On February 13, 2014, the Harlem Globetrotters come to Vancouver and will play at UBC's Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre. To have a chance at winning a pair of tickets click here to enter a draw on our facebook page.
Or if you are looking for a great holiday gift, you can buy tickets online here.
This isn't the first time the most famous basketball team in the worls has come to the Point Grey campus, in fact the Thunderbirds and Globetrotters used to play an annual game and the last time they met back in 1946, UBC won.
Story from Erwin Wodarczak, UBC Archives
In the 1930s and 1940s, one of the highlights of the UBC sports calendar was the annual visit by the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team.
In those days the Globetrotters, already famous for their on-court antics, were nevertheless a serious professional team. Consisting of black players prevented by colour barriers from playing in the established all-white basketball leagues (similar to the situation in Major League Baseball in those days), the Globetrotters barnstormed across North America.
It was a point of pride that they never turned down a challenge from any team, whether professional, amateur or collegiate. Back then, there were no easy victories against "stooge" teams like the modern-day Washington Generals.
The Globetrotters first played the UBC Thunderbirds basketball team in a noon-hour game on February 14, 1936, during the team's first visit to Vancouver. The results were reported in the February 18 edition of The Ubyssey:
The Harlem Globe Trotters strutted their stuff in a big way, with trick shots, perfect ball-handling, screen plays et. al. – to chalk up a 39-23 win – not that it mattered.
Although the Harlemites were continually in the limelight, Varsity's Senior A's, bolstered by "Henny" Henderson, made a very creditable showing. Charley Hardwick and "Spud" Davis were the most effective of the hard-fighting Collegians.
Through most of the first half, the dusky hoopers played smart, almost-perfect basketball. Again and again, they flashed down the floor with a four-man attack to sink plenty of baskets from close-in. Their screening and interference plays with phenomenal shooting brought rousing cheers from the Student supporters.
With the game under control in the second half, the Globetrotters began their comedy routine, consisting of trick shooting, play-acting and ball-handling stunts – "a vaudeville show that would put the Ziegfeld Follies to shame [and] had the spectators doubled up with laughter," according to The Ubyssey.
The highlight was perhaps when Globetrotter Harry Rusan started dribbling the ball down the court, stopped in front of Lloyd Detwiller, waved his hands in front of the UBC player's eyes, and politely handed him the ball. Whether hypnotized or just surprised, Detwiller simply dropped the ball to the floor.
The story was much the same the following year. Although the final score was a close 46-43, the result was never in doubt. The final score of the January 1939 game, a 60-34 Globetrotter victory, was a more typical scoreline.
The language used by The Ubyssey in reporting the game unfortunately was also typical of the period:Â
The Harlemites with their hi-de-ho just had too much on the ball for the Thunderbirds who spent most of the afternoon picking up experience – while the cuhlad boys picked up the points. The suthern pickaninnies didn't rub it in too much though and kept the score within bounds.
By the mid-1940s, however, the Thunderbirds were developing into one of the top basketball teams in Canada. At the same time, during the Second World War the Globetrotters lost many of their top players, either to the American armed forces or to high-paying factory jobs. So the final result of a Globetrotters' game was no longer a foregone conclusion. "'BIRDS BOP HARLEM, 42-38," read the headline in the January 12, 1946 edition of The Ubyssey:
UBC's HIGH-FLYING Thunderbirds out-ran, out-shot, and out-played the mighty world-famous Harlem Globe Trotters as they chalked up a well-earned 42-38 victory before a jam-packed house of screaming students in their Varsity Gym Friday at noon. Paced by young Pat McGeer, who tallied a total of 14 points, the 'Birds grabbed a 23-16 lead at half time and then played the Trotters at their own slow-moving pace for the second half to take the four-point victory.
There was no mention of the usual Globetrotter antics in The Ubyssey – they were presumably too hard-pressed by the UBC team to indulge in tricks and comedy. The result was no fluke; later that week the Globetrotters would lose again, 57-44, to that year's other top Canadian basketball team, the Victoria Dominoes. Coincidentally (or not), it was the last time that the Globetrotters would face the UBC Thunderbirds. Future games would be against either local all-star teams or other touring squads.
The sport of basketball was catching up to the Harlem Globetrotters. Starting in the late 1940s American college basketball teams began integrating, and in 1950 the first black players were drafted by the NBA. With fewer sources of talent to draw upon, their teams tended to be weaker than in the 1930s, and the Globetrotters began their transition from a professional touring team to the sports-entertainment entity they are today.
Nevertheless, UBC's victory over the Globetrotters deservedly ranks as one of the great sports achievements in university history. That 1946 Thunderbirds basketball team is still considered one of UBC's all-time best, and would eventually be inducted into the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame, along with individual members Sandy Robertson and Reg Clarkson, and coach Bob Osborne. The 1946 team, along with Robertson, Clarkson, Osborne and Pat McGeer, has also been inducted into the UBC Sports Hall of Fame.
