Jay-Z’s co-ownership of the Brooklyn Nets reminds us of the Smart Set Athletic Club — America’s first all-black basketball team — whose players lived in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section where he grew up.
Jay-Z’s Link To Brooklyn’s Century-Old Black Basketball History
Indy Star: George Crowe’s place in history was cemented when he won the first Indianapolis Star Indiana Mr. Basketball honor while playing for Franklin High School in 1939.
Crowe, a 1943 graduate of Indiana Central, was a three-sport star for the Greyhounds in basketball, baseball and track. Known as a great scorer and rebounder on the hardwood, Crowe was an all-state player in 1941 when the cagers finished ninth in the country.
Did one devastating punch thrown by a future Basketball Hall of Fame player in an unrelated game threaten to derail Jackie Robinson’s baseball debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers?
Part I of a multi-part series on George Crowe, the last living Harlem Rens player, covers his Indiana schoolboy basketball career.