Posts tagged ‘kareem abdul-jabbar’

Let me take you back in the history of basketball, one which we are certainly NOT doomed to repeat. To the 1920s, Washington, D.C. ….

Photos via Shorpy.com.

[1925. Bob Grody & manager Ray Kennedy, Palace Laundry]

[Feb. 15, 1926. Washington, D.C. Palace team, entry in the American basketball league, being taught Charleston by Vivian Marinelli. Left to right: Kearns, Manager Kennedy, Conway, woman playing piano, Miss Marinelli, Grody, and Saunders]

Last week a D.C. neighborhood blog, New Columbia Heights, posted some very old photos of a Washington pro basketball team from the 1920s, the Palace Five Laundrymen.

The Palace Five played in the American Basketball League (ABL) from 1925 to 1927 and were owned by the racist former owner of the Washington Redskins, George Preston Marshall. Most interesting to me, they played in Columbia Heights, D.C., mere blocks from where I live today.

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[A crab cake and egg breakfast with a Bloody Mary and the Free Darko book at the Phillip's in the Baltimore-Washington airport -- no better way to spend time before a delayed flight.]

If you think you know professional basketball history and want to know more … if you faintly know pro ball’s past and want to be re-captured with tales instead of accounts … if you have any level of personal involvement with the NBA, the new Free Darko book, The Undisputed Guide To Pro Basketball History, is a must-read for you.

The souls of the Free Darko collective take many of stories we all know, and many we don’t, and weave them into intricate, seamless patterns that pull together pro basketball history like the Dude’s highly sought-out rug from the movie, The Big Lebowski, pulled together a room.

Want to know the last type of Cigar that Red Aurbach smoked during his career? Dutch Masters. Or how about what shoe Michael Jordan preferred before he was persuaded to sign with Nike? You’ll have read all the book’s side bar texts that quench your thirst for facts.

The Free Darko book reaches far below the surface and brings meaning to the court action like I’ve never seen before. Clean, tight depth that ranges from comparing the NBA’s statistical explosion in the early 1960s to the English agricultural revolution of the 1700s/1800s to a break down of the frequency of head hair styles/types (including facial) of the 1970s.

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