Recalling basketball greats held back by racism

Clarence "Big House" Gaines (left) and Earl Monroe are among those featured in "Black Magic," a four-hour ESPN documentary. (WINSTON-SALEM STATE)

Fact: White people can never be sufficiently educated on the subject of racism.

But a fine place to start that education would be the four-hour ESPN basketball documentary "Black Magic," which will air in two parts tomorrow and Monday at 9 p.m.

This ambitious project, directed by Dan Klores, and produced by Klores and basketball great Earl Monroe, takes root with the founding of what we now refer to as the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) during Reconstruction - there were 75 up and running by 1900 - and takes us to the present day, where Cleveland Cavaliers center Ben Wallace of Virginia Union carries on the tradition of HBCU stars in the NBA.

We are introduced to African-American coaches and players whose names might not have resonance for whites, but who are a vital part of the sport's history. We are made aware of the historic so-called "Secret Game," a 1944 contest between a team representing the Duke Medical School and the all-black team fielded by the North Carolina College for Negroes, a game that was held at 11 a.m. on a Sunday because it was presumed everyone in Durham was in church.

That North Carolina College for Negroes squad was coached by John McLendon, whose influence on the game was profound. McLendon was a native Kansan who actually learned the game's finer points from Dr. James Naismith, but who was himself denied a spot on the Kansas team, because, well, guess why. He, in turn, mentored countless young men, two of whom, Ben Jobe and Clarence "Big House" Gaines, are well-profiled here. Any discussion of Top 5 all-time coaches must include the name of John McLendon.

We learn how the NCAA consistently refused to consider allowing the HBCU institutions from participating in post-season tournaments against white schools, even going so far in 1948 as to argue the laughable premise that "the quality of competition was not good enough." This at a time when the Harlem Globetrotters were busy defeating the professional champion Minneapolis Lakers in head-to-head competition and when the amazing New York Rens were wrapping up a 27-year barnstorming run in which they had won 85 percent of their games, mostly against white competition and all with players who had been developed by, yes, the HBCUs.

We are also reminded of Orangeburg.

Who remembers Orangeburg? Well, surely not most whites, who are well-versed in the tragic lore of Kent State, but who don't realize that a similar incident happened in 1968 when a group of nonviolent protesters from South Carolina State College, in Orangeburg, S.C., were fired upon by local police. Three students were killed, dozens were injured. As then-South Carolina State dean Dr. Oscar Butler explains, "The only difference between the students at Kent State and the students here is that they were white and at Orangeburg they were black."

This, of course, won't exactly be news to anyone in the viewing audience who happens to be black, any more than the saga of John Chaney will come as a surprise. Chaney is in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a coach, but no contemporary honor can undo the injustice that was done to him 57 years ago, when he was the 1951 Philadelphia Public School Player of the Year and received no big-time college offers from anyone, not even one of the basketball-crazed Philly schools. He took his phenomenal game to Bethune-Cookman College, in Daytona Beach, Fla., but despite his rather obvious two-way skills (35 points a game and tenacious defense) he was similarly ignored by the NBA, becoming, instead, the scourge of the Eastern Basketball League.

And Cleo Hill? Ever heard of him? Hill was the St. Louis Hawks' 1961 number one draft pick out of Winston-Salem, where he had played for "Big House" Gaines. Due solely to astonishing, overt racism, his NBA career consisted of 58 games in that 1961-62 season. Hill may have been one of the greatest basketball players who ever lived, and for many who love the game the highlight of these four hours may be the jaw-dropping footage in which the 6-foot-1 Hill shows off a dazzling offensive game that includes a succession of 15- or 20-foot hooks.

The idea that an owner would deprive himself of a supreme talent such as Hill because he was not a member of a preferred race (and because white teammates did not want to play with him) may preclude any need to explain what racism is ultimately all about.

One nitpick, if I may. Documentarians often exaggerate to prove a point, and Klores is no exception. Anyone not in possession of a historical basketball perspective would think that John McLendon, and John McLendon alone, had invented fast break basketball, and that all his progeny embraced it. But George Washington University under Bill Reinhart and Rhode Island State under Frank Keaney were famed in the 1940s for their "racehorse" style of play. And John Chaney abhorred it, winning his one Division II championship at Cheyney State by a 47-40 score and coaching a strict possession style at Temple.

But one nitpick out of four hours is pretty good. This is appointment television.

Bob Ryan can be reached at ryan@globe.com.