On November 1st 1950, Nat Sweetwater Clifton walked onto an NBA court. Up until that moment, the ex-Harlem Globetrotter star turned New York Knick created a chain of events that would rock the sports world, defy political barriers, change the course of professional basketball as we know it and forever live in infamy as a forgotten and possibly sequestered moment in American history.
The story begins during the inception of the National Basketball Association. Behind closed doors, a majority of the NBA team owners vote to keep the league white, thus triggering a volatile inner battle that eventually leads Ned Irish, owner of the New York Knicks, to challenge the league and it's constituents in bringing black players into the league for the betterment of the game and for the fans.
Enter Abe Saperstein. The PT Barnum of sports, whose genius creates an unbeatable all-black team that travel the globe destroying every opponent they come across. The NBA crowned champion faces the Harlem Globetrotters in what is hailed a true world championship. With the Globetrotters defacing the white NBA champions, Irish's wheels begin to turn. The NBA makes it clear, time and time again, that the Globetrotters will never participate as a franchise within the league. Irish argues to the team owners, using ticket sales as his motivation- The NBA will benefit greatly from the gate draw by allowing blacks of the talented caliber the Globetrotters are, into the league. As will audiences from the entertainment value, not to mention the contribution this will make to the growth of the game. But the idea of drafting black players is rejected vehemently and Irish goes off to battle. He begins a strategic courtship of Globetrotter star Sweetwater Clifton. The tumultuous relationship between Saperstein, Sweetwater, Irish and NBA Commissioner Maurice Podoloff plays into a war of politics.
The chess match finds Saperstein, matching wits with Irish as the New York Knick owner/coach buys Sweetwater from the Globetrotter mentor. Soon after, other NBA team owners follow suite in Irish's path and the inclusion of blacks into the league becomes a sheik elite race to see which owner, which team and ultimately who will become the first black basketball player to walk onto an NBA court- the Jackie Robinson of basketball. Boston Celtic owner Walter Brown shocks the sports world when he drafts Duquesne star Chuck Cooper. In a dramatic turn of events, Washington Capitols owner Bones McKinney drafts Earl Lloyd from American University. The stage is set. Politics, money and corruption take on an innocent dream as Sweetwater attempts to overcome all odds and risk everything to fulfill his destiny of bringing a new game to the world. A game that, little did he know, would light an endlessly burning torch that would eventually travel via the hands of such greats as Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor, Connie Hawkins, Julius Erving and Michael Jordan.
A time in a place where history was made and the greatest sport was re-born. A story never told until now, in Sweetwater.
