Courtside Patriarch | may 12, 2004
“The Wizard, the Wizard!” shouts the announcer after the ball swishes through the net. Former NBA great Gus “The Wizard” Williams has just launched another three-point bomb. The announcer slides across the floor and heckles the players in a non-stop, chattering sideshow. Welcome to the Pelham Fritz Basketball League at I.S.201 in Harlem. It’s part spirited ball game, part spectacle and part neighborhood get-together. It’s a league for those 38 and up, with ex-pros and recreational players sharing the floor.
John Isaacs, 88, watches the action intently from a chair courtside, oblivious to everything but the game. He does let out the occasional wisecrack to those passing by and offers witty critiques of the game: “This crew here they’re interested in big chains and material things. Playing that high-wire act. They want to go around the back and through the legs. Play ball!”

During breaks in the action, soul classics and hip-hop plays in the background. Pleasantries are exchanged amongst the crowd. Backs are slapped. Wives and girlfriends are sprinkled throughout the bleachers. A small table overflows with hot dogs and potato salad, as Isaacs savors a slice of pecan pie. He is the unofficial patriarch at the proceedings and easily the most revered man in the gym.

Isaacs is a casually dapper man whose smooth face has few wrinkles — he still lifts weights and jumps rope every day. Though Isaacs retired from New York Life Insurance Company over 20 years ago, he leads after school activities at the Hoe Avenue Clubhouse in the Bronx five days a week. Sunday afternoons he co-hosts a radio show on 90.3 WHCR in Harlem. Isaacs can exchange pleasantries in numerous foreign tongues, having visited 43 countries.

His family came to Harlem from Panama in the 1920s. “Until I was seven or eight all I spoke was Spanish. Now it’s ‘un poco’, a little bit.” He played baseball at first, but by the time Isaacs got to high school, he had discovered basketball. “I was playing with a junior squad in the neighborhood, the Capitals. We were the only team of our age level to have two sets of uniforms. Our jackets were reversible. Grey on one side, blue on the other.” Isaacs soon distinguished himself on the court.

“We were playing at the 168th Street Armory for the city championship and I heard this voice from the crowd. ‘The old man wants to see you.’ ” Bob Douglas, owner of the Harlem Rens, hoped Isaacs would play for his team. Douglas founded the Rens in 1923, five years before the Harlem Globetrotters started playing, and it was the first black-run professional team. While black baseball players had the Negro Leagues, there was no such outlet for hoops players. Instead, the Rens traveled across the country taking on all comers. They battled black college teams and formidable white foes such as the Celtics and the Philadelphia Hebrews. Isaacs hesitated in joining the squad at first. “I was too busy hitching on the back of trucks and taxicabs. Jumping across roofs. All kinds of dumb stuff. But when you’re young you don’t think.” After graduation, Isaacs decided to make the leap.

The Rens played home games on Sunday nights at the Harlem Renaissance Casino, at 138th Street and Seventh Avenue. Douglas was allowed to rent that space after promising the casino’s owner that he would name the team after the establishment, turning the Rens into a running, dribbling advertisement. The second floor of the building hosted bands and dancing. In between sets, portable baskets were placed in front of the bandstand. “Once we were done playing they had a dance going on. The lindy hop was in vogue then. I spit on the floor a lot to get traction.”

Most of the Rens’ games were played on the road. Isaacs didn’t have a shoe contract or shiny diamond earrings. “I never try to compare that era and now. It would be unfair. I made $150 a month. $3 per diem to eat.” The Rens’ schedule was extensive, with games played in gyms and fieldhouses throughout the Northeast, South and Midwest. “We played every night of the week and twice on Sunday. We’d leave (Harlem) right after New Year’s and wouldn’t come back until April. We were barnstorming.”

Isaacs savors the experience of having donned the Rens’ navy and gold uniform. “We enjoyed playing; we had a lot of fun. We traveled with eight guys, the bus driver and the road manager. We’d play pinochle to kill time. I read a lot.” The opportunity to explore America is what stands out. “I got a chance to put my size thirteens down in nearly every state in the union,” he recounts proudly.

The team faced hostile crowds and an unwelcoming America at certain stops. Hotel and restaurant purveyors sometimes refused to serve them. Fans showered them with racial epithets, and referees were sometimes less than impartial. The Rens always hoped to grab an early ten-point lead because as Isaacs explains, “that was the ten the officials were going to take away from us.”

His teammates anointed Isaacs “Boy Wonder,” because “I was the youngest to play at that time,” he says, modestly discounting his skills. Other Rens nicknames included Fats and Wee Willie. In the five seasons prior to Isaacs’ arrival, the Rens had a 473-49 record, at one point rattling off 88 straight wins. It was not until Isaacs’ fourth year with the team in 1939, however, that they were officially crowned the best team in the country, making the Rens, not the 1970 Knicks, New York’s first pro basketball champions.

At the first integrated World Professional Basketball Tournament in Chicago the Rens’ faced the Oshkosh All-Stars in the finals. “Man they had some big people,” Isaacs recalls of the all-white team from Wisconsin. After the Rens 34-25 victory, the players received jackets with “Colored World Champions” on the back. Isaacs grabbed a razor blade and proceeded to cut out the word “colored.” “I just made it real,” he says.
When World War II arrived, the Rens schedule was suspended and Isaacs took full-time work. “I got tired of traveling and had a permanent job. I had a family and couldn’t be roaming all over.” By the late 1940s, a few Rens joined the fledgling NBA.

The Rens paved the way for today’s highly compensated pros, but Isaacs isn’t bitter he missed out on the millions. He still knows what good basketball is and knows why today’s Knicks aren’t any good. “They believe Stephon Marbury is the savior. The problem they have is they all want to do it themselves. You should all be striving for the same thing — to win.” Isaacs is content to still have the game as part of his life, offering his story to those who will listen. There are still plenty who do.

© 2009 david gerlach | contact: davidgerlach at yahoo dot com