I Grew Up with Basketball: Twenty Years of Barnstorming with Cage Greats of Yesterday

Frank J. Basloe grew up in Herkimer, New York, where YMCA director Lambert Will developed the game of basketball. Basloe’s classic memoir, I Grew Up with Basketball, offers an eyewitness account of the humble roots of the imposing enterprise that is professional basketball today. At age sixteen, Basloe began his career as a promoter and managed several teams that regularly toured New York, New England, and the Midwest, including the Oswego Indians and Basloe’s Globe Trotters. Until the 1920s and the advent of the New York Original Celtics, New York Renaissance, and Harlem Globetrotters, Basloe’s clubs reigned supreme among barnstormers.

I Grew Up with Basketball is a fascinating and entertaining memoir of basketball’s infancy and, for some, fuels the debate about the game’s true origins by providing a counternarrative to the sanctioned history offered by the Hall of Fame. Though James Naismith’s original concept is acknowledged, Basloe credits YMCA director Will for altering the game to be more exciting and fun to play as well as establishing early rules of play.

This rare firsthand glimpse of the early days of basketball is complimented by Michael A. Antonucci’s introduction, which tracks the game—from Basloe’s Globe Trotters to LeBron James—and its trappings as a business vehicle.