The 1948 Globetrotters–Lakers game was a dramatic match-up between the
Harlem Globetrotters
The Harlem Globetrotters is an American Exhibition game, exhibition basketball team. They combine athleticism, theater, entertainment, and comedy in their style of play. Over the years, they have played more than 26,000 exhibition games in 124 ...
and the
Minneapolis Lakers
The Los Angeles Lakers franchise has a long and storied history, having played and won championships in both the National Basketball League (United States), National Basketball League (NBL) and the Basketball Association of America (BAA) prior to ...
. Played in
Chicago Stadium
Chicago Stadium was an indoor arena in Chicago from 1929 to 1995. When it was built, it was the largest indoor arena in the world with a maximum seating capacity of 26,000. It was the home of the National Hockey League's Chicago Blackhawks and ...
, the game took place two years before professional basketball was desegregated. The Globetrotters' 61–59 victory – by two points at the buzzer – challenged prevailing racial stereotypes about the abilities of black athletes.
Background

The idea for the game, which was held on February 19, 1948, was hatched by Globetrotters owner and coach
Abe Saperstein and Lakers general manager
Max Winter
Max Winter (June 29, 1903 – July 26, 1996) was a Minneapolis businessman and sport executive who helped found the Minnesota Vikings.
Biography
Winter was born in Ostrava, Austria-Hungary (modern day Czech Republic, Czechia). He emigrated wi ...
, two friends who both believed they had the best basketball team in the country.
Each had good reason to think so. For two decades, the Globetrotters had traveled the country winning game after game. It was because the team was so unbeatable that the players first started clowning around to make the game more interesting. When the Globetrotters arrived at the Chicago Stadium to face the Lakers, they were on a 102-game winning streak.
The Lakers, on the other hand, were a new team, formed only six months earlier. But they were already on their way to becoming a powerhouse, with two future Hall of Famers: The
George Mikan
George Lawrence Mikan Jr. (; June 18, 1924 – June 1, 2005), nicknamed "Mr. Basketball", was an American professional basketball player for the Chicago American Gears of the National Basketball League (NBL) and the Minneapolis Lakers of ...
, who is described by the NBA as the league's "first superstar", and
Jim Pollard
James Clifford Pollard (July 9, 1922 – January 22, 1993) was an American professional basketball player and coach. As a player in the National Basketball Association (NBA), Pollard was considered one of the best forwards in the 1950s and was k ...
, whose leaping ability – he could dunk from the free throw line – inspired the nickname, "The Kangaroo Kid".
The Lakers, who took their name from Minnesota's designation as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes", were members of the
Basketball Association of America
The Basketball Association of America (BAA) was a professional basketball league in North America, founded in 1946. Following its third season, 1948–49, the BAA merged with the National Basketball League (United States), National Basketball Lea ...
(BAA), which was the precursor to the
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada). The NBA is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Ca ...
(NBA). As a black team, the Globetrotters were not allowed into that league, or any professional league. A year earlier,
Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American professional baseball player who became the first Black American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the Baseball color line, ...
had broken the color barrier in professional baseball, but basketball remained segregated. Four black basketball players had briefly been on various teams in another league, the National Basketball League. But when a fight between a white player and a black player during a game in
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse ( ) is a City (New York), city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States. With a population of 148,620 and a Syracuse metropolitan area, metropolitan area of 662,057, it is the fifth-most populated city and 13 ...
, triggered a riot in the stands, black players quietly disappeared from the league.
Many sports fans, team owners, and coaches did not want to see teams integrated. Some held the racist view that blacks were not equipped for sports like basketball that required coordination, strategy, and finesse. In 1941,
Dean Cromwell
Dean Bartlett Cromwell (September 20, 1879 – August 3, 1962), nicknamed "Maker of Champions", was an American athletic coach in multiple sports, principally at the University of Southern California (USC). He was the head coach of the USC track ...
, the assistant head coach for the U.S. track team at the
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XI Olympiad () and officially branded as Berlin 1936, were an international multi-sport event held from 1 to 16 August 1936 in Berlin, then capital of Nazi Germany. Berlin won the bid to ...
, which included
Jesse Owens
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who made history at the Athletics at the 1936 Summer Olympics, 1936 Olympic Games by becoming the first person to win four gold meda ...
, wrote that black athletes excelled in certain events because they were closer to primitive man than white men were.
Racism dominated other aspects of the Globetrotters' lives as well. The night before the game, the team checked into the same small two-story rooming house on the segregated South Side of Chicago that they visited every time they were in town. Called Ma Piersall's, its rooms were tiny, no more than ten feet by ten feet, and featured sagging single beds. Across town, the Lakers spent the night at the popular, luxurious, high-rise Morrison Hotel where a month earlier a black actress had been denied a room and told to find a room in a "South Side hotel for colored people".
The game
A record number of fans showed up at Chicago Stadium to watch the Lakers face off against the Globetrotters. It was an exhibition game played right before the official Basketball Association of America contest between the
Chicago Stags
The Chicago Stags were a National Basketball Association team based in Chicago from 1946 to 1950.
History
1946–47 season
In the BAA's inaugural year, the Chicago Stags were originally meant to start out as the ''Chicago Atomics'', to the point ...
and the
New York Knicks
The New York Knickerbockers, shortened and more commonly referred to as the New York Knicks, are an American professional basketball team based in the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of Manhattan. The Knicks compete in the Na ...
. Still in its infancy, professional basketball had never attracted more than 9,000 fans in Chicago. That day, nearly 18,000 filled the stadium.
The Globetrotters starting lineup, a combination of the best players from Saperstein's East and West units, featured
Reece "Goose" Tatum,
Marques Haynes
Marques Haynes (March 10, 1926 – May 22, 2015) was an American professional basketball player and member of the Harlem Globetrotters, notable for his ability to dribble the ball and keep it away from defenders. According to the 1988 film ''Harl ...
, Ermer Robinson, Wilbert King, and Louis "Babe" Pressley.

During the first half, Laker fans had reason to gloat. Their team quickly jumped to a 9–2 lead. The Lakers held a significant height advantage over the Globetrotters, with several players towering over Tatum, the Globetrotters' star, six-foot-three center, and Haynes, who was barely six feet tall.
Tatum turned out to be no match for Mikan, the Lakers' center, who scored 18 points in the first half while preventing Tatum from scoring at all.
At halftime, Minneapolis led 32–23. During the break, Saperstein and his team devised a plan to defend Mikan with two men instead of one. They also decided to fast break each time they got the ball, to tire the Lakers out. The Globetrotters knew they were in great shape, having played nearly every night for as long as they could remember. The strategy worked. With both Tatum and Pressley guarding Mikan, he was able to score only 6 points in the second half. The Globetrotters tied the game for the first time in the third quarter. On several occasions they led, only to watch the Lakers come back to tie the score.

In the final quarter, both Tatum and Pressley fouled out from guarding Mikan so closely. The rest of the team picked up the slack. With 90 seconds left, the Lakers tied the game at 59 with a free throw. When the Globetrotters got the ball, Marques Haynes, who earlier in the game had teased the Lakers by dribbling while lying down on the court, dribbled to run out the clock, since there was no shot clock at the time.
This was easy for Haynes: He once dribbled an entire fourth quarter to overcome a two-player handicap and sustain the Globetrotters' one-point lead.
With only a few seconds left, Haynes flipped the ball to
Ermer Robinson, who was stationed 30 feet from the basket. Flexing his knees and holding the ball to his chest, Robinson let fly the one-handed shot he had practiced hundreds of times a day on his childhood courts in San Diego. It was the same shot he had already missed three times in a row, and he hadn't sunk any from that far out. But this time the ball went in. Screaming fans poured onto the court. When the Globetrotters reached their locker room, they hoisted Saperstein, who was wearing double-breasted suit and wide tie, onto their shoulders.
A year later, the Lakers and Globetrotters met for a rematch, with the Globetrotters again winning, this time 49–45. The teams met six more times after that, with the Lakers winning each of those games.
The aftermath
The racial implications of the game were not immediately apparent. The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' headline, "Mikan Cooks Tatum's Goose", focused on the fact that the Globetrotter star only scored three baskets. Neither Saperstein nor Winter saw the game as being about race relations; they simply wanted to see which team was best.
"I'm positive that he
bedidn't see it as a racial game", Gerald Saperstein, a cousin of Abe Saperstein's who was at the game, told the Associated Press.
But to many team owners in the young and struggling basketball leagues, there was a clear message: Not only were black players as talented and capable as white players, they added a level of excitement to the game that appealed to both white and black audiences.
To black basketball fans, it was a moment of empowerment. "It just revitalized so many of us, from the fact that
t showedwhat we can be", said
John Chaney, the former longtime
Temple University
Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist ministe ...
basketball coach who, in 1948, was a teenager in deeply segregated
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville ( ) is the most populous city proper in the U.S. state of Florida, located on the Atlantic coast of North Florida, northeastern Florida. It is the county seat of Duval County, Florida, Duval County, with which the City of Jacksonv ...
.
Two years later, in 1950, three former Globetrotters became the first black players on NBA teams. The
Boston Celtics
The Boston Celtics ( ) are an American professional basketball team based in Boston. The Celtics compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Atlantic Division (NBA), Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference (NBA), ...
drafted
Chuck Cooper, the New York Knicks signed center
Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton
Nathaniel "Sweetwater" Clifton (born Clifton Nathaniel; October 13, 1922 – August 31, 1990) was an American professional basketball player who was one of the first African Americans to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was ...
, and the Tri-Cities Blackhawks (now the
Atlanta Hawks
The Atlanta Hawks are an American professional basketball team based in Atlanta. The Hawks compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Southeast Division (NBA), Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference (NBA), Easte ...
) took
Hank DeZonie
Henry Lincoln DeZonie (February 12, 1922 – January 2, 2009) was an American professional basketball player. He was the fourth African-American player in the National Basketball Association (NBA), following Earl Lloyd, Nathaniel Clifton, and ...
.
As basketball became integrated, giving talented black players greater opportunity to play professionally, the Globetrotters had fewer recruits to choose from. Rather than try to compete with the NBA, Abe Saperstein transformed the Globetrotters into a touring act, first against teams of all-star college players around the country and then with ambitious tours of Europe, South America, and the rest of the world. The Globetrotters also expanded their dazzling ball handling and shooting tricks, cementing their reputation as "the magicians of basketball".
The Lakers went on to become an outstanding team, winning six professional basketball titles in the next seven years: 1948 (NBL), 1949 (BAA), 1950 (NBA), 1952 (NBA), 1953 (NBA), 1954 (NBA). When Mikan retired in 1954, the team struggled financially. To boost attendance and revenue, then-owner Bob Short relocated the team to Los Angeles before the 1960–61 season.
Chicago Stadium, the venue of the first Globetrotter-Lakers game, was demolished in 1995. The impact of that game, however, was felt for many years to come. "Those Lakers-Trotters games definitely contributed to the integration of the league", basketball historian Claude Johnson told ESPN.
Stan Bergstein worked for the Globetrotters as announcer and promotions at the time. From his personal collection of photos, this is Marques Haynes,George Mikan, Stan Bergstein and Goose Tatum taken the day of the game.

References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Globetrotter
Lakers
The Los Angeles Lakers are an American professional basketball team based in Los Angeles. The Lakers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Pacific Division (NBA), Pacific Division of the Western Conference (NBA ...
Minneapolis Lakers games
1947–48 in American basketball
Race in the United States
1948 in sports in Illinois
1940s in Chicago