12-28-2015, 02:43 PM
Meadowlark Lemon died yesterday in Arizona at age 83.
![[Image: 56815365160000b300eb9998.jpeg]](http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/56815365160000b300eb9998.jpeg)
My dad was a big fan of the Harlem Globetrotters and the Buccaneers. I used to love watching him play when I was little.
Though skilled enough to play professionally, Lemon instead wanted to entertain, his dream of playing for the Globetrotters hatched after watching a newsreel of the all-black team at a cinema house when he was 11.
Lemon played for the Globetrotters during the team's heyday from the mid-1950s to the late-1970s, delighting fans with his skills with a ball and a joke. What a hook shot.
Lemon played in over 100 countries and in front of popes and presidents, kings and queens. Known as the "Clown Prince of Basketball," he averaged 325 games per year during his prime, that luminous smile never dimming.
"Meadowlark was the most sensational, awesome, incredible basketball player I've ever seen," NBA great and former Globetrotter Wilt Chamberlain said shortly before his death in 1999. "People would say it would be Dr. J or even (Michael) Jordan. For me it would be Meadowlark Lemon."
RIP.
Story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mead...efe0d8ac6d
My dad was a big fan of the Harlem Globetrotters and the Buccaneers. I used to love watching him play when I was little.
Though skilled enough to play professionally, Lemon instead wanted to entertain, his dream of playing for the Globetrotters hatched after watching a newsreel of the all-black team at a cinema house when he was 11.
Lemon played for the Globetrotters during the team's heyday from the mid-1950s to the late-1970s, delighting fans with his skills with a ball and a joke. What a hook shot.
Lemon played in over 100 countries and in front of popes and presidents, kings and queens. Known as the "Clown Prince of Basketball," he averaged 325 games per year during his prime, that luminous smile never dimming.
"Meadowlark was the most sensational, awesome, incredible basketball player I've ever seen," NBA great and former Globetrotter Wilt Chamberlain said shortly before his death in 1999. "People would say it would be Dr. J or even (Michael) Jordan. For me it would be Meadowlark Lemon."
RIP.
Story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mead...efe0d8ac6d