Winning, on and off the Court
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
This Sunday and Monday, “Black Magic,” a four-hour documentary covering the little-known history of basketball in America’s historically black colleges and universities from the 1940s into the 1970s, will make its premiere on ESPN. A large-canvas history paralleling the achievements of the civil rights movement with stories of Southern black athletes and coaches determined to refine the game while excluded from integrated competition, “Black Magic” represents something of a departure for its director, Dan Klores, the award-winning creator of last year’s jaw-dropping, true-life, aberrant-relationship forensic “Crazy Love.”
Beginning with the story of John McLendon, a student of basketball’s inventor, Dr. James Naismith, and himself the innovative coach responsible for the fast break and the four-corners offense, “Black Magic” uses the biographies of five men to bring to light the unsung teams and players who shaped the sport into its modern form. McLendon’s secret contests between his North Carolina College for Negroes team and various white college teams proscribed from playing nonwhite schools paved the way for the integration of the NAIA and NCAA tournaments.
McLendon’s protégé, Clarence “Big House” Gaines, in turn coached both Cleo Hill and the future Knick and NBA All-Star Earl “the Pearl” Monroe. Gaines’s saga is followed through the stories of three players: 6-foot-8-inch Bob “Butterbean” Love, Earl Lloyd — one of dozens of quota players drafted by the NBA but forced to play beneath their skill level so as not to show up white players — and John Chaney, who turned his back on the restrictive early NBA for a record-setting yet barely documented career in the barnstorming Eastern Basketball League.
Broadcast on the anniversary of the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre, in which members of the South Carolina National Guard opened fire on a peaceful civil rights demonstration on the South Carolina State campus and killed three students, including a star basketball player, “Black Magic” details the toll, the invention, and the ingenuity that are the lasting legacy of segregation during basketball’s formative decades.
