HERE’S TO THE LOSERS
MIKE VACCARO: Revamped Generals don’t plan to be Globetrotter pushovers
Here’s to those who love not wisely No, not wisely but too well … To the girl who sighs with envy When she hears that wedding bell … To the guy who’d throw a party If he knew someone to call … Here’s to the losers! Bless ’em all
— Frank Sinatra
N OBODY — truthfully, nobody — has ever known losing the way the Washington Generals know losing. For decades, they existed for one reason: because they were good losers. They would run around with the Harlem Globetrotters for 40 or 48 minutes. They would endure tricks. They would play the clown. They’d make their share of shots, sure.
Then they would do what they do better than any team, organization, political party, or country on earth has ever done. They would walk off the court losers. Again. And again. And again.
“That was then,” Sam Worthen says, serious as a tax audit. “It’s different now.”
Worthen has already lived one of the great New York basketball lives — raised on Brooklyn’s asphalt courts, a star at Franklin K. Lane High then at Marquette University, he played in the NBA with the Bulls and Jazz. He’s one of the names about whom they speak with such reverence on the West 4th Street courts downtown, and at Rucker Park uptown.
He has played and coached at every level, here and abroad, worked with kids, coached in college (most recently with Jeff Ruland at I ona, 2004-07), reached out to thousands of kids at clinics and camps.
Now, at 59, he coaches the newest incarnation of the Generals, who the week after Christmas will play the Globetrotters 11 times in six days to kick off the Globies’ 2018 world tour — including eight games at the Barclays Center, Madison Square Garden, Nassau Coliseum, Prudential Center and Westchester County Center.
And Worthen has a message for the folks who will come to watch the usual Globetrotter hijinks: the half-court heaves and the passing-drill warm-ups to “Sweet Georgia Brown,” the confetti and ice-bucket tricks, the dribbling wizardry, and, always, the winning scoreboard at the end.
“We are serious about this,” Worthen insists, and he isn’t putting anyone on when he says this. “We want people to know that we are serious about beating them. In the past the Generals were just too content with losing, there was a lot of careless talent, they were easy marks for the ’Trotters.” He paused. “Not anymore.”
Here’s to those who drink their dinners When that lady doesn’t show … To the girl who’ll wait for kisses Underneath that mistletoe … To the lonely summer lovers When the leaves begin to fall … Here’s to the losers! Bless ’em all
W ORTHEN knows the date well, as you might imagine: Jan. 5, 1971. The Generals, coached by Red Klotz, hadn’t beaten the Globies in 14 years, a 2,495-game losing streak. Between 19522015, in fact, the Generals — and their various aliases (Boston Shamrocks, Atlantic City Seagulls, Baltimore Rockets) — would lose over 17,00 times to the Globetrotters.
“We’re the Ginger Rogers of basketball,” Klotz told me a few years before his death in 2014. “Always dancing backwards.”
But that afternoon at the field house on the campus of the University of TennesseeMartin, the Globetrotters were without their featured star, Curly Neal. Absent their dribbling wizard, the Globetrotters toned down the “joke” aspect of the game — which usually accounted for roughly 70 percent of the game, enough to ensure a proper outcome — and played mostly straight up.
And they happened to catch the Generals — playing as the Jersey Reds that night — playing the best ball of their lives. By the time the Globetrotters knew it, they were trailing by 12 late in the game before mount- ing a furious comeback and taking a 99-98 lead with a few seconds left.
The Generals had enough time to get the ball to Klotz, who was 50 years old but still active. He hoisted up a two-handed set shot. To his dying day, he would never admit if he actually tried to make the shot or not, but it went in anyway.
The Generals led 100-99, the timekeeper kept trying to extend the game because Meadowlark Lemon, the Globies’ other big star, kept missing hook shots at the buzzer, but the Generals were finally declared the winners.
They celebrated by pouring orange soda
over one another. Klotz and Lemon didn’t speak for months. And that was that.
“Forty-seven years,” Worthen says. “I’d say 47 years is long enough to wait, wouldn’t you?”
A year after Klotz’s death, the Generals disbanded, but earlier this year they were reborn under the leadership of another New York City point guard of some renown, Kenny Smith, who became their general manager. He hired Worthen, and together they scoured the country looking for talent, eventually trying out 60 players.
“The Generals never did anything like that before,” said Worthen, who actually coached the old Generals briefly a decade ago. “Before, they just wanted guys who wouldn’t fall down running up and down the floor. Now we have basketball players. We have guys who know how to win.” Another pause. “We have guys who will win,” he says. To prove that these aren’t empty oaths, the Generals played their first game together back in July, in The Basketball Tournament — a 64-team pro event with $2 million in prize money where there is zero clowning around for even a second of every game.
“We played very well,” Worthen says. “People saw that we were taking this seriously. We played awfully good basketball.”
Alas, they lost in the first round, 76-72, to the Matadors, a team of former Texas Tech players. But it left their coach undaunted.
“We’re coming,” he says. “Believe it. Because I do.”
Here’s the last toast of the evening Here’s to those who still believe … All the losers will be winners All the givers shall receive … Here’s to worry-free tomorrows May your sorrows all be small … Here’s to the losers! Bless ’em all.
“WE CAN’T wait to be a part of history,” Worthen says.
But what about when that happens? Legend has it t he crowd at Tennessee-Martin booed when the final-final-final buzzer sounded. Stories have long been told that children cried, stunned that the Globetrotters had lost.
Worthen laughs. Heck, he was one of those kids once. He used to make the trek to the old Garden whenever he could as a kid to see the Globetrotters. And of course, he wasn’t there to watch the Generals (or the Reds, or the Seagulls, or the Rockets). He rooted for the Globies every time.
“You know what though?” he says. “I think we appeal to the regular guy. And everybody always likes to root for an underdog. I can envision it already, the day the final buzzer sounds and we’ve beaten them. It’s not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when.” He knows there’s skepticism. They’re the Generals, after all. They lose. It’s what they do. It’s what they’re supposed to do.
“I wouldn’t do this,” he said, “if I didn’t believe. Every guy on this team, we all believe. Just wait. You’ll see.”
Bless ’em all.