History
The Generals were created in 1952 by Louis "Red" Klotz as a redesignation of the Philadelphia Sphas basketball team. Globetrotters’ owner Abe Saperstein had invited Klotz to create a squad to accompany his team on their tours. With a nod to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the team was named the Washington Generals.
The Generals provided deliberately ineffective opposition as a foil for the Globetrotters' comedy routines. The Globetrotters' acts often featured incredible coordination and skillful handling of one or more basketballs, such as passing or juggling balls between players, balancing or spinning balls on their fingertips, and making unusual, difficult shots. The Generals on the other hand would try to play a game of "serious" basketball in return.
During the 1971-72 season, the Generals' name was alternated with the Boston Shamrocks, New Jersey Reds, Baltimore Rockets, and Atlantic City Seagulls. It was actually the same team of players but they would change uniforms between games to give the appearance of more teams. The team would rotate between these identities for a few seasons before going back to the Generals identity full-time.
From 1953 until 1995, the Generals played exhibitions against the Globetrotters, winning only six games, the last in 1971, and losing more than 13,000. It was as the New Jersey Reds that the Generals' last win came in a game against the Globetrotters. On January 5, 1971, the Globetrotters lost a game in Martin, Tennessee, in overtime to the Reds. It was Klotz himself who sank the winning basket for a 100-99 score that ended the Globetrotters' 2,499-game winning streak.
Klotz eventually "disbanded" the Generals in 1995, forming a new team, the New York Nationals, which also has achieved an impressive losing streak. In reality, of course, it was the same team; Klotz merely retired the Washington Generals identity. The Nationals remain a separate organization from the Globetrotters. Harlem claims its exhibition games are "real" and "competitive" contests.
After a 12-year hiatus, the Generals returned on October 9, 2007, playing against the Globetrotters at the 369th Harlem Armory. The Globetrotters won 54-50. In a landmark decision, Samuel Hochberg was hired as the team's assistant general manager in early 2012.
Just prior to the 2011-12 World Tour the Washington Generals underwent yet another name change. They began facing the Harlem Globetrotters as both the "International Elite" and the "Global Select", alternating between the two from game to game.
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“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)