Every sport needs a little bit of magic
Loveable icons with the disposition of a rattlesnake suffering from ulcers.
Last week, though, your columnist sat down with a real-life Harlem Globetrotter.
Park that sneer. The Harlem Globetrotters! They weren’t a sports team: they had a cartoon show. They were on Scooby-Doo! The Harlem Globetrotters! Wilt Chamberlain! Meadowlark Lemon! The theme song, Sweet Georgia Brown! What’s not to love?
Bam Bam Bamiro was pretty easy to spot in the Herbert Park Hotel in Dublin.
Six-foot-six, an easy and loping gait, the Harlem Globetrotters uniform: Sherlock Holmes wasn’t required.
Easy-going and soft-spoken, Bam Bam told me he’d been recruited the way the Globetrotters always recruit – they looked for him to show a little sparkle.
“I was training in my gym and they were looking for talent. My trainer put me on to one of the Globetrotter scouts. I tried out in front of them, and they liked what I did.
“I’ve tried out for a lot of different teams, in high school and college, and sure, there’s some nerves but once you’re out on the floor that competitive edge takes over.
“You start to run, you relax a little... the basketball player comes out in you.”
So does the showman. The Globetrotters need a showman rather than a shooter, so Bam Bam pulled a trick or two out of his back pocket.
“I’m known for my dunk. I get in the air, cock that arm way back and just throw it in the rim.
“As a boy, Michael Jordan’s dunks were my favourite, but so were Michael ‘Wild Thing’ Wilson’s. He’s dunked on a 12-foot ring.”
Twelve feet up is a fair test. “You are right, my friend. It is a fair test.”
Bam Bam survived the audition, but the good news came after a nerve-wracking wait.
“The way it’s done they call people into a room and they told us there if we’d made it or not.
“When I was told a weight fell off my shoulders, I was so excited... I told my college coaches, my family, they were so delighted because they know the history behind the Globetrotters. Who doesn’t?”
It’s a life on the road, though. From December to April the Globetrotters are travelling and playing games almost every day.
It means a lot of different courts, a lot of different buses, a lot of different planes.
Staying fit is a challenge, Bam Bam says, but looking for something new, a different trick to show to the people who come to see the Globetrotters sizzle: that’s what all the players are looking for.
“Sure, looking for that new trick can get a little competitive, but we’re part of a team,” Bam Bam insists.
“And someone working hard to do that inspires everybody else to work hard. We’re a team, a family.”
So... you’re in the country for the national basketball finals. What new trick are we going to see?
“Well, we want people to come out that day because we’ll be showing people something new.
“This year they’re going to see something that’s never been seen before — the four-point play. That’s what people can look forward to. Not the two, not the three, the four-point shot. Thirty-five feet from the ring.
“You can only score it in the last three minutes of the quarter, too.”
Another fair test? “Another fair test.”
And then, Bam Bam Bamiro was gone, off to do a television appearance.
Hot Shot Branch was supposed to be there as well, but his flight had been cancelled because of the bad weather in the States (yet another Globetrotter, Airport Greenup, should really have helped out, you’d imagine, in that case).
Do we overstate the importance of the Harlem Globetrotters?
A day or so later your columnist happened to be talking to a big name in the Irish sports world and mentioned his encounter in passing.
The sportsman’s eyes lit up. “You met one of them? Really? The Harlem Globetrotters?”
What’s not to love?
* Contact: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie Twitter: MikeMoynihanEx
