(Some Spoilers) Very entertaining movie about the legendary Harlem Globetrotters and their coach Abe Saperstein, Thomas Gomez, and the antics they pulled on the court. It's those crazy ball spinning and dribbling antics that made their opposition go batty while at the same time preserved the Globetrotters stamina to make the big push to win the game in it's last dying seconds. We get to see the Globetrotters do their thing on the basketball court in a number of dazzling newsreel footage clips that's by far the most exciting scenes in the entire movie.
As for the plot it's a bit schmaltzy with chemistry major Billy Townsend, Billy Brown, leaving collage to peruse his dream of becoming a member of the famed Harlem Globetrotters. This has Billy's girlfriend Ann Crapenter, Dorothy Dandridge, a bit confused in wondering if he's throwing away a good paying career as a collage chemistry professor for a dream, making it as a Harlem Globtrotter, that may not come true for him. Detremined to make the team Billy takes advantage of a fellow player in the team getting injured to get into it's starting lineup. And before you, and Abe and his globetrotters, know it he's the star attraction as well as biggest point scorer on the team.
It's later when Billy without Abe's knowledge marries Ann and on his way back to the hotel injures his knee slamming into a garbage can, by Billy not looking straight ahead, in him trying to make it back before lights out! Playing hurt Billy does his job against the rival New York, not the later Boston, Celtics but at the very last moment his injured knee gives out just as he was about to make the winning shot! With both Abe and his teammates feeling that he let them down by not reporting his injury before the game so he could have been replaced Blly is kicked off the team for not being a team player. Billy ends up getting a teaching job from Professor Turner, Bill Walker, as an assistant chemistry teacher in the all black Baltimore Collage to support himself an Anne. Meanwhile on the side Billy, in great talent never being overlooked, soon secures a contract from the New York Rams Basketball team only under the condition he lets his injured knee heal before he ever throws a basketball.
***SPOILER**** Things come full crucial for Billy when he reads in the papers that the Globetrotters are to play the New York Celtics in their rubber match, the teams beat each other once, in New York's Madison Square Garden. Billy then goes, injured knee and all, to see Abe Saperstein and asks him if he, with one of his players in the hospital, can play in the game. No surprise here with Billy, after a see-saw battle between the Globetrotters and Celtics, flipping the winning basket with less then three seconds left in the game re-injuring his knee in the process. With his contract as a New York Ram player voided in playing injured for the Globetrotters Billy can now go back to school and get his chemistry degree and thus a full time professor job at Baltimore Collage. But the biggest gift he got was the winning basketball, signed by all the globetrotters and coach Abe Sapertein, that brought the World Basketball Championship back to Harlem in New York City! Even though the Harlem Globetrotters never played there and are actually located in Chicago!
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