The Greatest Team You Never Heard Of

Kareem has always been an ispiration both on and off the court - this story is one of the reasons why. A few paragraphs and the link to the entire NY Times article are below.

Happy Gswede Thursday!
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Abdul-Jabbar’s Labor of Love

By HOWARD BECK
Published: September 30, 2009

Based on Abdul-Jabbar’s book of the same name, the documentary summons the musical, cultural and intellectual history of the Harlem Renaissance to tell the story of the Rens, an all-black New York team and, as Abdul-Jabbar calls it, “the greatest team you never heard of.”

The book was published in 2007. Abdul-Jabbar has been working on the film since then, with an expected release in February, during Black History Month. His mission is to convey the rarely told story of professional basketball’s roots.

“Everybody thinks it started in 1947, with the N.B.A., and they have no idea what professional basketball was like prior to the N.B.A.” Abdul-Jabbar, a Hall of Fame center who is now an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers, said during an interview at the Armory. “In that era, it was a time when sports were segregated. A lot of people I talked to, interviewing them for the documentary, didn’t even know that the N.B.A. itself was segregated for its first three years of existence.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/sports/basketball/01jabbar.html?emc=eta1