When the Generals Beat the Globetrotters: Fifty Years Later
Commemorating the most improbable upset in sports history
Tonight marks the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most important events in basketball history: the night the Washington Generals beat the Harlem Globetrotters.
In the decades leading up to January 5th, 1971, the Washington Generals had lost thousands of pre-scripted basketball exhibitions to the Globetrotters. The Generals suffered these indignities under a variety of monikers, including the New Jersey Reds, the New York Nationals, and the Boston Shamrocks. No matter their name, the Globetrotters’ opponents’ job was and always has been twofold: firstly, they must play competent, sound basketball so as to contrast the Globetrotters’ hijinks; secondly, they must lose in the process.
But on that January night, the Generals arrived in Martin, Tennessee, unaware that they were about to make history. As the Generals’ players put on their jerseys — this time bearing the logo of the New Jersey Reds — little did they know that they were gearing up to do something revolutionary.
Inexplicably, the Reds came out red hot on this evening. The Globetrotters, meanwhile, were sluggish, easing back on their comedy shtick and playing relatively conventional basketball. This was to the Reds’ advantage, and in the fourth quarter, they were flirting with the lead.
The Globetrotters held a one point advantage with just seconds to go, but the Reds had possession. The ball wound up in the hands of Generals’ player/owner Red Klotz, who promptly drained a jumper to take the lead. In desperation, the Globetrotters’ Meadowlark Lemon stormed down the court and attempted a buzzer-beater, but he missed.
The partisan timekeeper made a frantic attempt to add seconds onto the clock, but the outcome could not be reversed. Despite jeers among the adult spectators and tears among their children, the verdict had been rendered. The Reds/Generals had won.
The significance of this victory can’t be overstated. Imagine, if you will, a musclebound leather daddy and his etiolated, semi-naked gimp. For years — decades, even — the leather daddy has kept the gimp chained in a dingy basement with moldering bread as his only nutriment. Each night, without fail, daddy has produced a cat-o-nine-tails and relentlessly lashed his submissive captive, cracking jokes in the process of cracking the whip and thereby rendering the punishments even more cruel and unusual. As the welts and gashes accrue, the gimp becomes resigned to his fate. It is the harsh snap of the studded belt and the pleasure that the sadist takes in it, after all, which guarantees the gimp’s next meal. The gimp spirals into masochism. He takes a stoic pleasure in the familiarity of the pain. But then, for just one night, the gimp breaks his chains. He gets possession of the cat-o-nine-tails and controls it, even for just a few minutes or a few seconds, and now he is the one who metes out the hurt. He lands a few resounding cracks on his leather daddy. But he does not joke in the process. He is deadly serious. As he peels back the leather and reddens the naked flesh of the dominator with stinging blows, the gimp enjoys a sober retribution that the sadist can never know. It was this somber satisfaction of the revenging masochist that the Washington Generals-cum-New Jersey Reds enjoyed on that January evening in Tennessee fifty years ago.
But the sadists always prevail, and within twenty-four hours, the Globetrotters would set things right. Revolutions, after all, are just endless circles, and they always circle back so that the continual cycle of domination and brutality can begin anew. The next night, in the next game, the Globetrotters reportedly put a whipping on the Generals to end all whippings. And the Globetrotters have never been dominated, let alone beaten, in these fifty years to follow.
Nonetheless, on that January night in 1971, the Washington Generals gave many of us a faint glimmer of hope that the dominated and debased can sometimes, however fleetingly, lash back.
