Who?

Charlie Scott. The New York playground legend was possibly the greatest to ever come out of Rucker Park. Once credited by Tiny Archibald with ‘inventing the crossover’, Scott was a baller’s baller. “You’d always think, one day I’d like to be out there and be able to be in that position to play in front of a packed house. Rucker Park, to me at that time, it was everything in basketball.”

The flashy 6-6 guard would join the North Carolina Tar Heels in 1966. He was the first African-American baller to play for North Carolina and the first to ever receive an athletic scholarship in the NCAA. Under Dean Smith, Charlie would average 22.1ppg & 7.1rebs and made three consecutive Final Four appearances.

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But whilst today we embrace the steps that Charlie made as a pioneering black athlete back in the mid-60′s… it was a tough road. In an interview in 2001, Scott said ‘At that time, no matter how comfortable I felt with my teammates, they still had to deal with the fact that they never had been around black people, either. I still couldn’t go anywhere with their friends because their friends were still brought up in a South that was very separate…There was a lot of loneliness on my part and a lot of times I questioned myself why I was here.’ But even though a difficult time in his life, Scott still can’t help but see humour and positives, joking that black college basketball fans back then ‘had only one person to cheer for when they turned on the television.’ But Scott also had the support of his team-mates and his coaches. Especially Coach Dean Smith. Coach Smith was years ahead of his time and believed that race was no factor in basketball and treated life the same. Scott would later say ‘Dean Smith is the only father I ever had.’

During his four year career at UNC, Scott was also a gold medalist at the Olympics. In 1968, Scott would team up with Jo Jo White and a 19 year old Spencer Haywood to lead Team USA to a perfect 9-0 record and Olympic gold. Scott was the fourth leading scorer on that USA team, averaging 8.0ppg.

He’d already achieved more than most who come out of Rucker Park. He’d paved the way for black athletes, won Olympic gold, 4 years of college…but Scott wasn’t done. In 1970, Scott was drafted 106th overall by the Boston Celtics for his entry to the NBA. At the time the Celtics featured John Havlicek, Jo Jo White, Don Nelson, Don Chaney, Dave Cowens and a series of other veterans. Scott felt that an already stacked team wasn’t the best option for him to further develop his craft and he joined the Virginia Squires in the ABA. Surely part of the appeal too must have been UNC Alums Doug Moe, Larry Brown and Bill Bunting who were suiting up for the Squires at the time.

Charlie would average 27.1 point an outing and captured the ABA’s Rookie of the Year award. In his second season, Scott would be a part of one of the most exciting duos in NBA history as the Squire’s would acquire Dr J, Julius Erving prior to the 1971-72 season. Scott would average an ABA record 34.6ppg and Erving an impressive 27.3ppg in his rookie campaign. The Squires were exciting, but not winning. They would barely break .500, Scott was dissatisfied with ABA-life and took his talents (see what we did there?) to the NBA. By this time the Celtics had traded his rights to the Phoenix Suns for Paul Silas.

In his three years in Phoenix, Scott never averaged less than 24 points a game and represented the Suns at three consecutive All Star Games. But even though Scott achieved individual success in Phoenix, the team was never a contender and didn’t make the playoffs in those three seasons. Prior to the 1975-76 season, Charlie would be acquired by the team who drafted him, the Boston Celtics. Phoenix would receive Paul Westphal and draft picks in exchange for Scott. Then in some strange twist of fate, with Cowens, Havlicek, Paul Silas, Charlie Scott and his team USA team-mate Jo Jo White would carry the Celtics to the finals in a matchup with the Paul Westphal-led Phoenix Suns. Scott would drop 25 points in the deciding game 6 to go along with 11 rebounds and 5 steals.

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Scott was traded to the Lakers 31 games into the 1977-78 season and at the end of that season he was traded to the Denver Nuggets where he played the final two years of his career before his retirement in 1980. Even though he played just 156 games of his 10 year career with the Celtics, it’s Boston where his heart is. ‘We shared a lot of things together as a team.  I just enjoyed my whole time there.  The friendships mean more than anything.  To this day I remain close to Jo Jo.  We get together as often as possible and talk on the phone all the time.  And that just goes back to the Tar Heels and the Celtics being like family.  Once you play for those organizations you become a part of the family, and that’s the way it will always be.’

After his playing career, he worked as the director of sports marketing at Champion, the sports apparel manufacturer, from 1990 to ’97 and then as the executive vice president of CTS, a telemarketing firm. In 2001, Charlie was hired by UNC-Alum Michael Jordan as a special assistant & consultant for the Washington Wizards. Scott now works for Russell Athletics in a consulting position in between being supportive of his son’s Shaun and Shannon. Older son Shannon was recently a McDonald’s All American and has been recruited by Ohio State.

When we started writing this story, we had no idea the journey that Charlie Scott had taken in his basketball career.

Charlie Scott. Now go watch that game 6 of the 1976 Finals.

(Editor’s Intro: Basketball Culture is a new segment where we will be exploring basketball around the world, not just in professional leagues but also as part of the communities who play the game.)

We’re very honored to introduce our Basketball Culture segment to the world by diving into the Philippines, who this year has the distinction of having played basketball for 100 years.

Basketball was brought to the islands of the Philippines around the 1900s, by YMCA volunteers who had just spent the previous 10 years learning the game from the creator of the sport, James Naismith, in a small gym in Springfield, MA.  By 1910, basketball became official; the American colonial powers made it a mandatory part of the physical education component of schooling around the country, and thus a love affair was born.

The style of the game was therefore allowed to develop at its own pace, in parallel to the American game.  Today we speak so often of the differences between European, Asian, Australian, American and African basketball players and play, with so many obvious differences between points of emphasis, defensive and offensive sets, even the way players learn to shoot to or pass.  Philippine basketball, however, is arguably one of the very few, if not only, styles of basketball that developed not with an expectation of form or purpose derived from American basketball.   Rather, Filipino players learned moves and shots they developed themselves purely from experimentation and repetition.  Of course this has been successful to varying degrees over the years, and today we see more and more aspects of the American game creeping in, but for so very long Filipino games were like an ABA highlight film, with scoops and double pumps and rarely a pass thrown while actually looking at the intended recipient.

While the style may be changing, there is certainly no loss of passion for the game.  From the state of the art stadiums of the Philippine Basketball Association right through to the backstreets of the smallest village in Cagayan, basketball hoops are on every corner, next to every road, in every neighbourhood, on every block.

“Everywhere you look in the Philippines, there’s a jerry-built basketball game. In farming towns without paved courts, kids dribble on dirt and bank shots off of two-by-fours lashed to coconut trees. On Manila street corners, players who can’t afford sneakers run the court in flip-flops or bare feet.” The Slate

This early love took the basketball world by storm.  From the 1910s to the early 1930s, the Philippines dominated the Far Eastern Games basketball tournament, winning 9 of 10 basketball championships.

In 1936, the Philippines played in the Berlin Olympic Games basketball tournament, the first time basketball was played as an official sport in the Games. The Philippines beat Mexico and Estonia, but lost to the United States in the quarterfinals. The Philippines went on to beat Italy, and Uruguay to finished fifth in the tournament.

Soon thereafter, thanks to the ever growing number of small tournaments and leagues created by passionate players and supporters around the country, the Manila Industrial and Commercial Athletic Association (MICAA) was formed in 1938, and dominated Philippine basketball for almost 40 years, replaced eventually by the Philippine Basketball Association in April 1975, and the Philippine Amateur Basketball League (PABL) in 1983.  The PBA is now the premier League in the country, having merged with the PABL.

International success, however, has waned, and the Philippines, though enjoying great talent at home, have not been able to translate that into international championships, prompting the now-repeated cries of panic from local media.

It is an unusual situationl as its popularity continued to grow, basketball began to take over any other national pursuit.  Stories abound of the Philippine national boxing team having to share shorts, while basketball players enjoyed full sponsorship and financial support.

“Then there’s the basketball bait-and-switch that Philippine politicians have perfected over the past several decades. What’s the cheapest way to earn some votes? Build a basketball court and paint a mural announcing to your constituents that their new backboards were a “project of Mayor delos Santos.” Never mind costlier, more urgent needs like improved access to clean water and health care. In communities that have come to expect next to nothing from their elected leaders, some breakaway rims and free jerseys are often enough to buy voters’ loyalty at the polls. Maybe Philippine hoops isn’t facing a crisis. Maybe it’s too widespread and too powerful, worshipped too much by too many people.” SLAM Online

In fact it is impossible to walk down the streets of Manila without seeing buses and taxis adorned with the faces of Kobe, Jordan, Lebron, AI and naturally the many PBA stars loved by all.  Every wall seems to have at least a couple of pictures of NBA stars plastered across it, and the very successful basketball channel on local television can be heard blasting out classic games from around the world, 24/7.

Indeed, because of such immense popularity, basketball in the country has been an incredible aid to breaking down social barriers and assisting development within the country, with both governments and charities making use of the game in this way, not to mention the interest such passion sparks around the globe.

At the very least, basketball has helped to provide a sense of identity, a sense of national pride and a showcase to the outside world, remarkable achievements for a nation that had to endure colonisation several times in its history.  As the popularity of the local league and city-wide competitions grow, here’s hoping the international success returns to a very deserving, very loving, basketball nation.