Basketball Career Still an Inner-City Dream

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04 April 2008

Basketball Career Still an Inner-City Dream

But only few achieve star status, financial rewards

Tony Wilson, 9, gets a shot off and scores in front of New Orleans Hornets guard J.R. Smith during a holiday basketball camp for inner-city youth in Oklahoma City in 2005. (© AP Images)

Tony Wilson, 9, in a one-on-one match against the New Orleans Hornets’ J.R. Smith at an inner-city camp in Oklahoma City (© AP Images)

For many inner-city youth, especially African Americans, basketball always has been a means to gain recognition and the chance of a quick career — on a college team or maybe in a professional league. Tens of thousands of kids practice very hard and dream big, but only 35 will join the NBA each year, writes author and professor Steven A. Riess.

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Inner-City Kids Dream of Being Basketball Stars
By Steven A. Riess

Basketball is the sport of choice of the U.S. inner cities, the less affluent, often ethnically diverse neighborhoods of the American metropolis. Invented in the United States in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, it is an affordable sport that offers young men and women a chance to display their skills, creativity and athleticism.

For nearly a century, the world’s best basketball players were Americans, but the world has caught up and defeated the United States at its own game in the Olympics. In 2004, the U.S. team lost three games and walked away with only a bronze medal. Today, nearly 20 percent of the National Basketball Association (NBA) is foreign-born. (See “Foreign Players Help San Antonio Win Basketball Championship.”)

Basketball started out as a college sport, but quickly became very popular in the urban slums among children of eastern and southern European immigrants because it fit in well with their environment, needing little space or expense. Social reformers advocated the sport to improve players’ health, morals and character, and also to Americanize them, teaching such important values as self-sacrifice, teamwork, quick thinking and hard work.

Until the 1950s, the top basketball players were mainly second-generation inner city youth, primarily Jews who used the sport to get college scholarships.  Basketball was considered the “Jewish sport,” much like basketball later became the “African-American sport.”  Jews were very prominent in the late 1930s and early 1940s, making up nearly 50 percent of players of the professional American Basketball League, based in the Eastern states.

However, the Jewish prominence on the court began to slide after World War II, as Jewish families became more successful and moved out of the inner city.

TROTTERS AND RENS

African Americans were also playing basketball by the early 1900s.  There were two important traveling black pro teams, the New York Renaissance (Rens) of 1923-1949, and the Chicago-based Harlem Globetrotters, established in 1927 and still in operation, but they could not play in a “white” league. They were virtually the only teams where black players could earn a living.

The Rens won 80 percent of their games, and captured the World Championship Professional Basketball Tournament in 1939, which the Globetrotters won a year later.  In 1948, the Trotters defeated the Minneapolis Lakers, the best white team in the United States. These African-American teams played aggressive, quick and physical basketball.

The primary sport for African Americans at this time was baseball, and in 1947 Jackie Robinson became the first black player in the major leagues. Baseball attracted many of the finest African-American athletes of that day.  Pro basketball then was a minor sport.  The National Basketball Association was created in 1949, and one year later included three black players — Chuck Cooper, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton and Earl Lloyd — who encountered hostile crowds, prejudiced foes and biased referees.

The first national black basketball star was center Bill Russell, who joined the Boston Celtics in 1956.  He was an exceptionally agile center and brilliant defender and rebounder who led the Celtics to 11 championships. He was quickly followed by superstars Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor and Oscar Robertson, who reshaped pro basketball. Black players were not merely successful, but dominating. There have been only four non-black most valuable players (a title awarded each season by sportswriters and broadcasters) since 1958.

By the 1960s, colleges in the North dramatically increased their recruitment of black players, drawn heavily from poor urban neighborhoods, and by the late 1960s, even the most segregated southern colleges were integrating.  An important symbolic moment occurred in 1966 when Texas Western University, whose top seven players were black, won the Division I National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Championship over the all-white University of Kentucky squad. (See “Basketball’s March Madness Thrills Fans, Boosts School Morale.”)

NEIGHBORHOOD HEROES

Black youth growing up in the inner city idolized these athletic pioneers, and, increasingly, the most talented athletes focused their attention on basketball instead of baseball.  They emulated the more flamboyant pro stars as well as legendary playground heroes who developed a freer-flowing, improvisational style of play different from the traditional “white” style that stressed team play and bounce passes.  The “black” approach emphasized speed, agility, leaping and creative ball handling, epitomized by Marques Haynes, dribbling wizard of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Since the 1960s, kids have attended games at NBA-run Summer League playgrounds where they could see their neighborhood heroes show off. Legends developed about players who pick quarters off the top of backboards, make 360-degree dunks (slamming the ball down the basket) and “pin” (block) shots against the backboard. Kids were also influenced by the pros on TV, like Earl “the Pearl” Monroe, with his dribbling, spins and “in-your-face” jump shots, and the extraordinary leaps to the basket by Julius “Dr. J.” Erving.

Today, the neighborhood playground is a heaven for inner-city youths, where they can exercise control and establish their reputations as “performers” as well as athletes. The playground provides a community where they learn social skills, creativity and cultural identity. They learn the rules of the game and the social conventions of the playground court, where such feats as making a good move, a difficult shot or a prodigious block and impressing the fans often are more important than winning. In the inner city, the playground, together with the family and church, can provide youths with a respectable social network, keeping them away from gangs and out of trouble.

DREAMS AND REALITY

For many young black men, basketball always has been more than a game. It has been a means to gain recognition through striking play and a chance of quick social mobility — to college and maybe to the NBA. Currently, about 60 percent of Division I college players and 75 percent of NBA players are African Americans. They provide role models for black inner-city kids, who practice very hard to improve themselves, while using the game as a means of self-expression.  They are very hungry to succeed and they dream big, just like baseball players in the Dominican Republic or soccer players from the slums of Brazil. But there can only be one Michael Jordan.

A recent study of black youths ages 13-18 found that 70 percent expected to play in the NBA, where in 2007 the minimum salary was $427,163 and the average salary was $5.2 million. Each year, 40,000 African-American boys will play high school basketball, but only 35 will make the NBA.

Social commentators and community leaders are pointing out that the allure of professional basketball may be distracting talented black youth from academic pursuits. Some colleges came under criticism for recruiting inner-city youth who shine on the court and then paying little or no attention to their intellectual development and academic progress. A 2007 report found that just 43 percent of black male college players graduate.

There is certainly a downside to the great basketball dream — a problem that has not yet been adequately addressed.

Steven A. Riess is the author of City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (1989), Touching Base: Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era (1980, 1999) and Sport in Industrial America 1850–1920 (1995). He teaches history of American sport at Northeastern Illinois University.