Frigid temperatures this weekend prompt cold weather advisories

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

It's not easy playing for the Harlem Globetrotters. 


The legendary exhibition basketball team hits the road on Christmas Day, and doesn't stop until May. Players are known for their trick shots, humor and slick ball handling. The team makes its first of four Minnesota stops in Bemidji, Minn., Tuesday night celebrating 90 years of playing.


"If I had to guess how many games we play," said forward Alex 'Moose' Weekes. "I don't know. I lose count."


The answer is 400 games. That's a game every day of the week with a doubleheader on Saturday. Players practice for hours a day, sleep on buses and planes between games, and sometimes for a few hours in an actual hotel room. 


The Globetrotters have three touring teams. They split up to cover more ground, so 31-year-old Weekes doesn't play all 400 games a year. He does play twice as many games as the average NBA player, and calls it his dream job. 


"I get to do everything I wanted to do as a child," he said. "I travel. I play basketball, and I can be as crazy as I want and no one gets mad."


The Globetrotters play exhibition games. That means high-flying dunks and general basketball wizardry are more important than the score. 


One of Weekes' teammates, Handles Franklin recently paused a game to set a world record, sinking a basketball with his back turned, on his knees, from 60 feet. Just last year Weekes' team broke nine world records on the court, including most three-point shots made in a minute, and the longest a basketball has ever spun on someone's nose. The nose in question belonged to Scooter Christensen. The spin lasted nearly eight seconds.   

And the Globetrotters are busy off the court.


A few days before his game in Bemidji, Weekes spoke from a phone in Johnstown, Pa. He'd just come from Washington D.C., where he surprised a woman named Virginia McLaurin at her 107th birthday party. 


He and another player taught her a new skill — how to spin a basketball on her finger.


Weekes is nearly 7 feet tall with a huge head of hair, big hands and a big smile. McLaurin's birthday party involved a lot of bending down. Standing tall, she barely reached his sternum. 


"We try to be out in the community as much as we can," he said.


Weekes drinks coconut milk and eats bee pollen to keep his immune system in working order. He's torn ligaments in his shoulder and thumb, and said a lot of other players have the same wear and tear on their bodies. But you won't hear about it at their games. 


"We're the goodwill ambassadors to the whole world," he said. "You have to understand, the kids look at us like superheroes. We're not going to show them otherwise."


And that's what Weekes said the Globetrotters have always been about. This year marks the team's 90th anniversary. 


It also marks the passing of two Globetrotter greats. Meadowlark Lemon, known as the "Clown Prince of Basketball," died in December at the age of 83. Marques Haynes passed last spring at 89. He was known as the best dribbler in the game. 


They got their start with the Globetrotters when the NBA was still segregated. They played through institutional racism.
  

There are some upsides to the busy schedule. Weekes has seen 23 countries. That's a long way from his childhood home of Lilburn, Ga. 


The the best perk of all, he said, is the fans. 


"If you're banged up, it doesn't really matter," he said. "When the smoke clears and you hear the crowd it's electrifying." 


For more Globetrotter tour dates visit the team's 

Sports

Minnesota News

Greater Minnesota

NewsPartners

John Enger

Author

The Harlem Globetrotters have been playing for 90 years. Their first of four stops in Minnesota is Tuesday in Bemidji.

Globetrotters in Minnesota, still playing after 90 years

Go Deeper.

Like this?