Before the NBA, pro basketball was somewhere on the sporting totem pole below horse racing and prizefighting. That began to change in the ’30s. One of the reasons was a team based at the renaissance casino in Harlem.
Known alternately as the Renaissance Black Fives, the Harlem Renaissance, the Harlem Rens, the New York Rens — and later, as the Dayton Rens — the team was the most successful of the era and a huge draw even in the segregated South. In 1939, their finest year, they traveled 38,000 miles, won 132 of 141 games, were declared the “colored professional” champions and won the World Professional Basketball Tournament in
Chicago.
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