Basketball is a sound measure of resourcefulness. On the court, players are instantly crafting something from nothing — be it Shaquille O’Neal dunking over multiple defenders in his prime or Steph Curry swishing a 3-pointer several dozen feet from the basket.
But the sport also has evolved away from the court since being created by Dr. James Naismith in 1891. Its foundation was laid well before the NBA matured into a billion-dollar industry with an international talent pipeline — even decades before the likes of Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson and Elgin Baylor followed in the footsteps of the league’s first Black draftee, Chuck Cooper, in 1950.
This year marks the centennial anniversary of Naismith Hall of Famer Bob Douglas assembling arguably the best pro hoops team preceding integration: the New York Renaissance.
“The long-term impact was that (the Renaissance) inspired so many young Black people to play basketball that they made integration of the game inevitable,” basketball legend, culture writer and New York native Kareem Abdul-Jabbar told The Athletic by way of his longtime manager and business partner of 30 years, Deborah Morales.
Understanding Douglas’ contributions to basketball prompts journeying back to when pro leagues didn’t allow Black participants in segregated America. The inventive mind of Douglas served as a spark to basketball’s boom of talent, promotion and entertainment value. During his quarter-century stint running the Renaissance, Douglas’ rosters won 86 percent of their games, leaving an indelible impact on even basketball’s most veteran observers.
“James Usry was the first Black (man) to be mayor of Atlantic City. He played for the Renaissance,” longtime Philadelphia broadcaster and commentator Sonny Hill, who is nicknamed “Mr. Basketball” in the city, told The Athletic. “People don’t know that. People don’t know that coach John Wooden, one of my father figures, said to me the greatest team he’s ever seen in basketball was the Renaissance.”
The Renaissance’s path to hoop lore started in 1908, when Douglas, who migrated to America from St. Kitts two decades prior, co-founded the Spartan Field Club. Located in Manhattan, it was meant for Black children to compete in amateur sports and led to Douglas creating a basketball squad initially named the Spartan Braves. He played on the team until retiring at 36 to focus more on promoting the club as basketball popularized along the East Coast.
Douglas’ hustle and vision carried him away from his days as a hospitality doorman working seven 12-hour shifts per week with only every other Sunday and Thursday off.
“I especially like how Douglas embodied the American Dream,” Abdul-Jabbar said about Douglas’ path to basketball dominance. “An immigrant who, through sheer grit and hard work, built a mini-empire for himself. If he were alive today, he would own half of New York.”
When Douglas pitched Harlem-based real estate developer William Roach — born in Montserrat, less than 60 miles away from Douglas’ homeland — about hosting a basketball team in 1923, he hardly did so from a place of leverage. Douglas had an idea centered around gathering enough patrons to fill Roach’s casino. Customers could vibe to live music during timeouts and halftime. And after games, famed jazz and swing musicians could play until the late hours.
Douglas agreed to name his basketball team after Roach’s 900-seat Renaissance Ballroom and Casino for marketing purposes, doing away with the Spartans name he popularized. He also agreed to share a comfortable portion of gate receipts with Roach. Such an agreement paved the way for good business, despite Douglas preferring to keep his original team moniker.
“I needed a home floor bad,” Douglas told Sports Illustrated before his death in 1979. “So, I offered to name the team the Renaissance, even though I didn’t want the name. It was too cumbersome for a basketball team.”
On Nov. 3, 1923, the Renaissance tipped off against the Collegiate Five, an all-White team, and notched a 28-22 victory. The Renaissance’s on-court debut was the starting point of their dominant, nearly three-decade run against any team willing to meet them in New York or on the road. The Renaissance notched 2,318 wins under Douglas’ leadership and clinched several independent basketball titles. By the end of the 1924-25 season, Douglas led the Renaissance to the Colored World Basketball Championship.
From 1923 until 1948, the roster included several athletes who have extensive historical backgrounds. Players like Clarence “Fats” Jenkins, Zack Clayton and Bill Yancey also played baseball in the Negro Leagues. Before he became the second African American to sign an NBA contract, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton played with the Renaissance. Eyre Saitch, in addition to being a great basketball player, also was a national-level tennis standout.
New York’s on-court success established Douglas as one of the premier coaches, businessmen and recruiters in a growing — albeit segregated — sport.
As New York and the rest of America reeled from the Great Depression, once-lively audiences at the Renaissance Ballroom mirrored the country’s gloom as the national jobless rate peaked at 25 percent. Keeping the lights on became a challenge for Douglas and the team without fans to entertain.
In a just world, Douglas and the Renaissance could’ve made due by joining the professional ranks and notching consistent salaries, but the team’s application for the American Basketball League was rejected in 1926.
With families to support, reputations to maintain and skills to hone, the show must go on. Douglas eventually dug into his own pockets to buy a bus for the Renaissance. Barnstorming became the team’s sole business strategy.
Journeying across the Midwest and through the Deep South amid Jim Crow was a tall task for Black people. Despite their on-court success, the tight-knit Renaissance found solace in living to see and play another day.
Douglas and his team sometimes ate and slept on the bus when seeking opponents during the Great Depression. In rare instances, the team was allowed to eat in restaurants, with the exception made only if the Renaissance ate their food standing up.
Their hotel accommodations rarely went above dwelling with bed bugs and body lice. White gas station owners would chase away the Renaissance with rifles in hand upon seeing the team’s bus pull in for fuel.
Some game venues installed fences around the court to protect Black players from angry spectators. Team members even recalled needing riot squad assistance to leave hostile environments.
“Often, when they were down South, they stayed in dorms or private African American homes (when barnstorming),” Susan J. Rayl, an associate professor at SUNY Cortland, told The Athletic about the Renaissance’s road experiences. “There were very few hotels in which they could stay. There was some sense of where you could go and where you couldn’t go.”
Rayl’s studies about Douglas and the team led to a friendship with Renaissance guard John Isaacs, who recounted his occurrences for Rayl’s 1996 dissertation about New York’s peaks and valleys. Isaacs passed away in 2009 at 93 years old, six years before his Hall of Fame induction.
John Isaacs was a star of the New York Renaissance (or Rens) during the Black Fives era. The team was the greatest of that segregated era, in part because of Isaacs, who led them to more than 350 wins and the first ever World Professional Basketball Tournament championship. #BHM pic.twitter.com/VA7i25izz2
— NBA (@NBA) February 7, 2021
Born in Panama, Isaacs’ impact on New York hoops reached the likes of fellow Hall of Famer and New York native Chris Mullin.
“He worked with me at a lot of basketball camps when I was a kid, and it wasn’t until I got older that I realized his historical importance,” Mullin said about Isaacs the week of the Isaacs’ passing.
Douglas led the team to 88 consecutive wins over an 86-day span between 1932 and ’33, doubling the previous record set by the original Celtics in the 1920s. The Renaissance finished the 1932-33 season with a 120-8 record.
By 1939, with pro hoops leagues still segregated, Douglas entered New York into the World Professional Basketball Tournament (WPBT), a Chicago-based invitational for deciding the first world champion of basketball.
Bragging rights certainly can help draw confident competitors, but a $10,000 cash prize — equivalent to more than $200,000 today — was the ultimate mark of respect. Given the times, of course, the possibility of an all-Black championship game was negated before the tournament tipped off.
En route to defeating the Oshkosh All-Stars for the inaugural world basketball title, the Renaissance faced the Harlem Globetrotters in the semifinals. It marked a seminal moment in history as two Black basketball teams squared off with several marks of respect at stake.
“The brackets had been deliberately set up so the Globetrotters and Renaissance couldn’t both make it to the finals,” Abdul-Jabbar said about the 1939 tournament field. “It would’ve been unacceptable to the White audiences, players and owners to have two Black teams eliminate all the White teams. So, having the Renaissance win was a win for Blacks — not just as players, but as management.”
Douglas and the Renaissance continued etching their legacies as the 1940s continued. The team finished second in WPBT history with two title-round berths and 10 appearances. In exhibition games, they made $500 per appearance and earned a gate percentage when playing against newly formed ABL squads.
The last of those WPBT runs ended in a 1948 championship defeat against the all-White Minneapolis Lakers, who took the title with a 75-71 victory. Clifton (Renaissance-high 24 points) and George Mikan (game-high 40) dueled in a hotly contested bout.
Laker legend, George Mikan going up against Rens player Dolly King. Dolly was my high school referee. pic.twitter.com/wZ2y8sLw
— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (@kaj33) March 17, 2012
Despite the disappointment of defeat, the Renaissance’s final run at the world basketball title capped another dominant season. The team won roughly 86 percent of its games over a 26-year run of Harlem nights, barnstorming America and challenging for dignified recognition.
Reaching those heights validated Douglas’ vision. His knack for recruiting, coaching and promoting pioneered much of what has grown today’s pro basketball into a billion-dollar spectacle. Though the relationship between the recruiting, coaching and promotional work done by Douglas and basketball’s modern existence isn’t linear, much of that reflects the cracks of history through which so many other dots go unconnected.
Months after that Lakers loss, the Renaissance’s most viable opportunity came by way of replacing the 2-17 Detroit Vagabond Kings of the National Basketball League and migrating to Dayton, Ohio, because their ballroom facility was insufficient for league play.
After Douglas ceased overseeing team operations, the Dayton Renaissance compiled a record of 14-26 after Detroit dissolved as a franchise. The NBL’s pending merger with the BAA (Basketball Association of America) left what remained of the Renaissance to discontinue after Dayton fans boycotted most of their games. Cooper, Clifton and Earl Lloyd led the NBA’s first wave of Black players by 1950.
In 1972, the Naismith Hall of Fame enshrined Douglas as its first Black solo contributor. Several individual Renaissance players — including Clifton, Clarence “Puggy” Bell, William “Pop” Gates and Charles “Tarzan” Cooper — also have been inducted for their gifts to basketball.
“They were the spark, but after that, it’s taken on a life of its own and evolved to where it is today,” Edwin Henderson II told The Athletic. Henderson is the grandson of Edwin B. Henderson, another Black innovator who helped popularize basketball. The elder Henderson is credited as the first academic researcher of African American participation in sports. His 1904 summer studies at Harvard led him to basketball before he shared the game with his hometown. Henderson’s leadership helped establish the first athletic conferences for African Americans less than a decade later.
Since the Renaissance’s prime, many other basketball pioneers have done their part to push the game forward. But even an icon among icons recognizes Douglas’ contributions as critical paradigm shifts.
“Basketball is a sport, but on the professional level, it’s also showbiz,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “The whole point is to get people to buy tickets or watch on TV. Douglas was an innovator in getting people to buy tickets through hyped rivalries and working the Black community.
“Finding out about the achievements — and the fact that they were owned by a Black man — gave me an enormous boost of pride.”
Douglas was 96 years old when he died July 16, 1979. In 2014, the Renaissance Ballroom, which he helped manage until 1973, was sold for $15 million, closing a valuable but underrated chapter in basketball history.
In the years since the Renaissance’s run, American pro hoops has added more historical chapters via unrestricted free agency for players, the 1976 ABA-NBA merger, several NBA expansion franchises and the 12-team WNBA, where women’s pro basketball is enjoying a boom. Last October, roughly a century after Douglas pitched his prized idea for a Black pro hoops squad to play, the NBA announced that its opening-night rosters featured 120 international players from 40 countries.
The game of basketball — like most sports — has globalized enough for all aspirers to follow their dreams. And Douglas’ legacy grows each time basketball finds a healthier path ahead.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Charles Knoblock and Frank Franklin II / Associated Press)
