Franklin is living a dream
Chris (Handles) Franklin is especially animated when talking about a cartoon.
“I saw the Harlem Globetrotters on Scooby-Doo when I was six years old, and I knew I either wanted to solve mysteries or play for the Globetrotters,’’ recalls Franklin, 40, who was in Regina on Friday to promote the team’s Jan. 7 game at the Brandt Centre.
“I’m truly living a dream.’’
But there was plenty of living to do until that goal could be attained.
Franklin joined the team when he was 34 — an age at which many basketball enthusiasts are ex-Globetrotters. By then, the personable product of Harrisburg, Pa., had already earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work.
“When I graduated from graduate school, I decided to pursue my dream, which was to be a Harlem Globetrotter,’’ he says. “I got an offer to teach at the University of Pittsburgh, where I graduated, and I turned it down to pursue my goal. People told me it was a foolish thing to do.’’
They were proven incorrect — although not immediately.
“The Globetrotters were interested, but it didn’t quite work out,’’ says Franklin, who had sent audition tapes to the team. “There was an NBA lockout and a lot of the players who were going to the NBA ended up going to the Globetrotters. At the last second, they knocked me out of the box, and I had all my eggs in that basket.
“I continued to persist. I had to take the long way.’’
In the process, he went a long way back to his childhood. His parents bought him a basketball after he became fascinated by the Globetrotters and their ballhandling wizardry while watching Saturday morning cartoons.
There was not a basketball court near the Franklins’ household, but the future Globetrotter was undaunted. He vividly recalls dribbling the basketball up and down the sidewalk.
“I never put the ball down,’’ he says. “I just kept dribbling, everywhere I went.’’
As a result, the “Handles’’ nickname was applied on a playground when he was in high school.
“I would handle the ball and people used to say, ‘He has handles,’ ’’ he remembers.
Eventually, he enrolled at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania and quickly made an impression with his ball-handling. He is second on the school’s alltime assists list and fifth in steals.
After playing college basketball, Franklin continued to pursue higher education while aspiring to some day, somehow, make the Globetrotters.
Although his first attempt at doing so was unsuccessful, his skill with the basketball was such that he eventually caught the attention of Nike. He appeared in television commercials from 2000 to 2004, often demonstrating his talents alongside basketball luminaries such as Paul Pierce, Lamar Odom, Vince Carter and Baron Davis.
“Eventually, the Globetrotters found me,’’ Franklin says with a smile. “I couldn’t have written a better story.’’
Since becoming a Globetrotter in 2007, Franklin has visited 67 countries. He has made 10 trips to China and has repeatedly performed for American troops overseas. One such journey took him to Iraq.
“That was scary, because it was during the war,’’ he says. “The landing was crazy.
“We took a Black Hawk (helicopter) into the cities we would go to. We would have the bulletproof vests on and the helmet. There’s no doors and the fly-in is just a scary, scary thing.
“As a matter of fact, this year our team was in Afghanistan and two days after we left one of the bases, it was hit by a suicide bomber. It was scary for our players. You realize what our troops have to go through on a regular basis and what they go through to protect us as individuals.’’
Franklin has also met the commander-in-chief — noted basketball aficionado Barack Obama. “Handles’’ was among four Globetrotters who were invited to the White House in 2011 for the annual Easter Egg Roll.
“We took him through some ball-handling drills — dribbling through cones and some things that we were teaching kids down there that day,’’ Franklin says. “He’s very skilled. He did an excellent job.
“It’s amazing how personable he was, with all the focus on the president. He talked to you like you had known him for years. He’s very charismatic.’’
Charisma is also a prerequisite for a Globetrotter. The team, formed 87 years ago, combines sport and entertainment with the goal of creating a family atmosphere.
That approach first caught the attention of Franklin some 34 years ago. Now he uses that story as an example for others.
“I speak to kids all the time about believing in yourself and believing in your dreams, because the neighbourhood I grew up in, not a lot came out of it,’’ says Franklin, who spoke to students at George Ferguson School while in Regina. “People would say, ‘There’s no way you’re going to be able to be a Globetrotter,’ all the time. They would say I dribble too much.
“And now I travel around the world with the Globetrotters, dribbling a basketball for a living. Believe in yourself, and don’t let anyone ever tell you that you can’t do something or you can’t be somebody. With hard work and persistence, you can do it.’’
Or Scooby-Doo it, as it were.