When did you decide you wanted to be a Harlem Globetrotter?
Growing up watching movies in the Ritz Theater in Wilmington, North Carolina. Watching the old newsreels, I saw these tall black gentlemen singing, lacing up their sneakers. They were filled with joy! Sweetwater Clifton, Goose Tatum, Rookie Brown, and then they did something they called the “Magic Circle.” And man, could they play! It was a life-changing experience. I went home, pulled apart a hanger, threaded it through an onion sack, cut the bottom of the sack, nailed the whole thing to a tree. I didn’t have a ball. The closest thing I had was a Carnation Evaporated Milk can. That was my basketball court.
That’s how you started?
Basketball is not as old as a lot of people might think. When I came along, basketball was basically in its infancy. We had to create things to make it work. There are a few people who want to take credit for the three-point shot, but Abe Saperstein and I created the three-point shot. We really put that together because most of our players were shooting from so deep already. And then I came along, and I took it a step farther. My half-court hook shot from the corner, nobody had seen it before, because it hadn’t been done. Suddenly, I’m shooting over 70% from there, which means that something new is going on here. There are some of the college players that I’ve spoken to and a lot of the players who played street ball, they knew who started all that. I’m not tooting my own horn, but we had to begin to create things.
Many people don’t realize how great those 1950s Globetrotters teams were and how they could have been championship-caliber NBA teams.
We had the best black basketball players in the world. And then, one morning, I woke up and everyone was gone. Carl Green had gone to the Eastern League. Andy Johnson went to the NBA with Woody Sauldsberry. Woody became the NBA Rookie of the Year. And, of course, Wilt Chamberlain. Several of the other players were getting older. That’s when Abraham Saperstein said to me, “You can do it.” He told Eloise, his daughter, that when he first met me, he pointed at me walking across the floor and said, “Honey baby, that’s the one I’ve been waiting for.” That started a new era of basketball.
Did you feel a great burden to keep the Globetrotters alive after all of those great players left?
It was there. We did cartoons where we were shooting the ball off the sun and the moon! We had to create stuff to keep the younger kids involved, because they didn’t know about the history of the Globetrotters. They need to be taught to play the game the right way. Even when I do basketball camps and clinics today, kids call the stuff that we did “the old school.” But I go back to the fundamental skills. For me to do everything right, I had to know the fundamental skills, and then twist them around to show them something different. Playing the game the right way comes first. Everything else is secondary, other than the lifestyle you live. People are going to be pulling on you, asking for autographs. You’ve got the professional autograph seekers. How do you handle that? How do you handle people? Our kids need to be taught that. We have so many young athletes today, they’re imprisoned by their lifestyle.
Could you have ever imagined the life you would live as a Globetrotter?
I found something that I could do exceptionally well. I recently was ill and had heart surgery. One of the doctors I had told his staff, “We have to keep this man healthy, because he brings joy to people. He goes to big cities. He goes to small towns. I saw him when I was growing up in a small town in Egypt.” And you never think about that. Growing up in a small town in a far away country. One of the players inducted in the HOF with me (Dino Meneghin) said that the reason why he played basketball was because he saw me play when he was a kid in Italy. He saw me play the pivot, so he wanted to play the pivot too. We had to start a whole new concept of basketball, including a lot of the marketing strategies you see today.
As the NBA was starting to sign the best African-American players, did that change the way you thought of marketing the team?
Mostly all of the marketing that you see today was taken from what we did. A lot of people didn’t like Abe Saperstein. We had a special friendship, because I believe I needed him and he needed me. I could say certain things to him that other players couldn’t say, because we had a bond. It was in a time when being a black person in America was very difficult. What turned my life around was when Abe saw other players in a city going into the nice restaurants and going into the hotels where we as African-Americans couldn’t go. He said, “Mead, I know what you’re going through. You’ve got to make them laugh.” That turned my life around. No matter where I am, no matter where I go, people thank me for the joy. For making them laugh. There was a time when fathers wouldn’t tell their kids how much they loved us. Once a year when we came to town, the fathers would gather their kids. They would save for the whole year to buy a $5 or $10 ticket to take their entire families. On television, they would gather around the TV and would watch us bring joy to people. That’s my story. I didn’t want to play in the different leagues, because I found something I did very well, and I was very satisfied with that.
Not only were you playing in places where African-Americans couldn’t play. You were playing in countries where Americans were not welcome.
It became a political situation, because our presidents called us “ambassadors of good will in short pants,” because we could go places and represent our country where they couldn’t go. We brought them something that they had never seen before. How could you take a sport like basketball and turn it into a situation where you brought joy to people. Not happiness—happiness is a whim. You could be happy one moment and then it leaves you. Joy is a spirit. It will stay with you forever. I heard a young man say, “I’m doing what you used to do with the Globetrotters.” I laughed because the time was different. The game was different. They didn’t have to ride on the bus for 500 miles. They didn’t have to dress on the bus while people waited for three or four hours after the game, because the weather delayed our bus. That doesn’t happen anymore.
You were also going to places where African-Americans often weren’t warmly welcomed. In many ways, you were breaking racial barriers.
We went to place where there weren’t any hotels. The second game I played with the Trotters in Germany, they built a court by putting office desks together. We played on the desks, and people sat on the floor and watched us play. In Cologne, Germany, we played on the bottom of an empty swimming pool. In Spain and Mexico, we played in the bullfighting arenas. We went everywhere, and we helped change the concept of the game. We would go to places where we would literally bring our floor and baskets in trucks. We would unload them ourselves, put them down outside and play. If it started raining, you couldn’t quit playing. If you didn’t play, you had to give the money back! In the soccer stadiums, we might play in front of over 100,000 people.
In the 1970s, after the Globetrotters revolutionized the marketing of the game, you were perhaps the most famous athlete in the world. Was that difficult for you?
I didn’t look at it that way. I looked at it the way I hope most athletes do. No matter how much money you earn, you’re no different than the next guy coming in. One of my sons, we went on a little vacation once, and people were coming up to me for autographs. And he said, “Dad, are you with us or are you with them?” I said, “I’m with all y’all. (laughs). Son, these are the people who pay our bills.”
You played in over 16,000 games, most of them consecutively. You must have played through injuries, sickness, everything.
I understand some of the players today, when they get hurt, they sit out. Once they lose a step, the owners of the team try to get rid of them. I didn’t see it in that manner. Sammy Davis Jr. once said to me, “When I walk out that door, I’m on stage. If I don’t want to be on stage, I don’t walk out that door.” I try to keep it that way.
Bringing so much joy to so many people, was it hard when it was time to say goodbye to the Globetrotters and retire?
I haven’t gotten to that point yet (laughs). I’m still very active. I speak. I do fundraisers, not just for athletes but for all people—police departments, fire departments, local church groups. We do fundraisers in so many different ways. We do it through basketball, because people remember me as a young man playing basketball with the Globetrotters. They still look at me as a Globetrotter. They still expect me to perform like that. There are times when I minister in churches, and there might be a big basketball goal in the pulpit. And the pastor will say, “Let me see what you can do!” I haven’t forgotten my roots. I know who I am. I know where I came from, and I have a wonderful wife to go home to. When I was in the hospital for a few weeks, my wife slept on the chair the whole time. The only time she left was when one of my daughters came in. She would go home and shower and come back. People who forget that they have that kind of love in their life are crazy!
Was it always in your plan to become a minister?
No, gosh no. People don’t realize that ministering is a calling we have in our lives. If you’re not called to do it, you shouldn’t jump into it. It’s something totally different. Do you make a whole lot of money? Some people do. Some people don’t. It doesn’t matter. The people that I know that make a lot of money, they give it away to help kids turn their lives around. Education is the most important thing.
Most athletes get to experience that feeling of joy they bring to their own city. But you experienced it around the world!
Yes, that was my personal calling. It’s not for everybody. It was for me. You can have 50 billion dollars, but if there’s no joy, you’re in bad shape. You need to be able to laugh. Most people can’t laugh. They don’t know how. Some of the leading countries in the world have this problem. They didn’t know how to love Americans. Here in America, we are so blessed. I love all the other countries I’ve gone to, but this country has something that nowhere else has, and I hope we don’t lose it. We have good people here who came from other situations in other nations, and they came here because they felt like they could get ahead. One of my neighbors came from the Middle East with $500 in his pocket and the coat on his back. He made his way through college. He works so hard. When I went into the hospital for my surgery, he just went and painted my house! He said I want to make it special for you when you come home. Isn’t that amazing?
It must have been special to feel so much love when you got sick.
No one should ever use the word friend lightly, because if you have a friend, you’re one of the richest people in the world. Just one friend. We need to get back to that, having friendship with someone. I have a lot of friends. I had more friends that I realized. After I got sick, the phone calls, the emails. I’ll probably never get a chance to thank everyone who reached out and cared. My wife would try to field all the calls, but there are some athletes that everybody knows, and she had no idea who they were. She knows who Bill Russell is now! (laughs) She knows who Jim Brown is. My neighbor from the Middle East, when I came home, he and his wife were waiting on me so they could come over and talk. That’s friendship. My brother, Curley Neal, he calls every day. Curley and I may not see each other for a couple of years, but when we come together, it’s like we never missed a step. Believe me when I tell you, I have been blessed.