When I was young my parents took my brother and me to see the Harlem Globetrotters. I had never seen the combination of basketball and humor before, and it was exhilarating.
So I was interested to hear Alvin Yee tell me that several local kids had played with the Globetrotters.
“Coralie Chun Matayo- hi’s late father, Peter Chun, played on the team that always lost to the Globetrotters back in the late 1940s,” Yee said.
Peter graduated from Farrington High School, where he was a star basketball player. He was a member of the Hawaii All-Star Basketball team, which traveled for four months across the United States playing exhibition games with the Harlem Globetrotters.
Clay and Gordon Tom told me that their father, Richard, played against the Globetrotters when they first came to Hawaii around 1937.
Richard Tom was one of Hawaii’s top players back then and played in an adult league on a team called the Dragons.
“The Globetrotters came over on the Lurline,” Gordon Tom says, and “my father put together an all-star team from his league — which had such teams as the Elks, Stevedores, Hawaiian Pines, Aiea, Palama and the Apollos. Most of the players were short — Tom was just 5-10,” but quick.
“They played at the old Civic Auditorium on King Street. Dad was a 1931 Saint Louis grad. He became a bookkeeper, then joined my grandfather’s business, Tom’s Grill. It served Hawaiian food on Maunakea Street. Dad got the nickname ‘Pipi Kaula Tom.’ ”
In 1941 Ah Chew Goo headed up an All-Star team to oppose the visiting Harlem Globetrotters. The Globetrotters won an exciting game against the All-Stars.
Son Vince Goo, who coached the UH women’s basketball team from 1987 to 2004, said the Globetrotters usually had a team that toured with them, but could not afford to send one to Hawaii. His father was asked to put a “patsy team” together to play two to three games against the Globetrotters.
“Dad pulled a couple tricks in the first game, and Abe Saperstein, the Globetrotters’ owner, told him he couldn’t do that again.” Tricks were for the Globetrotters.
“One trick involved a ball with a screw in it, attached to fishing line. After a timeout he switched the ball, and when Dad shot the free throw, the ball would be pulled back. The players standing on the lane would rush towards the basket, but the ball would be back in the shooter’s hand. That got a lot of laughs.
“Another trick was switching to a deflated ball, again following a timeout. He intentionally inbounded to a Globetrotter, and when he tried to dribble the ball it did not bounce. Seventy-five years later these tricks remain part of the Globetrotters’ entertainment.”
Ah Chew Goo was nicknamed the “Mandarin Magician,” and local sportswriter Andrew Mitsukado once wrote that “Ah Chew Goo could make the basketball do anything but talk.”
After the three games in Hawaii, Saperstein offered Ah Chew Goo a position as a Globetrotter because of his superb ball-handling and passing skills.
After traveling across the country with an all-star team from Hawaii and witnessing so much discrimination, Goo wondered how a 5-foot-3-1/2-inch Chinese-American boy from Hilo would be treated along with the all-black Globetrotters. He declined the offer.
Ah Chew Goo influenced one of my all-time favorite basketball players, “Pistol Pete” Maravich. Pete’s father, Petar “Press” Maravich, was stationed in Hawaii during World War II and coached against Goo.
“He was so impressed with his ball skills,” Vince Goo recalls, “and sought him out at the Rainbow Classic, as his son and LSU team participated. When reunited with my dad, Press told him that he vowed in the 1940s that if he ever had a son, he’d teach him all of Dad’s basketball skills.”
Pete Maravich played for LSU in the 1969 Rainbow Classic and stunned the crowd with his dribbling and passing talents. The guard averaged 44 points a game during his college career. (And this was before the 3-point shot.)
Ah Chew Goo lived to be 96 and died two years ago. Vince Goo coached the UH women’s team for 17 years, winning nearly 70 percent of his games and taking the team to its first NCAA Tournament appearance (1989, ’90, ’94, ’96 and ’98). He was named coach of the year four times.
After World War II, Roosevelt High School basketball coach Art Kim put together a multiethnic team and called it the Hawaiian All-Stars.
The team toured the mainland, sponsored by the Hawaii Tourist Bureau and the Chamber of Commerce. Business and political leaders hoped basketball could promote Hawaii as a future state as well as tourism to the territory.
The team consisted of Kim, Harry Chang, Clement Chang, Peter Chan and Tom Harimoto. Most of the players were under 5 foot 10, but two of them were well over 6 feet tall.
The team recruited Globetrotters owner Saperstein to handle their bookings.
The Los Angeles Times wrote that the team arrived in San Francisco accompanied by hula dancers. The newspaper cautioned the Globetrotters to be wary of Hawaiians because they were quite adept at sports.
Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, they often toured with the Harlem Globetrotters, usually playing the patsies for the antics of the highly talented Globetrotters.
The Hawaiian All-Stars played the Harlem Globetrotters in February 1947 for 6,000 fans at Los Angeles in Shrine Auditorium.
Despite winning most of their games on the mainland, the All-Stars lost to the Harlem Globetrotters 65-40.
On a 1952 trip to the mainland, the All-Stars had a record of 73 wins and only seven losses.
Another person playing against the Globetrotters was Donald Ho (not the singer). Ho graduated from Kaimuki High and was on the traveling team that played against the Globetrotters when Wilt Chamberlain was on the team.
“I was in elementary school when they played at the old Civic Auditorium, and I remember that game,” Allan Okubo told me.
“I met Don many years later when he was a sheriff serving papers. He said he became good friends with Wilt and would stay at his house in Los Angeles.
“He got Wilt to autograph a large picture of himself holding a paper that showed ‘100,’ signifying his 100-point game. He made it out to my two kids that played basketball, Patrick and Diane. Sadly, Don passed away years ago, but he should be remembered for his contribution to Hawaii sports history.”
Bob Sigall’s latest “The Companies We Keep 5” book has arrived, with stories from the last three years of Rearview Mirror. “The Companies We Keep 1 and 2” are also back in print. You can find more information about them at CompaniesWeKeep.com.
