Atlantic City Weekly

Red Klotz admits he may be "the losingest coach" in the history of professional basketball, with career losses that number in the tens of thousands. So why are NBA greats like Julius Erving, Connie Hawkins, Billy Cunningham and Red Holzman lobbying to get the five-foot-seven-inch point guard inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame?

Part of it is the man's sheer endurance, part of it his undeniable sportsmanship, and a love of the game that remains pure more than seven decades since he first tossed a ball into a peach basket.

"I go back a hundred years," says Red, who is exaggerating just a little. He's been playing since the Great Depression, hit the hard court as a pro in the 1940s, and played almost non-stop until he was 68 years old (with a three-year break to fight in the Second World War). He still owns and coaches the New York Nationals, a professional franchise that travels with and plays the Harlem Globetrotters.

And at 86, Red is still blowing them away at weekly pick-up games around Atlantic City. Three days a week he plays for two to three hours at a pop, working the perimeter like a bull terrier against opponents half his age.

"For a shorter guy, he's like a rock," says Lou DeMeis, who plays Saturday mornings with Red in the gym at Ventnor Elementary. "If you run into him, you know you ran into something. He is just an amazingly accurate shooter."

"He's still got the goods," agrees Jeff Sharkey, another weekend warrior who plays regularly with Red. "You can't leave him open, because he'll score."

"It's a great injustice that Red is not in the Hall of Fame, for everything he's accomplished, and for pioneering basketball all around the world," says Linwood sports writer Tim Kelly.

A South Philly native born Herman Louis Klotz in 1920, Red played for two years at Villanova, then signed on in the 1940s as the youngest member of the SPHAs (a team named for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association) and helped them take an American Basketball League title. He then joined the Baltimore Bullets and played with them in their championship year, 1947.

In 1950, Klotz acquired the Washington Generals (known variously as the New Jersey Reds, the Boston Shamrocks, the Atlantic City Seagulls, and now the Nationals). In 1953, they partnered with the Globetrotters, and together the teams have visited 117 countries including China, Israel, India and Russia. They have played on Army, Navy and Marine bases, on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, and in a Philippine leper colony. They have played in ballrooms and bullrings, before heads of state and, in 2002, for an appreciative Pope John Paul II (who became an honorary Globetrotter). Along the way, they have inspired hoop dreams in young athletes around the world.

As Kelly notes, the Globetrotters -- the "Clown Princes of Basketball," renowned for their antic performance style -- could not have played alone. "Red is kind of unsung," Kelly says. "But every comedy team needs a straight man."

Over the years, Klotz and his players beat the Globetrotters just once, in 1971, when Red, then 50, scored the winning shot with just three seconds to play. Though his team's legendary losing streak has caused some pundits to label them "white men who can't jump" and "patsies" to the Globetrotters, Red insists he's always played for real.

"I didn't have to do anything to help [the Globetrotters], and as for winning and losing, that's totally legitimate. We made them play." He calls the New Jersey Nationals "the best team outside the NBA," and notes that they beat every foreign team they ever played. "The only team we couldn't seem to beat are the world famous Harlem Globetrotters."

Red Klotz, at 86, still plays pick-up games three times a week

"When we started playing overseas [in exhibition games during the 1950s and 1960s], everybody was kicking a soccer ball," says Red. "Now all you see is baskets hanging everywhere, and we are part of that success ... They didn't know about the famous Celtics, the famous Lakers, the famous 76ers. They didn't know about all those. All they knew was the world famous Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals."

The team played "good basketball, in addition to being entertaining," says Kelly. "That's what made the world fall in love with the game."

Cindy Loffet is the sole woman on the Saturday morning pickup team. The onetime collegiate hoops star calls Red Klotz "the greatest competitor out here. We play a semi-roughhouse game, and after two or three hours, I'm often black and blue."