Before Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Julius Erving, or Michael Jordan -- before Magic Johnson and Showtime -- the Harlem Globetrotters revolutionized basketball and spread the game around the world. In Spinning the Globe: The Rise, Fall, and Return to Greatness of the Harlem Globetrotters, author Ben Green tells the story of this extraordinary franchise and iconic American institution. While millions of fans have been entertained by the Globetrotters, the true story of their amazing eighty years as a team has never been told. With lyrical prose and masterful story-telling, Green chronicles the Globetrotters' rise from backwoods obscurity during the harsh years of the Great Depression to become the best basketball team in the country and, by the early 1950s, the most popular sports franchise in the world. Through original research, Green also uncovers intriguing controversies about the Globetrotters' origins, their image in the African American community, and how they were used as a propaganda weapon during the Cold War. Green renders captivating portraits of founder Abe Saperstein and the players who defined the Trotters' legacy, including Inman Jackson, Goose Tatum, Marques Haynes, Meadowlark Lemon, and Curly Neal. He descibes the Trotters' struggles to overcome racial discrimination and internal dissension on their long road to glory. In equally vivid terms, Green details the Globetrotters' fall from grace to the brink of bankruptcy in the early 1990s, and the ultimate rebirth under owner Mannie Jackson. At every turn of the narrative, Ben Green illustrates the surprising connections that link the Globetrotters' story to the complex issues of race and sport in America, and skillfully weaves a social history of America into the Trotters' saga. Of their formative years, he writes: "The Harlem Globetrotters were not just a great barnstorming team; they were a sociology class on wheels, bringing black hoops and black culture to a hundred midwestern towns that had seen neither, and in the process transforming Dr. James Naismith's stodgy, wearisome game -- which was still sometimes played in chicken-wire cages by roughneck immigrants with flailing elbows and bloodied skulls, a sport more resembling rugby -- into an orchestration of speed, fluidity, motion, dazzling skill, and, most improbably, inspired comedy." After playing more than 20,000 games in over 100 countries, before millions of fans, the Harlem Globetrotters truly belong to the world. This is their story.

Today's National Basketball Association commands millions of spectators worldwide, and its many franchises are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But the league wasn't always so successful or glamorous: in the 1940s and 1950s, the NBA and its predecessor, the Basketball Association of America, were scrambling to attract fans. Teams frequently played in dingy gymnasiums, players traveled as best they could, and their paychecks could bounce higher than a basketball. How did the NBA evolve from an obscure organization facing financial losses to a successful fledgling sports enterprise by 1960?   Drawing on information from numerous archives, newspaper and periodical articles, and Congressional hearings, The Rise of the National Basketball Association chronicles the league's growing pains from 1946 to 1961. David George Surdam describes how a handful of ambitious ice hockey arena owners created the league as a way to increase the use of their facilities, growing the organization by fits and starts. Rigorously analyzing financial data and league records, Surdam points to the innovations that helped the NBA thrive: regular experiments with rules changes to make the game more attractive to fans, and the emergence of televised sports coverage as a way of capturing a larger audience. Notably, the NBA integrated in 1950, opening the game to players who would dominate the game by the end of the 1950sdecade: Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, and Oscar Robertson. Long a game that players loved to play, basketball became a professional sport well supported by community leaders, business vendors, and an ever-growing number of fans.

One of the most popular sports today, this title features 150 of the most influential people to ever play the game, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, and Candace Parker.

This text offers an examination of African Americans in sports, those highly successful and influential individuals, athletes, and teams who have transcended mere celebrity to come to represent a given era. The book explores the history and lives of complex, multi-layered personages and groups who reflect the conflicts and contradictions of their times, and it examines the extent to which modern mass media and popular culture have contributed to the rise, and sometimes fall, of the these powerful symbols of athletic, individual, and group excellence.It includes articles on: the Williams Sisters; Shaquille O'Neal; Jim Brown; The Harlem Globetrotters; Jack Johnson; Jesse Owens; Joe Louis; Magic Johnson; Wilma Rudolph; Muhammad Ali; Barry Bonds; Negro Baseball Leagues; Tiger Woods; Michael Jordan; Florence Griffith Joyner; Eddie Robinson; Arthur Ashe; George Foreman; Wilt Chamberlain and others.