By Scott A. Grant
mail@floridanewsline.com
Basketball became a competition sport for the first time at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. I have often wondered if the Germans added basketball as an inducement to get us to come. If so, it worked — despite some objections, the USA went to Berlin and participated in what has become known as the Nazi Olympics.
So many stories have come out of those Olympics. It seems like every time you turn around there is a new book or movie featuring some aspect of those games. The secret is that, as everyone in Hollywood knows, Nazis make great villains. Take a relatively mundane story about archaeology, rowing, or basketball and throw in some Nazis and you have drama!
In 1936, there were no real professional basketball teams and no nationwide NCAA Tournament. (The first NCAA tourney would not happen for two more years; Oregon beat Ohio State to claim the first National Championship in 1938.) The Olympic committee decided to have a tournament to determine who would represent the USA in those first Olympics. The best team in the country was probably Long Island University coached by the legendary Claire Bee. Long Island University was 25 – 0 that year and in the midst of a 40-game winning streak; however, the team was mostly Jewish and determined to boycott the games. Many Jewish athletes boycotted those games, with good reason.
After a series of regional tournaments, the final eight gathered in New York City at Madison Square Garden. There were five college teams, the YMCA Champions, and two Industrial teams from the AAU championships. Those two teams were sponsored by corporations and the players, usually former college stars, had jobs that allowed them to play basketball. One team represented Universal Pictures and the other represented the McPherson Globe Refiners, an oil refinery in Kansas. McPherson won the AAU championship. Universal finished second.
Universal beat the University of Arkansas in the first round and the Wilmerding YMCA in the second. Wilmerding is out near Pittsburgh. It is a company town built by Westinghouse Air Brake. Most of the YMCA players also played for Westinghouse. McPherson won its first-round game and then beat University of Washington in the second round, setting up a repeat of the AAU final against Universal Pictures. This time, Universal won. In the end they took seven players from Universal, six from McPherson, and one from the University of Washington.
Getting to the Olympics proved difficult. Both teams lost their corporate sponsorships. Neither Universal nor McPherson wanted to be associated with the Nazi Olympics. Both teams had to play their way across the country to get to the ship to Germany. When they got to Berlin there were more problems. The Germans decided to limit each team to seven players. They also attempted to limit the size of players to six feet, two inches tall. We protested the height rule and split the team in half to comply with the seven-player rule. The games themselves were played outdoors on a clay tennis court with old-fashioned lace-up basketballs. That was bad. Then it rained. Then it poured.
In the finals, a mixed team of players from both squads met the Canadians in a typhoon. It was impossible to dribble and in the second half, we mostly just held the ball, winning 19 – 8. The Canadian team was from Windsor Ontario right across the river from Detroit. They were sponsored by Ford Motor Company and called themselves the “V-8s.” The medals were awarded by James Naismith, inventor of the game. Gold to the United States, Silver to Canada, and Bronze to Mexico. Those would be the only Olympic Medals Canada and Mexico would ever win in the Olympic games.
Scott A. Grant is a local historian and author. By day, he manages investments at Standfast Asset Management. He welcomes your comments at scottg@standfastic.com.
