Here is what some of basketball’s founding fathers would say about the current N.B.A. lockout.
Lockout Blues, and Ancient Hoops Wisdom
By Vince Thomas for TheRoot.com: Before the NBA was desegregated, there were the Black Fives.
The team and its players on this vintage photograph of an African American basketball team in 1931 remain unidentified, but I still appreciate the stories it tells.
One hundred years ago this October, in 1910, the first all-black play-for-pay team, the New York All Stars, were formed in New York City.
I was in Manhattan last week for Converse’s celebration of the 35th anniversary of Rick Telander’s playground basketball classic, Heaven is a Playground.
Ellen Jenkins Harris, entrepreneur and daughter of New York Rens star Clarence ‘Fats’ Jenkins, joins Black Fives, Inc. as its newest Advisory Board member.
In 1950, Cooper, a Pittsburgh resident and Duquesne University graduate became the first African-American selected in the NBA Draft.
Crowe, a handsome former pro basketball and pro baseball star who looks much younger than his 88 years of age, still strikes a chord though a man of few words.
Duquesne honors Chuck Cooper, among first blacks in NBA, by staging inaugural Chuck Cooper Classic, a hoops doubleheader featuring HBCU teams. How cool is that?
This story from a Black Fives Era descendant links the distant basketball past with the funeral of New York Renaissance star John Isaacs earlier this year.










