Introducing the Globetrotters coming your way soon
Set up 91 years ago to give black players a game, the Harlem Globetrotters remain a slam-dunk success
It is hard to miss Moose Weekes. At 6ft 9in and with a frizzing busby of hair so magnificent he makes Marouane Fellaini look as though he is suffering from advanced male-pattern baldness, he is big. Really big. “Funny thing is, people like to point that out to me,” he says in his laconic Atlanta drawl. “Standing in the airport check-in this morning at 6am, you kinda knew someone was gonna come up and say, ‘You’re tall’. Like I hadn’t noticed before.”
Given his scale (and his lean, athletic demeanour) there is a fair chance also that people will make a stab at his profession. Particularly when he is wearing a tracksuit with probably the most renowned team name in American sport written across the front.
Because Weekes, 33, has for the past eight years been a member of the Harlem Globetrotters. Basketball’s most storied institution, an organisation that has been bouncing balls for more than nine decades, the Globetrotters predated the National Basketball Association by more than 20 years. Although, admittedly, when Moose unzips his jacket he might confuse the unwary, leaving them scratching their heads at who exactly are the “Globet Rotters”.
Alongside him, Carlos “Dizzy” English, his team-mate for the last seven years, is less conspicuous. At 5ft 9in, off court, the 32-year-old blends unnoticed into the crowd. Though put him in an arena and he looks, by comparison with the rest of the players, as if he has just finished a shift at Snow White’s place.
“I’m 6ft 5in in my head,” he says. “But what I lack in height, I make up for in speed. I run between the tall dudes and make ’em dizzy. That’s where I got my name.” So unexpectedly normal-sized is he, only last month, spotting him in his Globetrotters apparel, someone asked Dizzy if it was a Halloween costume.
“I told them no, I really am a Harlem Globetrotter,” he recalls. “They laughed. Luckily I had a ball with me. So I could show them a few tricks.” And the moment he did so, they realised he was not messing around. This is a man so adept at manipulating a basketball that he can even get one to spin on the end of his cack-handed interviewer’s forefinger. Which, as fleeting instants go, is as satisfying as anything the inveterately non-athletic could experience. It is a truly astonishing feeling.
“That’s what we’re here to do,” says Dizzy, as he adeptly catches the ball when it goes flying off its temporary resting place. “Spread a little joy.” The unexpected thing about the Harlem Globetrotters is that they are still around, still spreading a little joy.
They were founded in 1926 to provide professional basketball opportunity for black players prevented from participating in the mainstream by America’s relentless sporting apartheid. By the Seventies, they had become a comedy troupe of sharpshooters and trick-shot wizards doing funny things with hoops and balls, a vaudeville act spreading the message of basketball across the globe.
They even had their own cartoon series, in which they inflicted humiliation on a variety of charlatans, ne’er-do-wells and all-round bad guys, armed only with a basketball and a pair of garishly striped knee length shorts. But these days, with the NBA a worldwide phenomenon, open to everyone of any creed or colour, the team’s purpose might be thought to have withered on the vine.
Yet, according to Moose and Dizzy, in London for a fleeting visit to promote their UK arena tour next May, the Globetrotters have never been bigger. So popular are they, at any one time there are up to four separate teams on the road, wowing audiences on all five continents with their ability to do things with a basketball that appear only possible with the generous application of superglue.
“It’s quite something for an operation that has been around for 91
consecutive years to remain relevant,” says Moose. “We are part of American history, introducing basketball throughout the world. It’s an honour carrying the torch of the names that have come before, like Curly Neal, Meadowlark Lemon, Sweetwater Clifton. We’re trying to make sure the kids today are talking about us in the same way you spoke about Meadowlark when you were a kid.” Moose and Dizzy have played anywhere and everywhere, from an ice rink in Russia (“We all wore cleats,” says Moose) to an arena in Chile in midwinter where the heating had broken and they were in danger of their sweat freezing.
“Only one way to describe it,” says Dizzy. “We were chilly in Chile.” And wherever they go, the pair say the reaction is the same.
“People love us,” says Moose. “It is a privilege to represent a brand that is synonymous with goodwill.” Type the words Harlem and Globetrotters into YouTube and up comes a hint of what they do to earn that reputation. Compilation videos abound of trick shots, of bewildering dribbles, of balls flung into nets from players on roller coasters, zip wires, low flying aircraft. This is what the show entails: trickery. According to Dizzy, the difference between an NBA game and a Globetrotter performance is that you might go to watch the LA Lakers or the Chicago Bulls and not see your favourite player do anything beyond the routine. With the Globetrotters, outrageous trickery is guaranteed.
Or as Moose puts it, in an answer you suspect he might have delivered before: “You’re gonna see a lot of rim-wrecking high-flying dunks, a lot of superb ball handling, sharp shooting from all angles. We’re gonna give you great entertainment, a time you’ll never forget. It’s a party atmosphere. We’ll share your popcorn, we might steal your food, you might find yourself on the court dancing with us, or getting wet from a water bucket. And one thing is for sure, you will leave our company with a smile on your face. From the smallest child to the oldest adult, you will go home entertained.”
It is the arms race of new, inventive ways of throwing, passing and shooting a ball to ensure entertainment is provided that keeps the players on their mettle.
“You wanna know the secret?” asks Moose. “It’s all magic. When you play for the team, you have to be a student of the Globetrotter history. We have to be innovators of the game of basketball. We have to do stuff that the audience has never seen before. We are constantly competing among ourselves to come up with that stuff.”
So much so, Moose says he long since stopped counting the number of hotel light fittings he has smashed taking a ball back to his room to practise some more. And that is a fact of life about being in the Globetrotters: the relentless touring, the way the hotel becomes home from home. These are sportsmen who see more of airport check-in staff than they do of their families.
“The clue’s in the name,” says Moose. “We’ve travelled to 123 different countries. But that is part of the fun. We enjoy meeting people from all over. Me especially, I love it. I immerse myself. I really like to enjoy the different food.” As he speaks, a waitress comes over to the table and asks what he would like to eat.
“I’ll have the burger and fries,” he says. Though, in case we might think that is not the most local of gastronomic selections, he adds a caveat.
“We are in England,” he smiles. “So I won’t say I want a pickle. What I’ll say is, I’d like a gherkin.”
‘The clue’s in the name. We’ve travelled to 123 different countries. But that is part of the fun’