They looked at us like we killed Santa Claus
I may be the losingest coach in history, but I won't tolerate bad basketball
It was a strange, transitional period for the team. After a dozen years as the Washington Generals, they would change names no fewer than four times over the next two. On the road, they became the Boston Shamrocks, Baltimore Rockets and the Atlantic City Seagulls. They wore New Jersey Reds uniforms when the bus pulled up to Martin, Tennessee, a city of just under 8,000, located two-and-a-half hours outside of Nashville.
It was, perhaps, a perfect recipe for an upset – a minor identity crisis coupled with a seemingly unending road trip. They were tired and at each other’s throats when then they rolled into town. For now, at least, it was all a motivator. Head down and plowing ahead, the Reds left it all on the court that night in the college auditorium. By the time the buzzer sounded, it was clear they’d just played the game of their lives, and now it was on to overtime.
“We were playing so hard we didn't even know what the score was," Roy Kieval recalled years later. The Brooklyn-born player had made a name for himself on the courts of Western Kentucky University, capturing the attention of owner/manager, Louis "Red" Klotz.
Klotz had turned 50 the previous October, but was still happily lacing up and taking the court each night as both player and coach. He’d has his moment of glory nearly a quarter-century prior, a member of the Baltimore Bullets, the year the team captured the Basketball Association of America championship. The following year, it would be absorbed into the National Basketball League. Standing 5’7, he remains the third shortest player in NBA history.
It seemed that Klotz’s luck had largely dried up by the early, 50s, when owner Abe Saperstein approached the player about starting a new team. Klotz agreed, naming the new squad after Dwight D. Eisenhower, the World War II hero recently elected the 34th President of the United States. The Washington Generals’ named belied their success. Prior to the January 5th game in Martin, the team had lost 2,495 games straight.
"I may be the losingest coach in history,” Klotz quipped, “but I won't tolerate bad basketball.” Though they were temporarily the New Jersey Reds, for one brief game that winter of 1971, luck was finally on the Generals’ side. As they fought for their lives on the court that night, the opponent’s captain and chief ball handler, Frederick "Curly" Neal, had been sidelined. New Jersey’s captain, Eddie Mahar, on the other hand, was having a career game.
The Reds found themselves up by a single point with seconds left in overtime. Opposing star Meadowlark Lemon took possession of the ball, shot and missed. Kieval grabbed the ball and dribbled out of bounds, but the timekeeper failed to stop the clock.
The Harlem Globetrotters had lost, 99-100.
The crowd full of children was, understandably, stunned and upset. "They looked at us like we killed Santa Claus,” Kieval noted years later.
The funereal tone in the stands stood in stark contrast to a rare locker room celebration for the Generals. For the preceding 2,400+ games, they’d had no reason to keep champagne on-hand, so in Martin, they had to settle for spraying bottles of orange soda on Klotz’s head.
“You're supposed to be losers,” Saperstein told the rival coach, threatening to fire the entire team for the transgression. Lemon was gentler, congratulating the Generals for their win. It was a big gesture from lifelong competitor who’d recently felt victory slip through his fingers.
The Globetrotters would have the last laugh, however, going on to win the next 8,829 games.
Sources:
An upset that shook the glove https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-2000-03-19-0003190083-story.html
"Showtime in NBA Can Be Traced to Trotters" The Sporting News