Elevating the Game

"On one level, 'Giants' is about Bob Douglas, a Caribbean immigrant who founded the Rens in the 1920s, making a deal with the owner of the Renaissance Ballroom, in the heart of Harlem, that allowed his team to play its games on the dance floor. All Douglas had to do was advertise the ballroom by calling his team the Rens--essentially making it basketball's first naming-rights deal.
"But on another level, the film views basketball through a broader cultural prism. There was another, better known all-black team playing at the same time, the Harlem Globetrotters. While the black-owned Rens were purists, priding themselves on athletic skill, the white-owned Globetrotters were cast by their owner Abe Saperstein as showmen, relying on clownish antics to entertain largely white audiences. (The NBA was not integrated until 1950.)"

Patrick Goldstein in the Los Angeles Times talks with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar about the former player's new documentary, On the Shoulders of Giants: The Story of the Greatest Basketball Team You've Never Heard Of.