FirstCuts: Watch ESPN’s ‘Black Magic’

By Bethlehem Shoals
Sports don’t start and end with a referee’s whistle. FirstCuts, a blog dedicated to sports culture, will cover everything outside the lines, from games to gear.
If you have more than a passing interest in college basketball, old basketball, the evolution of the game of basketball, race in sports, good documentaries, or American history, you owe it to yourself to check out part two of ESPN’s Black Magic tonight.
Ostensibly about the story of hoops at traditionally black colleges, it’s just as much about segregation and integration at all levels. Anyone who has read Nelson George’s Elevating the Game will be familiar with a lot of the material, but the interviews and vintage footage are alone worth your time. Plus, last I checked the voiceover in my brain wasn’t Samuel L. Jackson.

To me, the most fascinating part of this story is the question of style, and how it winds through this documentary in some subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways. Coaching at NCCU (then North Carolina College for Negroes) in the 1940’s, John McClendon came up with a fast-paced, wide-open offense that emphasized shooting every eight seconds. This kind of play became the norm at black colleges, while white schools kept it slow and methodical. This philosophical difference ended up being one of the justifications for competitive segregation; according to the NCAA, this kind of play was contrary to the spirit of student-athlete basketball and proved that African-American coaches were stupid. Then again, when NCCN and Duke played in a secret, spectator-less game, the “smarter” Duke team was absolutely demolished.
You can draw whatever inferences you want from this -- about “right way” versus more creative play, the recent rise and fall of the Suns, college basketball purists who hate the pros, whatever. If nothing else, though, bringing this hidden history to light adds a whole new dimension to the history of this sport. And if that’s too deep, stay for the characters: A young George Steinbrener as the owner of the first ABA team, Pee Wee Kirkland igniting Norfolk State’s program while his criminal hustle had him driving luxury cars, and of course, the legend of Earl “Black Jesus” Monroe, which is on deck for tonight.
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