HOUSTON (AP) – Most people have never heard of Harlem Renaissance Big Five.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is intent on changing that.
The 63-year-old Hall of Famer has co-written and is the executive producer of a documentary called “On the Shoulders of Giants.” It tells the story of the Harlem Rens, an all black professional basketball team that defeated the Original Celtics for the world basketball championship in the 1930s.
“The primary reason that I did it was because the early days of professional basketball are almost totally unknown now to the public because it happened so long ago,” Abdul-Jabbar, in town for the Final Four, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “There’s no footage. It’s just fallen through the cracks of history.”
The Rens, who competed from the 1920s until 1949, were named after Harlem’s Renaissance Casino and played in its second-story ballroom. Jazz greats including Count Basie and Cab Calloway played at halftime of the Rens’ games, and they’d come on again after the game for a dance that lasted until the wee hours of the morning.
They won more than 2,000 games, including 88 straight in 86 days in 1932-33.
Abdul-Jabbar, who was born and grew up in Harlem, said he didn’t learn of the Rens until the summer before his senior year in high school.
“When I was still in high school I knew that they were a very good team,” he said. “But I didn’t know their relationship to professional basketball until much later, after having played professional basketball.”
The movie is currently available on Comcast on demand but is set to be released on Netflix in May. It features music by artists including Chuck D of Public Enemy, will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and Herbie Hancock. Jamie Foxx narrates the film, and a star-studded list of people, including Spike Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, Carmelo Anthony, Charles Barkley and Bill Russell, appear in it.
He said it was easy to get so many people to lend a hand with the film.
“There are a lot of people who like the sport who I know and who have something relevant to say with regard to where the sport is today and where it’s come from,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “So I was able to get people to say a few things about what they knew about the Rens and give them a little bit of the recognition that they deserve.”
The documentary also features an interview with John “Wonder Boy” Isaacs, a Ren who died in 2009.
The impact of the Rens, who were enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in 1963, is far reaching, and Abdul-Jabbar said even the late John Wooden, his coach at UCLA, was influenced by the team.
“Coaches would bring their staffs to watch them play so they could figure out a way teach the game,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “That’s how well they played the game. My own coach John Wooden, he played against them in the 1930s. He played for a professional team in Indianapolis. He remembered how they played and tried to incorporate some of their expertise in his coaching philosophy.”
Abdul-Jabbar was most struck by the obstacles the Rens had to overcome in playing in a time when America was segregated.
“They couldn’t travel like everyone else,” he said. “They couldn’t stay in hotels. There was no guarantee that would be able to eat at a restaurant, and sometimes people wouldn’t sell them gas because they were black. It was a very different time in this country and very difficult to be a person of color and try to function in America. Yet they dealt with all of that just for the opportunity to play basketball.”
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SMOOTH OPERATOR: Connecticut freshman Jeremy Lamb has the curse of smooth.
On the court, he moves so easily it hardly looks like he’s breaking a sweat.
People have noticed throughout his career but rarely with an admiring tone.
“That’s my personality,” Lamb said Sunday. “I’m just real calm. I don’t really show much emotion on the court. That’s just how I am. A lot of people ask me about that, ask me, ‘Are you really working hard?’ and stuff like that. I’m working hard. I just don’t show much emotion.”
Lamb heard the same thing at Norcross High School in Georgia, despite averaging a team-leading 20 points as a senior, and the impression followed him to Storrs, Conn.
“When I first got to UConn, people were saying, ‘You’re going half-speed. You’re not working hard.”’ he said. “I was working hard. It looks like I’m not. So yeah, sometimes people get on me for that, but really when I start scoring, don’t nobody really say nothing, so I just got to score.”
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OTHER OPTIONS: VCU coach Shaka Smart isn’t the only one who turned down Harvard.
Butler defensive specialist Ronald Nored got an academic scholarship from the school considered by many to be the most prestigious in the country. But just as Smart did about a decade earlier, Nored decided to go somewhere where basketball would be as big a deal as his grades.
The Homewood, Ala., native initially committed to Western Kentucky, but changed his mind after coach Darrin Horn left for South Carolina. Nored then decided to go to Butler.
“Harvard’s done a great job. Tommy Amaker’s done a heck of a job at Harvard lately,” Nored said Sunday. “And the fact that he told me the average Harvard graduate makes $300,000 after they graduate, I was like, maybe I need to be going to Harvard. But I thought Butler’s been doing great things over the last 10, 11 years, and I just wanted to be a part of something special.”
That he has. Butler is the first Indiana school to make the Final Four in back-to-back years, and Nored and the Bulldogs will play for the national title for a second straight year Monday night. The eighth-seeded Bulldogs play third-seeded Connecticut.
“It’s really exciting,” Nored said. “The thing that’s changed in the last few years is that people will recognize who Butler is a little more, that people are excited about Butler basketball.”
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NEW ALLEGATIONS: Former UConn player Nate Miles recently told The New York Times that coach Jim Calhoun knew he received improper benefits from a former team manager, contradicting statements Calhoun made to the NCAA.
Calhoun acknowledged making mistakes in the recruitment of Miles, which led to a three-game suspension next season by the NCAA, but said he did not have knowledge of payments and gifts that were given to the player.
Calhoun’s lawyer issued a statement after the allegations surfaced and the coach didn’t elaborate much more on Sunday.
“I’ve said before that I took full responsibility as the head coach, anything that happened within our program,” Calhoun said. “So, therefore, I accept that responsibility. I said my own personal and private thoughts would be kept personal and private.”
Miles, who was expelled from UConn in October 2008 without ever playing for the Huskies, said he received shoes, clothing and money from a former team manager who was introduced by current Quinnipiac coach Tom Moore, a former assistant under Calhoun.
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GIVE THEM A CHANCE: Butler coach Brad Stevens feels for the non-BCS football schools who never get a chance to play for the national championship no matter how good their records are. He said he’s a fan of Boise State and TCU.
“I’m one of the guys screaming at the TV when TCU doesn’t get a spot to play for the national championship,” he said.
He was excited when someone told him Boise State quarterback Kellen Moore attended a Butler game in Salt Lake City last season wearing a Bulldogs’ T-shirt.
“That’s pretty cool,” Stevens said. “Our guys rallied around that. Every time Boise would play, they’d be talking about that the next morning. I think that’s a pretty neat deal. Certainly we understand what they’re going through in a lot of ways.”
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WALKER TO THE NBA: UConn coach Jim Calhoun has said Kemba Walker’s draft status is high enough that he should probably consider leaving school for the NBA.
Walker hasn’t thought much about what he’s going to do but certainly didn’t rule out a return despite prognostications that he’s already got a foot out the door.
“Everybody’s got the perception I’m leaving,” Walker said. “Everybody says, ‘oh, yeah, he’s leaving, he had his senior night already and is graduating early.’ That’s not the case. I just want to get it over. If I was able to come back, I’d probably have just one class, but I don’t see why people make those perceptions. I just want to win the national championship at this point.”
So with the potential of being a lottery pick in the NBA draft, why would Walker come back to Storrs?
“If we win the national championship, I’m thinking back to back,” he said. “We’ll have a great team; we’ll have the same team, actually. Coming back would be fun. These guys are my brothers.”
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AP Sports Writers Nancy Armour, Hank Kurz Jr. and John Marshall contributed to this report from Houston.
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