, they
were all There was a lot of overcrowding, and this
overcrowding and congestion caused health issues because people were in
oftentimes in congested buildings where there would be no window

(17:25):
or no ventilation. Meanwhile, the mortality rate among African Americans
was something like twenty five percent. Now there was one
in four were dying from pneumonia or tuberculosis, and health
leaders back then thought that it was just because they
weren't exercising their lungs enough. They didn't realize it was
highly contagious. But as a result, people started to look

(17:48):
around for answers. In one place for answers was the YMCA,
which had formed in England in the mid eighteen hundreds
as result of the whole Industrial Revolution. And so they
start to realize, well, to avoid you know, moral decay

(18:09):
and health decay, let's figure out ways to be to
combine all these ideas of um muscular Christianity, physical culture.
Back then, they didn't have anything like like fitness. There
was no such thing as physical fitness. There was no
phizzed class. It wasn't the concept. So they start to

(18:30):
realize the mind and the body, the mind and the
body and the spirit go together. And so that's their
slogan to make you know, for for for the YMCA,
that makes them who they are. But black health leaders
and community leaders start realizing what we should do something
like that too, and so some innovative pioneers during that

(18:51):
time formed the Alpha Physical Culture Club, which was the
first African American um athletic club. And it was the
purpose of community wellness really more so than hey, let's
play this sport the money to be made that came
way later, and that there were no professional teams in fact,
because basketball overall, even in the days of James Naismith,

(19:15):
which was you know, just fifteen years earlier, was born
out of that YMCA concept. So the idea of playing
for money was almost blasphemy to the authorities who governed
the game. They didn't want any connection between money and
the sport really for the longest time. And so that's

(19:38):
kind of where I pick it up. Yeah, I mean,
well Naismith was like a gym teacher, right, I mean,
that was his that's how he invented the game. Yeah,
I mean, he was given the instruction to invent the
game by a man named Luther Gulick up up in
Springfield at the at the it was called the Springfield
International School. And you know, his assignment was come up

(20:02):
with a game for the winter months because once football ends,
these young men are just roaming around and they don't
know what to do with themselves, and there's you know,
Springfield was a test case because and that's why they
put a branch there. There was another branch in Montreal
because it was just big enough of a city for
there to be enough vice but not too much where

(20:23):
they could figure out, okay, can we create something that
keeps these kids, you know, occupied where they don't go downhill?
And and so that's how this game was invented. And
it took a while, you know, back and forth iteration,
but when he when he came up with it, you know,
it was like a and I write about this in
my book, you know, just the sort of a brainstorm.
Uh you know, light bulb went off and he had

(20:46):
this game, and um in black communities. It didn't take
off right away at first because it was because Edwin Henderson,
who who is this person from DC? He was a
gym teacher UH, and the schools were segregated back then.
So he came up to learn the game at Harvard

(21:08):
University during a summer course, and while he was there,
you know, he realized, Wow, this this might be something
that kids back home could enjoy and appreciate. But when
he came back, he said that at first they thought
it was a sissy sport because this was the days
of you know, football and UH and rugged determination. And
so he had to really fight hard to make sure

(21:30):
that people, you know, really embraced it. And it took
a while, but not long before before the game was
then you know, brought on board. And what do you
think was the So you have all these different programs,
these different little clubs, I guess you could say what
were what was the one that was sort of the
driving force behind spreading the game? Well, in DC, you

(21:55):
had you had Henderson who formed um an organization. It
was an all amateur organization called the i SAA, the
inter Scholastic Athletic Association of mid Atlantic States. And the
reason he did that was because, like you said, there
were all these clubs and different organizations and people and

(22:15):
they didn't really have any way to organize and play
one another. So it's all intramural, but but still through
that at least he was able to train kids to
play the game and learn the game. And then so
that was that was one part. And then another part
in New York City was that you started having these organizations, churches,

(22:35):
y MCA's club teams like the Smart Set Athletic Club
of Brooklyn, which was this organization that was a social
and athletic club, Black Run Black founded in Brooklyn in
nineteen oh four. And when I first, you know, discovered
this organization, I was actually working at the NBA, and

(22:57):
I was saying to myself, how is it that we
don't don't know about this team and this organization, like
it's unheard of, And that began my journey. And I
was living in Brooklyn at the time, and there was
you know, years would go by before the Barclay Center
was even a concept of twinkling anybody's eye, right, So,

(23:19):
so you know, so then that led meet on this
quest to find out more and it so it turns
out that there were a few clubs in the New
York City area that I that I really recognized as
being the ones that drove this and it was the
Saint Christopher Club, which was within the auspices of the
Saint Philip's Protestant Episcopal Church that at the time was

(23:44):
in Midtown. And you have to realize too, your listeners
have to realize that the black population of New York
City was mostly concentrated in Greenwich Village and then it
moved up to Midtown to an area called the Tenderloin District,
which was in the know from the from about the
twenties to the fifties, centered up along Fifth at between

(24:05):
Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue, and so Saint Philip's Church
was located in the midst of that because it was
so bad in terms of vice that its nickname was
Satan's Circus and uh that's and so this is a
high rent district now though, right, yeah, yeah, exactly right.

(24:25):
So but um, you know, the Saint Christopher Club was
named after the Saint Christopher, the patron saint of safe travel,
because they wanted there these kids who were just you know,
just rampant, to have a safe haven. And then out
of that safe haven eventually came athletic activities boxing, uh,

(24:48):
track and field and basketball, and then you know, at
first they started um playing in very informally. So the
first game between two independent African American basketball teams actually
took place in Brooklyn, in Bushwick at the corner of
Gates and Knickerbocker in a renovated handball facility over there.

(25:13):
That's what year is this around? This is nineteen oh seven,
almost they were forty years before the NBA came along.
Oh yeah, and then they had and then they had
you know, about one hundred people that came came there.
But but you know, the next game, maybe there were
two hundred, and then all of a sudden, three hundred

(25:34):
and they started to realize, well, we we should charge
twenty five cents, you know for the admission, and then
the twenty five cents allowed them to hire first of all,
get more different, bigger facilities. But also at that time,
music was becoming more popular because the gramophone and the

(25:55):
radio were commercially available for the first time, so listeners
could actually hear music, and they were like, wait, we
want to dance to this, but you couldn't dance to
it if it were just sheet music prior to the gramophone,
and a lot of people couldn't afford a gramophone or
a radio. So there was a ballroom construction craze, and

(26:16):
then all these ballrooms got built and then on certain
days they were empty. So these enterprising black basketball promoters said, hey,
wait we can let's put two and two together. Let's
have a game, and then we'll also hire a band,
an orchestra, usually ragtime, and then they put you know

(26:36):
that these music would play before and then during halftime,
and then after the game. And that marriage of music
with basketball actually was an African American innovation back then
in the yearly D. Yeah, and we think that it's
we think it's game operations now have put that all together.
When you go to basketball games and there's a DJ
before or you know, their DJ at halftime, Like this

(26:59):
would started out with a ballroom with an orchestra, and
then the ballroom they would play basketball. These must be
big ballrooms, by the way, Well they weren't that big.
It's just that the games were less, you know, less
prominent back then. You know, so the courts were sometimes smaller.
But after a while suddenly they would have you know,

(27:21):
three thousand people that eventually in the nineteen tens, mid
nineteen tens, and the question was, well, where's all this
money going. You know, we have enough money that we're
bringing in. If you were the host team, if you
were the Smart Set Athletic Club and you were bringing
in Howard University for a game at the fourteenth Regiment

(27:43):
Armory in Park Slope, you know, you you would rent
the facility. You would also pay for the visiting teams travel.
You would put them up in the hotel, get them food, dining,
have a reception for them. Often these teams would have
a sister team that would be responsible for the entertainment
and then when the when the sister team played, the

(28:04):
guys would do the would flip the roles and do that,
uh and you know, decorate the facility or whatever the case.
And that was That was like true hosting. That's what
hosting meant back then. Now we use that term and says, hey,
the Nets are hosting the Wizards. Yeah, yeah, you really
were hosting. Yeah, we always say laying out you know,

(28:26):
food fladder for the visitors. But at the time, though,
so you mentioned like you mentioned Harvard already, you mentioned
Howard already. Was college basketball a thing at that moment um,
you know, it was, but not among African Americans because
there were just too many concerns socially and culturally and

(28:47):
just for survival for a student, you know, a student
or a student's family to even want their kid to
get into sports because there was no opportunity. So it
was a considered almost frivolous amongst the African American community,
whereas you're such as such a flit now, where so
many looked at it as the ultimate thing that they
strived for. Yeah, because because back then it just really

(29:11):
had no meaning. You weren't going to get drafted there.
There wasn't even a professional league, you know. So we
can talk about Dolly King later because he actually was
from Brooklyn and he was at LU, and he left
his undefeated LU team mid season, even though he was
the captain and the leading scorer, which would be unheard

(29:32):
of today, but he left that He left so that
he could tour with the New York Renaissance, the Rens
that you mentioned, because he knew that he wasn't going
to be able to play professionally, you know, in a
in a circuit. But back then, that's how it was.
So you had colleges and Edwin Henderson had to actually
convince Howard University to to make his team, which was

(29:55):
called the Twelfth Streets, which was populated, like the entire
line was all Howard students already. So he went to
the administration said, well, you should really make this your
varsity team, and eventually they agreed, and so that became
one of the first HBCU basketball teams back in the
nineteen ten and then the others followed, you know, Hampton

(30:18):
and Lincoln and others. But back then they didn't have
any regulation regulatory oversight. So a team like Howard or
Hampton could come to New York City to play a
semi pro team like the Saint Christopher Club or the Corporators,
or or even a professional team like the New York
Renaissance which was fully professional would play Morgan State and others.

(30:40):
And this was you know, well before there was an
NC Double A or an n I T. And eventually
that you know that there were regulations that were put
in place, especially by the AAU, but back then it
was really more for the overall community. For the for
you know, started with wellness. Eventually it was more money.

(31:01):
Then they started to realize, okay, let's split the gate
receipts and uh, you know, then there was a struggle
for for over a decade between the forces that wanted
the game to be professional in the black community and
those that said, no, we can't do that, that's forbidden.
Um we you know, we don't want to go there,
because because the game was not meant to be professional,

(31:25):
the game will get ruined. The Luther Gulick, who I mentioned,
who is the person who gave James Naismith at homework assignment,
was adamantly against professionalism in basketball, so much so that
if you played professional baseball or any other sport and
they found out you, you could get sanctioned, your team

(31:46):
could get prohibited from playing against other teams that were uh,
you know that that were abiding by those rules. And
so it was it was quite interesting that that battle
that took place. But eventually the professional forces of professionalism
one it seems like that was that they're the start

(32:07):
of this whole battle between well, you're either professionally you're amateur,
whether it could be Olympics or any of that kind
of competition. College. Um, and you mentioned, you know, you
mentioned the two other the other sports at that time.
With the time you're talking about, I mean, professional baseball
is already is already up in is a thing now.
Professional football is already a thing now. Um, is there

(32:30):
a comparison at all to the development in what you're
talking about with the African American teams and the like
Negro leagues or things like that. Is there any sort
of a comparison around that time. It's, uh, there's a parallel,
but it's it's a little different because in baseball there
was never any battle with regard to being professional or

(32:52):
not that. Right from the beginning, they were just out.
They were just out to make money. Um, And there
was no real you know, amateur circuit. And again the
baseball didn't come out of the YMCA, which the Young
Men's Christian Association. They were very pious in some ways,
by the way, so much so that during the nineteen
tens and before that, you were not really allowed to

(33:15):
play basketball during lent during lenten season it was considered,
you know, one of those things that you had to
abstain from. Right. Yeah. So so if you look forward,
if you sort of fast forward entire March Madness, in
most cases it is during lent, right, So it's forbidden.
It's a forbidden tournament. It's just fascinating to me though,

(33:38):
that that I guess you're saying it came out of
the like the y m c A, which is a
Christian organization, So there's a little more of a puritanical
view on stuff. But it as opposed to other sports.
I mean, what's the difference of playing baseball? Football? Basketball's game?
It's recreation. You know, why should one be considered taboo

(33:58):
when the other be fully embraced. Yeah, they were just
different back then, Like baseball. They weren't allowed to play
on Sundays, you know, they had Sunday laws against baseball
and and m alcohol and different other you know, men
and women were an unaccompanied woman was not allowed to
dance with a man at a at a dance hall,
you know, stuff like that. Things of change, right, yeah,

(34:21):
so so um and then you know, so I write
about that too, and in my book, you know, in
terms of some of what happened and how come there
was this uh, this ballroom that emerged and flourished up
on one hundred and fifty fifth and eighth Avenue called
the Manhattan Casino. It's no longer there, but that's just

(34:43):
so happens to be right across the street from Rucker Park,
and so that's interesting. And then the polo grounds were
right there caddy corner from that facility, UM and teams
would come from from out of town. Two two out
of town teams would come to play at the Manhattan
Casino because it would get up to six thousand spectators.

(35:03):
And that's how that's a Harlem. And specifically New York
City became the mecca of Black basketball during that time.
I guess so the parallel, you know, I went I
went to the Negro League Museum last year in Kansas City,
and it's a great you know, it's great stories and characters,
and but it was kind of like this this parallel

(35:25):
professional league that was working to try and UM and
they couldn't penetrate, you know, the integration and things like that.
It sounds like with with with the fives. It's more
of it wasn't running parallel with the NBA or or
when the NBA started, it was the MBL wherever it
was UM, But it was more this this period of
time beforehand that is kind of this little jewel that

(35:47):
were with great characters and great players. And you mentioned
the think of the pageantry of being in a ballroom
in New York City where there's a there's an orchestra
playing as well as there's a know, there's a basketball
game going on a team called the Renaissance, And I mean,
there's just this this this magical kind of thing. I
could see it like a like a movie that's kind

(36:10):
of just forgotten it and I would imagine. So that's
that's kind of just the story you're trying to tell,
is about this this golden age that maybe gets overlooked
at certain times. Absolutely, I love how you're evoking just
the imagery of that time, because that's you know, I
try to do that in the in the book. And
you're right, football and baseball had in parallel the you know,

(36:35):
let's say, let's call them the white professional leagues. They
were racially exclusive, and basketball didn't have that. They had
different You had the New England League and up you know,
the Rhode Island League and the Western Pennsylvania League and
so on. And there wasn't one league until nineteen forty nine,

(36:56):
when the National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of
America merged to form the NBA. Even the BAA, which
I just mentioned, formed in nineteen forty six and the
NBL formed in nineteen thirty seven. So up until nineteen
thirty seven, you didn't really have a dominant league one
or the other. They were numerous leagues all the time,

(37:17):
and players sometimes played in both, you know, in three
different leagues at once. Yeah, but so there wasn't really
this fight. It was more it was more how do
we get better and how do we there wasn't there
was no league to break into up until the thirties.
It was really just because you also had a whole

(37:39):
bunch of independent other teams. You had you had the
all Jewish team from Philadelphia, the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association.
You had the New York Original Celtics, which was mostly Irish,
and you had Olsen's Terrible Swedes, which was you know,
the most Swedish. Sounds like it sounds like I know
you made it compared you referenced before or uh, we

(38:01):
just go back for a second at the time of
the early nineteen hundreds where it was after the Civil
War and and you had people, uh you know coming
into the big cities and that caused this overpopulation and
it caused the health issues and they wanted to uh,
you know, basketball was a way of getting people healthy again.
But you would also have, i think mentioned in your
book about in the late eighteen hundreds there were the

(38:24):
u in New York City, and this is depicted in
the movie The Gangs of New York m the riots, right,
the draft riots, and it sounds like all these things.
If everybody ever watched that Martin Scorsese movie The Gangs
of New York, it was it was all these different facts,
these these sects. You know, he was an Irish gang,
here was a Jewish gang, here was a religious Catholic gang,

(38:47):
and they all kind of fought for the turf there.
This is almost like a basketball version of that. There's
no one set thing. It's all these different sects coming
in to try and battle for basketball supremacy, so to speak,
in the early nineteen hundreds. That's really what it was
an excellent reference because the Gangs of New York, you know,

(39:09):
that was centered on this area called Little Five Points,
which is which is still you know technically there it's
near Chinatown, and um, you know, there were there was
also a concentration of African Americans and eventually you know this, uh,
if you've if you're from New York City and you've
ever been to this little place called Manetta Lane and
Minetta Street. It's right there by, uh, just south of

(39:32):
the West fourth Street cage Um. That area, that whole
area was called Little Africa because there were so many
black people living there. There was an elevated train that
came down sixth Avenue and it turned left or depending
on which direction you're coming, but if it was coming downtown,
it turned left onto West third. And on West Third
is where this kid named will Anthony Madden lived, And

(39:57):
so I talked I start a book with him because
he was born in abject poverty in that section, you know,
in the shadow of this train. And just I even
described the way the train was, like how that actually
you know what it was like to live under a
train during those times. These are a giant, you know,
hundreds of tons locomotives that burnt coal and steam and

(40:20):
stuff was falling on people. And he rose from that
to become the king of Black basketball in the nineteen tents.
But then after living out his life in the nineteen seventies,
he died and was buried in an unmarked grave. So
I start at his unmarked grave in the book because

(40:41):
I kind of want to draw the parallel that him
being buried in an unmarked grave is very similar to
this whole history being buried in an unmarked grave. And
then I spend the rest of the book unburying that.
And it not to give it away, but he's eventually
there's something that happens and the progression of things that happened,

(41:01):
where he's also then vindicated and unburied. And actually, you know, he's,
in my opinion and many people's opinion, a candidate for
the Basketball Hall of Fame for all the things that
he that he innovated. And so that's so. Yes, there
were lots of factions, and they traveled all around the
country and they and they because back then you have

(41:23):
to ask yourself, how did an all black team during
Jim Crow during the Great Depression get invited to an
all white place like Oshkosh, Wisconsin repeatedly win that game,
leave town safely, and keep getting invited back. Well, it's
just because there wasn't anything else going on. You had

(41:43):
to They didn't have new movies or Netflix or anything
like that. So if there was an if there was
something coming into town like Ringling Brothers or you know,
a team that was exotic like like Olsen's Terrible Swedes.
You know, the names would indicate like where they were
from or what kind of players they were. Then that

(42:04):
was like the big thing, and so people would come
from miles around to spend money on restaurants, bars, saloons, hotels,
and everybody was a winner and every place where the
Wrens went because they were at some point, at a
certain point, they just were considered the best team in basketball.
Wherever they went, they were advertised as colored champions, They're

(42:24):
coming to town. But also they were a mobile economic
stimulus almost as wherever they went people made money. So
they were really well loved and they helped popularize the
game in far off places and eventually other all black
teams did the same thing. They mimicked and you know,
tried to emulate what the Wrens were doing it but

(42:47):
it slept on. You know, people just don't realize how
the you know we always use that catchphrase, well they
helped pave the way, but they didn't just help pave
the way. They actually they actually built the popularity. They
were the way in many in many places that those
local white teams had to train and up their game

(43:12):
because they knew that a team like the Renaissance were
coming right, so they would have never had that incentive
just playing against the local other teams. And so they
also saw a whole different brand of basketball and envisioned
new new ways that they could that they could uh
you know, uh improve in terms of being players, staging

(43:33):
the game, etc. I mean, really, when you think about basketball,
and you know it starts in with nineteen forty seven,
is like the first league. You know, the NBA's just
celebrated seventy five years, so it was nineteen seventy nineteen
forty seven, um was kind of where it started. It

(43:55):
didn't become the NBA for a couple of years, as
you mentioned, But you know, I think the first the
first black player comes into nineteen fifty, so it's only
a couple of it's it's It wasn't like it was
some of like baseball where it took so long or
football where it took so long. It was a kind
of right away the professional league started integrating what do

(44:16):
you what do you do? Do you feel like basketball
has always been a little more commonality or a little
more um, you know, inclusive, then I mean, I know,
you know you have how long it took for college
basketball and then the you know, the all black team
in the Final Four for the first time. It took

(44:37):
a long time. There's still a lot of racism in
the South. You mentioned Jim Crowe, but I feel like
for as it's represented now and it's it's been the
most inclusive going even back to what you're talking about,
and maybe the fact that a team like the Wrens
or these these clubs you're talking about that would barnstorm
and set the standard. Um, they helped make it that

(45:00):
way where they did make it that way. Yeah, I
mean the Smart Set Athletic Club of Brooklyn back before
nineteen ten routinely played against all white teams. This was
just no big deal back then, and that in other
sports that was not happening. That was definitely not the case.
In boxing. It was very difficult for prize fighter to

(45:21):
to get on the path towards a championship because they
had to usually come through a white, white boxer. Um. Football, definitely,
baseball very rarely you had a player like Fleetwood, Moses Fleetwood, Um, uh,
what's his last name? You had you had Fleetwood Walker
and then you had um you know in boxing, uh,

(45:45):
you know, Jack Johnson, and it is always a really
rare exception. But in in basketball, you have to remember
too that the National Basketball League was formed in nineteen
thirties seven and a year later they had a black player,
and until nineteen forty six, really until nineteen forty nine,

(46:08):
the NBL had fifteen other additional African American players. So
in my book, I talk about the NBL and also
the BAA because they merged in nineteen forty nine. So
you know, I make a specific point that the New
York Renaissance could have been a founding team in the

(46:30):
NBA in nineteen forty nine if it wasn't for Shenanigans
that took place, and well, they they were left out.
So they were part of the NBLA and they were
the best team in basketball. But they but when they
joined the NBL, they took over they took over a

(46:53):
bankrupt team, and in order to take over that team,
they had to also assume their record, which was a
terrible record, and in order to make money, the owner,
Bob Douglas, had to split the squad and so they
you know, had they won the NBL championship in nineteen
forty eight forty eight forty nine season, it would have

(47:14):
been it would have been a challenge anyway for them
to have joined the NBA. But then they also had
this championship that started in nineteen thirty nine called the
World Championship of Professional Basketball, and the Wrens won the
inaugural championship. A team called the Harlem Globetrotters that everybody

(47:37):
knows as a comedy team, was actually a bona fide
skilled team. In nineteen forty they won in nineteen forty
A team called the Washington Bears, which was made up
of Frends players, won in nineteen forty three, and in
nineteen forty eight, the Wrens were close minutes away from

(48:00):
winning the final championship of that series. They were playing
the Minneapolis Lakers, and something happened in that game that
made some players later think that it was thrown. And
then the player who was suspected of throwing the game,
and I'm not giving it away by saying this was

(48:20):
later signed by Abe Sapperstein to the contract. Yeah, exactly,
if the Hunk Globe Chatters. And then if you if
you say, well, who stood to benefit the most from
not having a black team in the NBA one of
the one of those was Abe Sapperstein, because he had
a monopoly on black talent and a matter of fact,

(48:41):
the BAA when they were struggling, you know, after nineteen
forty six, they used the Globe Chatters as the front
end of their double headers, and mister Sapperstein threatened to
end that relationship if the NBA signed black players. But
it ned Irish of the Knicks, who said, look, we're

(49:03):
just going to leave and go back to being an
independent barn store MC team if you don't let us
sign uh Nat Sweetwater Clifton, and and and then that
led to you know, nineteen fifty. Eventually the first three players.
Chuck Cooper was the first drafted, and then Earl Lloyd
was the first who played with the Capitals, and then

(49:24):
and then Nat Sweetwater Clifton was the first who was
signed by the Knicks. And so as it stood. The
NBA when it when it opened its doors in nineteen
forty nine, had seventeen teams, which if you're just doing
the math of the scheduling, it's really really super awkward.
They had three divisions, and it was, you know, really bad.

(49:48):
And then the following year they added that eighteenth team.
But by then the Wrens had to you know, had
financially dissolved. And now though they are depicted on the
walls of Barclay Center for everyone to see and learn
and get to know and hopefully maybe then go pick
up a copy of your book and to learn all

(50:10):
about it. Now, like, how did that come about? How
did you get the Wrens to be identified at Barcley Center.
I know you had something to do with that. Well.
So when I was trying my best to do the
research and on this quest, I started collecting images and artifacts.

(50:35):
And this was years ago, and one day I was
sitting next to somebody you know, at a conference who
happened to be an art curator that was in these
meetings at Barclays before Barclays was completed. And in those
same meetings was a gentleman named Sean Carter who was

(50:56):
a part owner of the better noted Jay Z read
it down as jay Z right Hove and um she said,
because that people may not remember, but I know you
do that when Barclays was opened, there was some you know,
uh community um sensitivity and awareness, and they were trying

(51:18):
their best to represent the community through art and through
other things you know that would help be an O outreach.
And so um, we we had, you know, a collection
of African American related vintage basketball images, um and so
uh in Brooklyn related especially and so um. You know,

(51:41):
then I was asked to come down and and and
present or or or provide a compilation of these images,
which they then loved. And I heard that Jay really
loved the idea. And so they took these images and
blew them up to mural size and put them permanently

(52:01):
installed in the concourse. So if you go into the
Barclay Center today and you go in the main entrance
left and right, you'll see six images with some insets
also of Brooklyn related teams, including the Smart Set Athletic Club,
including the New York Girls and the Spartan Girls, which
were the sister a couple of the sister teams, and

(52:24):
one player, Dolly King, who played eventually for the New
York Wrens. And that photo that's in there, he's with Liu.
So that's where I was referencing earlier. He left in
nineteen forty one. They ended up winning the n I T,
but he knew that he wasn't going to be drafted

(52:45):
because there was no such thing as a draft, and
he he toured with the with the Wrens because they
were going out to these different tournaments in Cleveland and
in Chicago where there was a cash prize. And so,
you know, that was your best way to make a
lot of money back then as a professional player. Back then,
you know, renting an apartment for a whole month might

(53:06):
be you know, a four bedroom apartment might be twenty
five dollars a month, and these guys are making one
hundred and twenty five or more per per month. So
and uh where you mentioned Dolly King that were LIU
was a national powerhouse back then too, right, Claire b Yeah,
coach right, in any of these players, it's Dolly in
the Hall of Fame. He's in the He's in the

(53:29):
Lu Hall of Fame, Hall of Fame. I think that
he has a shot and could deserve to be in
the in the Naysmith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Are
there any any players from the five era that are
in the Naismith Hall to Fame in Springfield? Yes? Yes,
And I'm happy to say, you know, through our organization,
the Black Fives Foundation, about you know, we've been doing

(53:53):
this since the nineteen nineties, UM, but you know, about
the past fifteen years or so, we've been wrong advocates
for the proper recognition of these pioneers and the Basketball
Hall of Fame. We've helped them with information and research
and you know, an advocacy for for some of these players.
And I mentioned there were women's teams, UM, and one

(54:16):
of those women's teams was a team called the Tribune
Girls that was sponsored by the Philadelphia Tribune newspaper in Philly,
and they won eleven straight Black National championships from nineteen
thirty to nine into the early nineteen forties. And their
star was a woman named Aura Washington, who the Hall

(54:36):
of Fame enshrined UM and as a result, she's the
earliest female UH inshrinee in the Hall of Fame, UM
black woman named our Washington, who after she left basketball,
became a maid, a housekeeper and died with no one

(54:57):
knowing what you know of her amazing contribution to the
sport as well as to tennis. And then there's you know, others,
many of them from the Wrens. The question was if
the Renaissance was formed as a team one hundred years
ago in nineteen twenty three and playing one hundred and

(55:18):
fifty games a season through nineteen forty nine. They won
more than eighty five percent of their games if you
just imagine and visualize that. And many of the teams
that they played, like the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, the
Original Celtics and others, their players are in the Basketball
Hall of Fame, but the Renaissance were not. You had

(55:41):
this one team from nineteen thirty three that won eighty
eight straight games in eighty six days, and that teams
as a collective was enshrined in nineteen sixty three, which
was important. That was the first African Americans enshrined. And
then it took about another ten years for the owner
to be enshrined, and then another ten years for the
biggest star, Charles Tarzan Cooper to be droned, and another

(56:04):
ten years. So these these skips of nine ten years
while the other guys, as John Isaacs used to say,
he was one of the pioneers, that I got to know,
we're just getting enshrined, you know, year after year after year.
So eventually the Hall of Fame adopted a new approach,
which was they created a Committee, the Early African American

(56:27):
Basketball Pioneers Committee to do direct to direct inductions into
the Hall. Previously you had to go through a veterans
committee and you became a finalist and nobody knew anything
about you. And so I, you know, I took the
baton or our organization, myself included, took the baton from
Howie Evans, who was a longtime journalist with the Amsterdam

(56:50):
News and he started really advocating and pushing the Hall
of Fame in the sixties to begin recognizing these earlier pioneers.
And so you know, I was really inspired by him.
He was on our board, uh for a while, and
you know, so I took that baton and we just
kept running with it. And so now you have up

(57:11):
to we're up to twelve players from that era who
are in the Hall of Fame. Now that's great and
and and you know so much due to the work
that you've put in. H You mentioned that you worked
at the NBA. What did you do with the NBA
and when was that? That was from nineteen ninety four

(57:32):
to about nineteen ninety eight, and I started out as
director of International Business Operations and then that morphed into
Director of International Licensing. So we this was when you know,
Champion and Starter and some of those early names were
growing into Europe especially, but also Asia as well. And

(57:54):
so I was the liaison between UH, you know, the
NBA New York office and the offices that the league
was starting up in places like UH like Geneva and London,
UH and elsewhere eventually Paris. And we also had an
office in Hong Kong and in Australia and in UH

(58:15):
and in Tokyo UM. And that's when I, you know,
discovered through Arthur Ashe's book A Hard Road to Glory,
the Tennis Legend. He wrote a book about the the
journey of the African American athlete, and he named several
early African American teams, including the Smart Set Athletic Club.

(58:37):
And I was living in Brooklyn and as in licensing.
So I'm sitting there going wait, I'm smart I'm athletic,
I live in Brooklyn, this is my club, Like nineteen
oh four, what's going on with that? What's up with that?
And then I saw myself one day wearing Smart Set
Athletic Club of Brooklyn t shirt, you know, walking down
Flatbush And then you know lo and behold, I'm walking

(58:59):
down flat portion fast forward. Uh, all of a sudden,
here's Barclay Center. And this was years later, um, and
in Barclays Center there's now Smart Set Athletic Club. Uh,
you know, imagery and we we even now we have
you know, merchandise and partnerships with with uh you know,
global corporations that are helping tell this story. So it's

(59:23):
really been a journey and a you know, a labor
of love for for for me and for us. And
that's what I was, That's what I was doing there.
But when I was at the League, that's when they
launched NBA dot Com. Um, you know, as Rick Welts
was still there and with things you started to take off. Yeah,
everything was cooking when you you say so now you

(59:45):
used your um, your licensing background everything, and you started,
uh I guess taking some of the images and these
black five teams, right the uh, the logos and things
like that and using them in merchandise and then you
you turn this into a five or one and seat
three correct the black vibes, yes, foundation, UM, so you're

(01:00:06):
it wasn't like you were just you were just kind
of stealing the old stuff and merchandising it. Like you've
turned this into a way to fund the awareness of
this time and push these these measures forward. Um, what today,
So the Black Vibes Foundation, what are sort of the

(01:00:26):
primary goals and what it's kind of the day to
day of that. Yeah, And I have to say that,
I mean, anyone can find a defunct logo and start
making merchandise. And it's just that, you know, because of
my licensing background, I trademarked the names and the logos.
I taught myself illustrator and photoshop and trace traced the

(01:00:47):
logos you know, from from images. So for example, here's
a fitted cap that's the smart Set Athletic Club of
of of Brooklyn. Yeah, and sharper on zoom a light
blue with a dark blue logo with the interlocking uh
s a C. That's right, and and and and I

(01:01:11):
found those that logo, you know, off of images and
just tracing those images and it's not there, No, they're
just images off of photos. You know, other companies are
doing this too, and at the time they were doing that,
and so but I decided that not only did I
want to have a cap or a T shirt, but

(01:01:31):
I also wanted this history to be preserved. And sometimes
if you don't do it through licensing or through trademarking,
that anyone can just do anything. And if and since
licensing and merchandise is almost like its own language right
on the streets, Um, then that just means anybody can
say anything about this history. And I didn't want that.

(01:01:51):
I wanted it to be accurate. I wanted it to
be clean. Um. I didn't want to see it all
up and down, you know, fourteenth Street or wherever in
different markets. And so I thought, all right, let me
just see if we can protect this first, because then
we can try to you know, make the merchandise and
tell the story the right way. But it's going to

(01:02:12):
be hard to sell a T shirt to you for
your nephew. But it's easier for me to talk to
you about a cause or about a mission because then
whether you get the T shirt or not, you you
still you can still be hyped about that that that
mission and so um. And then what also happened is
that we got very lucky because uh, you know, I

(01:02:33):
was started making jerseys during the during the throwback era,
but um, you know, it was really toward the end
of the throwback era. Uh, partly because of mister Carter
saying change clothes in his song, but not only because
of that. It was just there were knockoffs coming in
and and so that whole um, that whole trend kind
of collapsed. But at that time, you know, I started thinking, um,

(01:02:58):
you know, we we got we got this merchandise onto
some really visible uh you know, rap artists like Ludicrous
and in the Roots and um exhibit on Pimp My
Ride and so forth. And then because of that, teachers
started calling and saying, hey, can you come talk to
our classroom about this? And I always thought, like what

(01:03:18):
I would never can think of charging a teacher, you know,
in a classroom that's trying to borrow pencils from you know, parents,
like in any way you know, along these lines of
like charging them to come. That's what I wanted to do.
That was the whole reason why I was doing this.
But in the back of my mind, I kept thinking,
but shouldn't we have like some kind of altruistic or

(01:03:41):
you know, fund or something that And so in two
thousand and thirteen that came true, and you know, I
just took all of the money from you know, the money,
the assets, the everything that all of what we had
um and donated it to a new organization that we
created called the Black Fives Foundation as a five and
see three. And that's right around the time twenty fourteen

(01:04:03):
that Barclays opened and and actually our our our murals
were in there on opening on opening day, and uh,
you know, we got a proclamation from the mayor. Um.
You know, it's really really wonderful that the Nets have
been tremendous in terms of just being advocates and allies
with with us. And uh maybe maybe you know, I

(01:04:24):
see everybody's got you know, four different uniforms every year
now in the NBA, Like I don't know, I could
see maybe a like a like a smart set throwback
right listen from you to God's Ears. Because we've we've
been trying this, we've been pitching for twenty years. Um,
but it's always it's always kind of like, uh, slightly

(01:04:45):
off because with Nike as the main uh you know,
the main Encourt licensee and before them Adidas. Um, you know,
we we went to Nike, We went to Adidas. I
used to work at Nike. Um and uh and then
now you know we have a partnership with Puma, and
so that it doesn't quite work, you know, so, but

(01:05:07):
we're willing to wait um till it's done right, you know,
because maybe in some future iteration the NBA will say, hey, look,
whoever gets the on court rights, you have to do
this this way the way we say, versus waiting for
Nike to dictate that, or Adidas to dictate that, or

(01:05:28):
or even Puma or just even the teams necessarily. So
we're we're we're we're gonna, you know, we're gonna chill
and do it the right way. But also were we
constantly try to advocate for that, and we are working
with several teams just to get this story out. One
shout out I want to give too is of course
the Nets, also the Wizards, UM and then the Uh

(01:05:50):
the Thunder with Sam Presty, and and there's been others
and so you know, we're slowly but surely paving away literally.
And we also have good relations with the Players Union
because ultimately many of these initiatives come from the energy
and the passion of the players in the Players Union themselves. Yeah,

(01:06:12):
I think they would be interested in that, and if
a lot of guys didn't know about it already, they
should know where it came from. Is there any when
I when I'm at UM in Indiana, Indianapolis the arena
there now a Banker's Life concco whatever it used to be. UM.
They always have a great exhibit when you walk around
the main concourse to the history of Indiana basketball and

(01:06:34):
things like that. I do you have anything in there?
I'm trying to. I want to say, like I feel
like I've seen something there, like when we don't. But
we're working with them very closely to conceive of something.
And part of it. One of the reasons is that
there's a man named George Crowe who was from Franklin, Indiana.

(01:06:56):
He played for the Franklin Tiger Franklin bear Cut who
their coach is also in the in the Basketball Hall
of Fame. But what he did is is he was
Indiana's first Mister Basketball African American youngster. And he eventually
played for Indianapolis University was called at the time, and

(01:07:20):
then played for the New York Renaissance, and he also
played for the Cincinnati Reds as a baseball player. A
tremendous athlete and so he was part of that team
in nineteen forty eight that was playing against the Minneapolis
Lakers in that fateful game, that if it had gone
a different way, the Wrens might have been one of

(01:07:41):
the founding teams in the NBA. So there's lots of
connections like that, you know that eventually, and I talked
about all that in my book. Yeah, and again the
book is The Black Fives, the epic story of Basketball's
Forgotten Era. You're still Brooklyn, You're no, You're not. You're

(01:08:02):
not living Brooklyn anymore though, right, I don't I come
to Brooklyn lot. I do. I love Brooklyn. Yeah, because
I talked to uh, the director Shaka King recently and
he talked about he's still born and Ray you know,
he's from bed Sty, still lives there, and he was
kind of he was kind of against the arena when
it started, you know, he was afraid of what it

(01:08:24):
was going to do in terms of further gentrifying the community. Um,
and he kind of rebelled against it for a little while.
And then he had a little issue with what the
Knicks had done. He didn't really like he was a
Knick fan, and he decided to give Barkley as a
try and he went to a fight one time and
he just said that, Um, what he realized when he
walked into Barkley Center was that the Brooklyn community was there,

(01:08:48):
Like he saw, he saw people from his life there.
He never got that feeling at Madison Square Garden. And
I've always felt like the Barkley's has done a great job.
And I I understand thencerns going in and they still
maybe valid with some, but at the same time, I
feel like it really has become a part of that

(01:09:10):
community where when you go to a net game or
you go to a concert, you know, you see people
that live in the area. You see it's it's become
a community center. You see the way the court, the
you know, outside the front of the building became a
gathering point for different protest movements and things like that.
But you know, I was just curious as a Brooklynite
and now you know, you see a part of your

(01:09:30):
life's work, the rents there represented in the in the arena,
what you think of Barkley's and you know, after ten
years now in that community, No, I mean I was
in Barkley's when there was still like forklifts and cranes
and cartecks, you know, riding around. Yeah, the you know
what's now you know, a center court um, And I was,

(01:09:53):
I was among the you know, the concerned. I mean
at the time. I wasn't in Brooklyn anymore at that time,
but you know, Klin was made up of small you know,
record stores and barber shops and cafes and that whole
area you know back when, back when that you could
get you know, you could rent DVDs right to watch

(01:10:14):
a movie, you know that kind of thing. And you know,
some of that got relocated. But I agree with you
if you if you know, I was, I had I
was invited to the opening so Jay z if people
might not remember, but he did a series of opening
concerts and I was. I was at the opening opening

(01:10:35):
of the concerts and it was just tremendous. I mean,
the entire arena. It seemed like every single person in
the arena. Chris knew every word of every bar in
every song and was singing along whenever he dropped out,
like he would just drop out his voice and oh man,
and so you know, it was just really spell binding

(01:10:55):
special and you could tell. And also just the way
that the nets have done it right so the hiring
of people from the neighborhoods and people are getting real
jobs and and have opportunities to move up right and
as you can attest to, not because you were from
that error, but just the opportunity to keep going and

(01:11:17):
and for that for those pathways to be available. Um.
And then when you talk to people like I just
I'm one of those guys where if I'm whoever it is,
it's in front of me, whether they have a broom
in their hand or mike or whatever, like, I'm still
gonna be talking to them and just say, hey, how's
it going, how's your day? And you can tell from

(01:11:37):
the from the reaction, the vibe, there's a pride of
this is this is our Barclays Center, right, It's not
somebody else's. And it goes back to the stewardship, uh
point that I made earlier. You know, if if you
feel like it's yours and you're like, okay, this is
like something I I have some say so as I
have some pride and some connection you know to this

(01:11:57):
as well. And it definitely you know, has diversity of employees. Um.
And uh, also the way that they have you know,
the different food courts and availability of what's there that
you can buy in the arena. Um. You know, when
they first opened Rock Nation, Rock Aware had a store,

(01:12:20):
you know, shop like right there at street level. You know,
it was dope the whole the whole way around, you know.
I remember Taj Gibson came to play. You know, he's
from Brooklyn and from Fort Green and he came in
to play for the first time, and afterwards he talked
about how he goes. I couldn't believe how many people
I knew I was. I was walking around so guys
there were ushers, uh you know, janitors, the guy running

(01:12:40):
the elevator, you know, like they all were guys from
his neighborhood. And he knew who they were, you know,
and it was a good sense of that good sense
of that Josh Gibson was. It was in a video,
was in a Black Fives video. Actually if you yeah,
if yack it up, it was, Yeah, it was amazing. Yes, Yes,
Sarah nice see got him very there. That That's a
great I'm glad he did that. UM. I always end

(01:13:03):
these things by getting a sense and know the person
that I'm interviewing at a personal level a little bit
I know we've talked a lot about the Black Vives,
and we've talked about your your passion though for this,
and you could see that you've it's it's it's it's
rare that someone comes across something in their life that
they're passionate about and they can make their lives work
out of it. And it's it's really fascinating to hear

(01:13:26):
your story. Uh. The great Jim Balvano, the head coach,
had that uh never give up speech, which has always
been important in my life. And you talk about inspiring people,
he was He actually gave that speech because he was
receiving the Arthur ash Award at the ASPIS. And you
mentioned how Arthur ashe inspired you to go on this

(01:13:49):
journey with his blood. M So this this ties together
with that. He would say, if you to do to
live a full life, everyone should do three things every day.
They should laugh, they should think, and they should cry.
The laugh part what makes Claude Johnson laugh? Oh? Man, Well,

(01:14:13):
I would say that I have three sons, twenty three,
twenty one, and eighteen, and they're all student athletes and
so and the two older ones played football. My oldest
just graduated from the University of San Diego. He was
a cornerback. He won four conference championships. Wanted to get

(01:14:35):
into the NFL, really aspired to do that. He's a
forty inch vertical four three speed, but he just somehow
didn't quite work out for him. But he's reconciled with that.
So now he's helping us with our marketing. Then my
next one, he's a wide receiver at the University of Michigan.
Just elected to do his fifth year there. He could
have declared for the NFL, but wanted to see if
he could give it a go. He led the team

(01:14:56):
in touch receiving touchdowns last year last season. Yeah. Yeah.
And then my youngest, he's a senior at Blair Academy
in New Jersey, which is a boarding school, but they're
known for wrestling in basketball, and he just committed. He's
a point guard and he just committed to play basketball
for the United States Naval Academy starting in the fall. Yeah.

(01:15:19):
So when we talk about stuff, like we just laugh
about so many things and memories and stuff that we've
been through because it's been a journey for all of us.
You know, it's like I'm I was a stay at
home dad for a long time after Corporate America, and
so I'm I'm the first stay at home dad with
a global sneaker deal. So we laugh about that, you know.
And I'm a self taught historian, and we've we've had

(01:15:41):
ups and downs and and like you know, you you
you got to realize, like when somebody's friendly and smiling
and happy and grateful, it's also because they had they
went through darkness, right, and they had to fight through
that and that happened sometimes. It's real. It's a human thing.
It's part of humanity. And if you walk around, um

(01:16:03):
and just realize that about other people, Like, no one's perfect.
Everybody has their own journey. Everybody has things that they've
been through, and if you are just aware of that
when you're walking around, then you can then you can
appreciate people better and you can find ways to like
get other people to laugh, because when you get somebody

(01:16:23):
else to laugh and you laugh, yeah, yeah, it's just
a beautiful thing and people need that. And uh so
we just find ways to think of the humor and stuff.
And so I would say mostly with my sons, but
there's there's also things related to you know, work and
observations about life and things like that. So you kind

(01:16:46):
of jumped ahead to all the other things I was
going to say. So I was gonna say everyone, you know,
the cry part is not necessarily in a sad way,
but what moves your emotions? And you kind of started
to answer that. Yeah, yeah, I mean definitely, like there's
there's uh, you have triumphs, you know, you have triumphs
over over adversity. Um. You know, we have a saying

(01:17:09):
in our in our household. You know it's we put
it up like stoppable question mark or unstoppable question mark,
and uh, you know it's just you look at that
and you got to go, okay, well I have a
choice here. And and sometimes you know, the once you
achieve something, it feels so much better if you didn't
think at first that you could, but you tried it anyway,

(01:17:32):
you know, just try that right, Yeah, you know, so
so you you got to keep at it, and uh,
there is there's sometimes just the joy of achievement. Um.
And and you know when you when you put your
all into something and then you see it come to fruition.
You know, I love it when people create something from

(01:17:54):
nothing because you know, I can relate to that um
and just you know, keeping at it. And then you know, people,
there's a lot of you know, things going on in
the world where you sometimes have to pause and say,
but who are there more of you know, good people

(01:18:16):
shining a light or not? And once you recognize that
there's more light out here, you just don't don't always
see it. But all it takes is one light to
eliminate a whole room of darkness. Right. You can't put
out light with darkness, but you can put out darkness
with light. And so that's that's what we try to
focus on. Chris, the think part. You've given us a

(01:18:39):
lot to think about here. I was going to say,
usually I'll say when you you know, they have that
oculus outside the arena and everyone coming out of the
subway or coming into the arena can see what message
what you would put up there? If you could put
a message on that oculus. You've given us a few
options here already, but if you could put something on
that board for the whole world to see, well, you know,

(01:19:00):
our slogan with the Foundation is make history now, and
I would put that. And the reason I would put
make history now is because everybody wants to make history.
But you can't make history someday. You can only make
history by the way you behave and act and choose
at this very moment, because the entire history of the

(01:19:22):
universe led up to this moment, so you might as
well take advantage of it. And you know, it's it
seems philosophical, but most people are stuck in the future
with fear, anxiety, doubt, or in the past with grievance
or shame or regret, and it's really hard to understand

(01:19:42):
how to get into the present. And there are people
like Eckhartole and others who help you with that, and
of course your faith is going to help you whatever
that is, and so we try to try to focus
on that. And you know, the recognition of the past
and making it relevant is also the double meaning of
make history now because we can learn something from that past,

(01:20:07):
not because we want to go back there, but just
because those pioneers, even though they didn't realize and they
were probably many cases completely obscure, changed the entire trajectory
of the sport. And people like my grandfather who left
Louisiana because there were too many lynchings going on. He
went to the South side of Chicago and never learned

(01:20:30):
how to read or write. But he was a pullman
porter for his career. And then his son, who's my dad,
became a college professor, and you know, and then all
of his kids got their college degree, and all of
my kids are on their way to get into college degree.
So his choice make history now in nineteen nineteen to
leave Louisiana. He had no idea what the downstream trajectory

(01:20:53):
would be. And so what we tell you know, student
athletes today is don't worry about what's gonna happen and
just do the right exact thing now at this moment,
because you don't know. You can't predict what the trajectory
changing thing is going to be. Just like going back
to the future. You know, you don't know what's going

(01:21:13):
to happen. But just do the right thing from a
place of consciousness and presence today and then it'll all
In most cases, it'll all work out one way or another.
The universes tried to orchestrate that and choreograph that for you.
Claude Johnson, the Black Fives Foundation, or the curator of

(01:21:36):
the book The Black Fives, The epic story of basketball's
forgotten era. How can people follow the Black Fives and
the foundation. What's the best way to learn more? Well,
our tag is black fives, So whether it's on Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Just at Black Fives B L A c K five S.

(01:21:56):
The book you can google it's on Amazon. But you
can also support your local bookstore by going to bookshop
dot org. That's a good way to do it. Of course,
go to your library. We do have a you know,
a U r L it's that new book dot com.
But that's just our page. But you can certainly go there.
You can get gear and stuff like that as well. Um.

(01:22:18):
But uh, but that's the way to do it. And
if you want to DM me personally, feel free of us. Um,
you know, we'll get back to you, you know, just
DM us through through IG and you're good. Yeah. And
your teachers out there and especially in the in in
communities that would have interest in this, get you out there, right, Claude.
You want to go talk to the kids. Yeah, that's

(01:22:40):
what it's all about for me. You know, my dad
was as a was a teacher, you know, and somehow
apple probably doesn't fall far from the tree, you know,
you want to do something right, Claude. I really enjoyed
this conversation. Thank you so much for doing it. Thank
you very much, Chris. It is great being on with you.
Thank you Claude. All right, my thanks to Claude Johnson,

(01:23:04):
author of the book The Black Five's The Epic Story
of Basketball's Forgotten Era. Um, he has the Black Five's foundation.
You learn more about that and as he mentioned, if
you're a if you're a teacher out there and you
want to teach your students, your young students, more about
the history of that era and African American contributions to

(01:23:27):
the to the development of eventually the the NBA. Here
in Black History Month, definitely reach out to Claude and
he'd love to come speak at your school. Uh. It
really enjoyed talking to him and TD bringing Tom Dowd
back in here. It really was a enlightening conversation. I've
passed those murals at Berkeley Center so many times and

(01:23:49):
you know, read the little blurb about them, but didn't
get it. I think Claude was able to give me
a richer understanding of that era of New York City basketball,
which is amazing. Yeah, I mean Claude's book is just
it's immaculately researched. And I'm talking like like old school research,
like you know, go to the library and dig through

(01:24:10):
the micro film looking at old newspapers and remember that.
And yeah, fortunately that's a memory. Now we can just
google everything, you know, digging through city records and maps
and things like that. And honestly, it's on the level
of what you would see from a PhD. Your attended professor.
It's because it's it's not just a piece of basketball history.
It's a great piece of American history that kind of

(01:24:32):
puts all of its characters in the context of their
times and how they got to these places. They really
made the game grow in the first half of the
twentieth century. It was a guy we talked about the
Smart Set Athletic Club whose pictures on the wall at
Barkley Center. That's Dolly King. He was a little bit
after Dolly King. He was a little bit after the
smart Set, and he's kind of you know, I did

(01:24:55):
an episode of my Basketball's Borrow podcast that's coming up,
and it kind of tried to cover the first fifth
years of basketball in Brooklyn, and when you look at
that period, you have Dolly King, who was probably the
best basketball player to come out of Brooklyn between nineteen
hundred and nineteen fifty. But because like we were saying before,

(01:25:15):
that history has not deeply covered, he's kind of a
forgotten guy. What's his connection to Red Holtzmann. He played
with Red Holtzman on the Rochester Royals. And this is
where things get twisty, right, This is this is the
old National Basketball League, which you know, a bunch of
its teams merged. First they jumped to the Basketball Association

(01:25:36):
of America and then they merged. And so you know,
Dolly King played for the Rochester Royals in nineteen forty
six because the National Basketball League was integrated at that time,
not very deeply, where the NBA wasn't when it first founded.
And so the Rochester Royles were very good team in
that league. They won the championship the year before he

(01:25:58):
got there. And the future Hall of Fame coach Red Holsman,
who was another Brooklyn guy, he was a guard on
that team, and he and Dolly played together and roomed
together for a year. And for people who don't know
all the history, the Rochester Royals today are better known
as the Sacramento Kicks. Yeah, went to Kansas City first
ye and then ended up out in Sacramento. Who are

(01:26:21):
ten games over five hundred this year for the first
time in eighteen years? How about that one? Yeah, but
light the laser or whatever they do up there. But yeah,
I mean, Dolly, you know, at the time, college basketball
is a little bit of a bigger deal, and New
York City was the center of college basketball. And he
played for Long Island University, which had a Hall of

(01:26:41):
Fame coach in Claire b was a national powerhouse. They
won the n i T twice kind of when that
was a bigger deal in the NCAA. And Dolly played
at LU and then he jumped to play for the
New York Renaissance. And maybe that puts him in context
better than anything else can, because in the first fifty
years of the twentieth century, you've got the original Celtics

(01:27:04):
independent team and you've got the New York Rents, which
was an all black team, and they really are the
two prominent teams of that period. And they weren't two prosters.
They had seven or eight guys. And Dolly King was
on that team, which is, you know, one of the
best teams in the world, just as as an aside.
You know, you talk about the college game was the thing,

(01:27:26):
and it was an East Coast thing most of the
time back there before the NBA really got going. And
then you had the I know this because Marty Glickman
was my broadcasting coach and he was so connected to
college basketball when they started broadcasting. He ended up being
the original voice of the Knicks for a very long time,

(01:27:48):
but before that was a college broadcaster and people always said, well,
you know, why isn't Marty Glickman regarded like Ben Scully
around the country. Marty did a lot of college and
college was a big deal. And then you had the
CCNY scandal with fixing games, right, and that led I
think to the popularity the professional game. Like college basketball

(01:28:13):
took a real hit with the CCNY scandal, and it
kind of and Marty was kind of a like attached
to the college game back then. So it's a really
there's a kind of this really interesting how the NBA
came to be that I don't think people know a
lot about. Yeah, I mean, and it really changed the
history of the college game because it really decimated college

(01:28:36):
basketball in New York City. Is you know, CCNY Long
Island University, which I mentioned as a Brooklyn school. They
were crushed by that scandal. The history of Long Island
University basketball might look very different. It might be a
very different basketball program today if those scandals hadn't happened
in nineteen fifty. And then you know, we're later on
the Jack Molina scandal in the sixties, which we'll talk

(01:28:58):
about in our Basketball Scoro podcast later on, because that
affected a lot of great Brooklyn players. Basketball is Burrow
podcast series. Look forward to seeing that anything else. Do
you want to provide information about that? Yeah, I'm still
waiting for a release date. Correct. A launch date is TBA.
We're working hard on it. We feel good about the
first couple episodes and it's it's just gonna be a

(01:29:20):
lot of fun. I just finished right in the episode
about the Big East. You know, we're going to talk
about Pearl Washington and Chris Mallens, so we really cover
a lot of ground. And yeah, you put a lot
of work into that, So really look forward to that
coming out and speaking in New York City Basketball next
week here on the Voice of the Nets. It is
my honor to have on Keith Ergo the head coach

(01:29:43):
of Fordham University. We're going to talk to him right
before the start of the eight ten tournament, which is
at Barkley Center. That's the hook. That's the hook for
me to get the Fordham head coach onto the Voice
of the Nets podcast. Just saw him last night on
Bruce Beck doing the the Bruce Becks, a you know,
midnight show there on NBC Channel four. I was a

(01:30:05):
little upset that, you know, Bruce got the got to
him before I did. But no, we're gonna we'll talk
to Keith Urago, who's an interesting guy. You know, he's
had a long history of college basketball and trying to
revive the Fordham program, which he has done. They've won
more games this year than they have since I was
a student back there. That's a long that's over thirty
years ago, by the way. Um, So we're gonna talk

(01:30:27):
to Keith Urgo and Fordham and another part of New
York City basketball and TD. We appreciate you setting this
up with Claude Johnson and look forward to the Basketball
is Borow podcast series. Thanks for joining us thus, Chris,
all right, that's uh, that's TD. We gave you a
bunch of things to read. I told you about The
Black Fives, the epic story of Basketball's Forgotten Era by

(01:30:47):
Claude Johnson. Gave me The Obstacles the Way by Ryan Holliday,
and Uh, I just I always got to give somebody
something to watch or listen to and stay stay with me. TD.
Here we continue. Um. So I was flying back from
Atlanta and we were on a plane that actually had
live TV. We don't normally do that, and had a

(01:31:09):
lot of movie options and things like that, and I
could have watched the basketball game, and I just I'm
just after that game in Atlanta, I was just like
needed to I need to clear my head. I needed
just something mindless for the hour and forty five minute
flight home. And I stumbled across a movie I wanted
to see was called the uh, the Phantom of the Open.

(01:31:30):
You know this movie tone I don't. I don't think
I've ever even heard of it. This is a movie
that just it was. It's a recent movie starring Mark Rylance.
You know Mark Rylance, incredible actor and I'm a huge
fan of his as well. Uh. It's the story, it's
a it's a it's based on a true story. It's
a true story of a guy in in England who

(01:31:55):
somehow got his way into the British Open in nineteen
seventy six despite the fact that he had never played
a round of golf in his life, and he kind
of it's not that he was trying to fool anyone,
or that he was trying to that he was a

(01:32:19):
fake or a fraud or you know, or the guy
who's like the one who used to dress his different
people and you know, getting the layup line of the
All Star Game. He's not like one of those guys.
It was more the story of a guy who just
was a very simple man, who was who was older
and he was losing his job as a crane operator
and his wife would just always remind him to do

(01:32:39):
something great, and he just saw golf on the British
Open on TV and said I'm gonna do that, like
very earnestly thinking I'm gonna do that, and somehow messed
up the application so badly, like figure it out or
you have to fill out an application, Okay, messed it
up so badly and put that he was a professional

(01:33:00):
that they stamped him into the tournament and you know,
I mean, I won't give away all the movie, but
you know, he he shoots a one twenty one in
the first round until they realized this guy's not really
a professional golfer and it's the worst round of golf
ever played in a major. But it tells his story

(01:33:21):
and his family life, and it's a true story. It
is really cool. I enjoyed it. So that's my recommendation.
You know, one twenty one on a British open course
for a guy who never swung a club before he
had he had he was he had practiced like he
practiced leading up to the tournament, but he didn't like

(01:33:42):
he didn't he couldn't even get on a golf course.
Like he was this like working guy in England and
barely could get a set of clubs, and like he
would just go to the park and he would hit
golf balls, and you know, he thought he was pretty good,
you know, and then he realized in he's a guy
tea off on the first tea and he's like, whoa,
that guy's wow, Like I party hit the ball, you know,
like it was really it's cool and and and Mark

(01:34:04):
Rylance is such a great actor, and that's I think
the real appeal of it for me was. I loved
watching him and you know, he's so earnest as a
is a word I used with him. And one of
the greatest scenes I think that that I always point

(01:34:25):
to in a film was from Mark Rylance in the
movie Bridge of Spies. Remember that movie with Tom Hanks, yea,
and he played a Russian spy who was living in
the United States, embedded in the United States, and they
find him out and they put him on trial. And
this is another like kind of stoic philosophy thing, is

(01:34:49):
there's a scene where he's about to get sentenced and
he's just sitting there and Mark Rylance his character which
he wanted Academy Award for it, by the way, as
Supporting Actor in Just Spies, and he's just sitting there
and it looks like, you know, he's reading the morning
paper and they're about to sentence him. And Tom Hanks

(01:35:09):
turns to him and he says, aren't you worried? And
he looked up at him very earnestly, like not being
a wisegar. He just said what it helped? And I
always point that to people who have, you know, going
through something where they're worried and you know, aren't you worried, well,

(01:35:31):
would it help you? Know? So that that always stuck
out with me. And his character is great in this
movie and he's great, So it's a recommendation for you there. Tone.
But yeah, now he's terrific in there, and he plays
it that way. Stellwark very throughout. And I know you
and I were talking Christopher Nolan movies before we started recording.
He was in John Kirk. He was very good and

(01:35:52):
I actually saw him a couple of years ago. He
was doing twelfth Night on Broadway and just wonderful actor.
Great to see in anything, and even in the The
Trial of the Chicago Seven. If anybody ever saw that,
he plays the Alan Dershwitz right as the lawyer or
the Chicago Seven, I believe it is or I have
the wrong lawyer. It wasn't. I don't think it was Dershwitz.

(01:36:15):
He played the lawyer, was playing William counselor William I
had my wrong having the wrong lawyer there, Yes, William
Counseler and he was perfect in that. Yeah, And it
took me. It took me a while to realize it
was him, actually that it was him. Yeah, he is
a he is a chameleon. Yeah, dun Kirk he talked
about he's in that as well. Great great room there. Anyway,

(01:36:37):
we've gone on quite quite a while here with the
postgame show. T D looking forward to your Basketball's Borough podcast. Um,
I don't know, you know, you're you're sort of making
a move within the organization. You may not have time
to work with us as much here on the Voice
of the Nets, but we appreciate everything you've done, uh

(01:36:57):
this patched year in getting this thing up and going,
and all the great guests that we've had, and I
will still lean on you to do some more of it,
and I appreciate all your hard work and attention to it.
So thank you very much. Thank you. I'm always happy
to help and I'm definitely looking forward to dropping back
in a couple more times once we get Basketball's Burrow
up in rolling to talk about some of the great

(01:37:18):
stuff we got there. All right, that's Tom doubt Thanks
to our guest Claude Johnson. Thanks to our engineer Isaac Lee,
always making us sound good. We'll talk to you next
week when we have Keith Ergo from Fordham. Hopefully they
will be in the top four and have the double
bye at the Atlantic ten Tournament, which is next week
at Barkley Center in Brooklyn. Until then, I'm Chris Garrino.

(01:37:40):
This has been the voice of the Nets.