Welcome to today's deep dive. I'm your host,
and I'm here with our resident sports history
expert to unpack something truly incredible.
Hey, everyone. I am really excited to get into
this one. It's a fascinating topic. Yeah, it
really is. So to start us off. I need you to
do a little visualization exercise with me. Picture
this. Okay, I'm ready. It's the late 1930s. It's
a Saturday morning. You are a college athlete.
You wake up and you force down this totally bland
breakfast because sports nutrition at this point
basically consists of just steak and eggs. Right,
a heavy, greasy breakfast. Exactly. So you head
to the stadium. You strap on a leather helmet
that honestly offers about as much protection
as a cardboard box. Oh, yeah. The gear was basically
just thick sweaters and heavy wool pads. Yeah.
And you go out there and you play a full, brutal
60 minutes of American football. And we really
need to clarify here. We aren't talking about
modern spread offenses where you run out of bounds
to stop the clock and avoid a hit. Right. We
are talking about 1930s grinded out three yards
in a cloud of dust football. You're playing offense
and defense. You are hitting people and you are
getting hit on every single play. So the final
whistle blows. You are covered in mud. You are
bruised all over. Your adrenaline is crashing.
You probably have a mild concussion, though obviously
nobody would call it that back then. I mean,
I'd be looking for a stretcher at that point.
Exactly. Most human beings would be looking for
a hospital or a week of bed rest. But the guy
we are talking about today, he doesn't go to
the hospital. He takes a quick shower to wash
off the mud. He grabs a bite to eat. Then he
literally walks over to the gymnasium, laces
up a pair of canvas sneakers with zero arch support,
and plays an entire college basketball game.
Wow. On the exact same day. See, it sounds like
a tall tale. Yeah. It sounds like something a
grandfather invents to impress his grandkids
at Thanksgiving. But this is the actual recorded
history of William Dolly King. And that is exactly
why we are doing this deep dive today. We are
looking at a man who is arguably the most versatile
athlete New York City ever produced. And yet
he is largely a ghost in the history books. It's
what I call the prehistory problem. We get so
obsessed with the modern NBA, the modern NFL,
that we completely forget the Titans who actually
built the foundation. For sure. Dolly King wasn't
just a multi -sport athlete. He was a pioneer
who helped break the color barrier in professional
basketball. He was one of the handful of African
-Americans to play in the NBL. A national basketball
league. Right, the NBL, which is the direct ancestor
of the NBA. And we're pulling this story today
from historical records, newspaper archives from
the era, and the Wikipedia entry for Dolly King.
We really want to piece together a career that
honestly just doesn't make sense when you look
at it through a modern lens. It completely defies
modern logic. Today, we have, you know, load
management where guys sit out games simply because
they played the night before. Right, to rest
their knees. Exactly. And here is Dolly King
playing two entirely different, highly physical
sports in one day. It's just a completely different
species of athlete. Let's go back to that Ironman
legend for a second because I want to make sure
people know this actually happened. This was
at Long Island University, LIU Brooklyn, where...
King was a massive star. The story comes directly
from his coach, Claire B. And we should note
that Claire B is a highly credible source. He
was an innovator, a Hall of Fame coach. He's
not the kind of guy who is prone to just making
things up for press. Right. He specifically claimed
King played a grueling football game against
a tough opponent and then literally suited up
for the basketball team that exact same night.
I really want to dwell on the physiology of that.
I'm just stuck on the transition. How do you
go from the heavy collision -based bracing of
football to the fine motor skills of basketball?
Well, that is the major takeaway right there.
It isn't just about cardio endurance. It is about
your nervous system. In football, you are constantly
tightening up. You are bracing for impact. Your
muscles are dense, contracted. Exactly. Yeah.
But basketball requires fluidity. It requires
a soft touch, loose hips, lateral. quickness
to switch your body from like car crash mode
to ballet mode in the span of maybe three hours.
That is physiologically baffling. And he wasn't
doing this with modern recovery tools. There
were no cryotherapy chambers. He didn't have
an electrolyte hydration plan. He probably had
an orange slice and some water, maybe a salt
tablet if he was really lucky. Yeah. And remember
the gear we talked about. In the 30s, uniforms
were wool. When wool gets wet with sweat or rain,
it gets incredibly heavy. He was likely carrying
an extra 5 to 10 pounds of pure water weight
on his body during the football game. Oh, that
sounds miserable. Right. To shut that wet gear
and then run up and down a hardwood court for
40 minutes, it speaks to a level of physical
conditioning that I don't think we even have
a metric for today. It definitely helps that
he was built like an absolute tank. The stats
we have list him at 6 '4", 215 pounds. Which
really requires some historical context. Right,
because if I see a 6 '4 guy walking down the
street today, I just think, oh, maybe he played
high school ball. I don't immediately think he's
a giant. But in 1939, he was a Leviathan. Yeah.
The average height for an American male at that
time was around 5 '8". Yeah. In basketball, the
centers, the big men on the team, were often
just 6 '4". or 6 '5". Wow. So King was the size
of a center, but he had the speed and athleticism
of a guard. Imagine LeBron James playing in a
league where the average player is the size of
a modern horse jockey. That's a great visual.
That is the physical disparity we are talking
about here. So he just dominates at LIU. He is
this multi -sport phenomenon. But then college
ends. And this is where the story shifts from
a triumphant sports hero narrative to harsh societal
reality. It's the early 1940s. He is black. The
NBA doesn't exist yet. And the major professional
leagues that do exist aren't hiring people who
look like him. This is the era of the pivot.
If you were an elite African -American athlete
back then, you didn't have a glitzy draft day.
You had to hustle. You had to find a way to get
paid. Exactly. You had to go to where the games
were, and that meant the all -black barnstorming
teams. Barnstorming. We hear that word a lot
in sports history, especially regarding this
era. But can we define what that actually looked
like for the listener? Sure. It is definitely
not a luxury tour bus. It's five or six guys
piling into a station wagon or a sedan. You drive
200 miles to a small town. Just cramming into
a car. Yep. And you might play in a high school
gym or a dance hall or sometimes literally a
barn that just has hoops nailed up to the rafters.
You play local team, you split the gate money
with them, and then you try to find a place to
sleep. Which was a major issue. A huge issue.
Because of segregation, local hotels often wouldn't
take you. So you slept in the car, you woke up
the next morning, drove another hundred miles
and did it all again. And this is exactly where
Dolly King goes to work. He joins the New York
Renaissance, commonly known as the Wrens. The
Wrens are absolute royalty in basketball history.
They were specifically the first all -black,
fully professional, African -American owned basketball
team. And because they played together constantly,
we're talking hundreds of games a year, they
developed a style of play that the white teams
just couldn't match. What was that style called?
They called it the Fancy Dan style. It was all
about quick passing, weaving, cutting to the
basket. They actually didn't dribble very much
because the basketballs back then were often
lopsided and the floors were incredibly uneven.
Oh, that makes sense. You can't trust the bounce.
Exactly. So they passed. It was a beautiful,
fluid, incredibly fast -paced game. So King is
out there. Cutting his teeth with the Wrens.
And later he plays for the Washington Bears,
which was another powerhouse all -black team
from 1941 to 1946. This whole circuit is essentially
a shadow league. It was the incubator for the
modern game. While the white leagues were playing
a very rigid, flat -footed, set -shot style of
basketball, the black fives, as they were often
called, were innovating. They were pushing the
pace. They were playing a faster, much more athletic
game. Dolly King was right there in the laboratory
where modern basketball was being invented, even
if the mainstream white press largely ignored
it at the time. But that wall of segregation
had to crack eventually. And for Dolly King,
that crack finally appears in 1946. The post
-war era. Everything in America is changing.
The National Basketball League, the NBL, makes
the decision to integrate. This is a huge, huge
moment. This is before Jackie Robinson even plays
his first game for the Dodgers, right? It is.
The NBL actually integrated a full year before
Major League Baseball and King gets the call.
He is signed by an owner named Lester Harrison
to play for the Rochester Royals. The Rochester
Royals, who, for those of you connecting the
historical dots at home, are the exact franchise
that eventually moves and becomes the Sacramento
Kings in the modern NBA. Correct. So we are talking
about Major League franchise history here. So
King plays 41 games for the Royals in that 1946
to 47 season. Now, I was looking at the historical
box scores for this deep dive, and I saw a number
that stopped me cold. Let me guess. The scoring
average. Yes, he averaged 4 .0 points per game.
I can already hear the modern basketball fans
groaning. I mean, four points. Today, if you
average four points, you are the 12th man on
the bench. You only play in garbage time. Was
he actually a good player or was signing him
mostly a publicity stunt? You have to completely
recalibrate your brain for 1946 basketball. Just
throw out all your modern expectations of what
a stat line should look like. Okay, recalibrate
me. Why is four points per game actually impressive?
Well, first of all, there is no shot clock. A
team could take a tiny lead and then literally
just hold the ball at midcourt for five minutes
without shooting. Wow, just stalling. Exactly.
Games often ended with final scores like 45 to
40. Second, the paint under the basket was an
absolute war zone. The rule was basically no
blood, no foul. If you drove to the basket, you
were getting hammered. So overall scoring was
artificially low across the entire board? Exactly.
The very best players, the league leaders, were
only averaging maybe 10 or 12 points a game.
So if you were dropping 4 or 5 points a night,
you were a very solid contributor. You were a
starter or a key rotation player. Okay, that
makes a lot of sense. But more importantly than
the scoring, King wasn't brought in to shoot
the ball. He was brought in to stop people. Ah,
he was a defensive specialist. He was the enforcer.
Lester Harrison, the owner, knew the league was
extremely rough. He needed a guy who was 6 '4",
215 pounds to clear out space and grab rebounds.
King was out there doing the dirty work. He was
essentially the Dennis Rodman or the Draymond
Green of 1946. That actually makes the integration
aspect even more intense, doesn't it? I mean,
if you are a pure scorer, you can maybe avoid
some contact. You shoot from the outside. But
if your specific job is to be the enforcer and
you are one of the only black men on the court.
You are a massive target. Every single hard foul
he gave, every rebound he fought for in the paint
had intense racial undertones from the crowd
and the opposing players. The pressure must have
been suffocating. He had to walk an impossible
razor's edge. He had to be physical enough to
do his job effectively, but disciplined enough
not to retaliate when he was inevitably cheap
-shotted by white players. The mental toughness
that required is just off the charts. And he
succeeded. He helped them get to the playoffs.
He wasn't just a passenger on that team. The
Royals were one of the very best teams in the
league. He was contributing to winning basketball
at the absolute highest level available in the
world. Okay, so we have established he is a legitimate,
barrier -breaking pro basketball player. But
this is the part of the deep dive where the story
just gets absurd again. Yes, the twist. Because
usually when the grueling basketball season ends
in the spring, you rest, you heal your battered
knees, you go on vacation. Not Dolly King. So
what does he do? Well, we have to talk about
the economics of the era. In 1946, you couldn't
just retire on a basketball salary. It didn't
pay millions. Most guys had summer jobs. Some
worked in factories. Some sold insurance. Dolly
King's summer job was being a professional baseball
player. And to be clear, we aren't talking about
semi -pro local sandlot games here. No, absolutely
not. He played in the Negro Leagues, and he played
for the Homestead Grays. For the listener who
doesn't know baseball history, how big a deal
are the Homestead Grays? They are the New York
Yankees of black baseball. They were a dynasty.
Josh Gibson played for the Grays. Cool Papa Bell.
These are mythical. Hall of Fame figures. Wow.
For King to just walk onto that roster means
he was truly elite. You don't just try out for
the Homestead Grays and make the team unless
you are a serious generational talent. And he
didn't just play for them. He also played for
the New York Black Yankees and the New York Cubans.
This was from roughly 1944 to 1948. So there
is this massive overlap where he is playing pro
basketball in the winter and pro baseball in
the summer. Think about the biomechanics of that
for a second. In baseball, you're tracking a
small white ball moving at 90 miles an hour.
It is all about hand -eye coordination, quick
twitch reactions, and rotational power in your
swing. Right. In basketball, it's about verticality,
lateral movement, and cardiovascular endurance.
To switch back and forth every six months, you
never let your body adapt to one sport. You are
in a constant state of physiological flux. And
a constant state of forward motion, too. The
travel schedule for the Negro Leagues was arguably
even more brutal than the barnstorming basketball
circuit. It was unrelenting. We were talking
over 100 games a summer. They would regularly
play three doubleheaders in three different cities
in three days. That's six games in three days.
Yes. It was a grind that physically broke people.
And King was doing this year round. No off -season
to rest, just switching uniforms and getting
right back on the bus. It really reframes that
Ironman story from college, doesn't it? That
wasn't a one -time stunt to impress a coach.
That was literally just his life. It was survival.
He was maximizing his earning potential while
his body held up. He was an athletic mercenary
in the very best sense of the word. Eventually,
though, Father Time remains undefeated. The late
40s and early 50s come around, and he starts
to wind down his playing career. He plays for
some lesser known teams like the Dayton Wrens
and the Scranton Miners. Right, the journeyman
phase. He is just squeezing the very last drops
out of the orange before he has to hang it up.
But he doesn't leave the game entirely. He transitions
to the sidelines. From 1964 to 1969, he is the
head coach at Manhattan Borough Community College.
Which is such a beautiful full circle moment.
Yeah. He is back in New York City. passing on
all that hard -earned knowledge to the next generation
of young men. Yeah. You can only imagine the
stories he could tell those kids. You know, they
complained about running laps, and he could say,
oh, you think practice is hard? Let me tell you
about the time I played the Harlem Globetrotters
and then drove 300 miles through the night to
play the Kansas City Monarchs in baseball. But
sadly, he didn't get to be the old sage of the
game for very long. No. And this is the real
tragedy of his story. He passes away in 1969
from a heart attack. He was only 55 years old.
That just hits hard. 55 is so young. It forces
you to ask some really uncomfortable questions.
Did the lifestyle contribute to his early death?
The constant stress of navigating segregation?
The sheer lack of rest? The physical toll of
playing two professional sports year -round for
over a decade? You have to imagine it played
a role. We can't know for absolute sure from
a medical standpoint, but it's hard not to see
a strong correlation there. He gave everything
to the game, quite literally. And he died right
before the NBA exploded into the mainstream consciousness.
He missed the Magic Johnson and Larry Bird era.
He missed Michael Jordan. He completely missed
the era of big television money. He was part
of the generation that planted the tree so that
others could sit in the shade. But he wasn't
entirely forgotten by history. In 1992, New York
City tried to set the record straight. He was
posthumously inducted into the New York City
Basketball Hall of Fame. And you always judge
a man by the company he keeps. Look at who he
was inducted with in that specific class. William
Pop Gates. An absolute legend of the game. Red
Sarachek. And his old college coach, Claire B.
These are the fundamental architects of New York
basketball. By putting King in that class, the
committee was firmly saying, this man belongs
on the Mount Rushmore of city hoops. It validates
everything we have been discussing today. He
wasn't a footnote. He was a headline that people
simply forgot how to read. So we have covered
the Ironman college game, his time with the Wrens,
breaking the color barrier in the NBL, and playing
for the Homestead Grays. It is a resume that
genuinely sounds like fiction, but as we wrap
up, I want to end with a thought experiment for
you and for the listener. Okay, let's do it.
We established that he was 6 '4", 215 pounds,
built like a linebacker, but moved like a point
guard. And that was in 1940, eating steak and
eggs and wearing flat canvas shoes. Right. If
you take Dolly King's DNA, that incredible frame,
that natural endless engine, and you drop him
into 2024, you give him modern plyometric training.
You give him a dedicated nutritionist. You put
him in a Division I program with a high -end
strength coach. What kind of athlete are we actually
looking at? That is a fascinating question because
today, 6 '4 isn't a center anymore. but a 6 '4",
225 -pound athlete, assuming modern weights,
with elite lateral agility. In football, you
are looking at an NFL strong safety who can cover
absolutely anyone on the field. Or in the modern
NBA, you are looking at a Russell Westbrook or
an Anthony Edwards type of player, a power guard
who just bullies people going to the rim. Or
maybe a Dion Sanders or a Bo Jackson type of
figure. Someone who literally plays both professional
sports simultaneously simply because they are
just that much better than everyone else alive.
Exactly. With modern sports science keeping his
body healthy and recovering properly, he would
be a global superstar. He had all the raw materials.
He just happened to be born 60 years too early
to maximize them financially and culturally.
That is the ultimate takeaway for me. Dala King
is the bridge. He connects the gritty, segregated,
barnstorming era to the polished, highly televised
global game we watch today. You really cannot
understand the modern NBA without understanding
the guys who played in those smoky gyms and cages
back in 1946. Absolutely. History is never a
straight line. It is built entirely on the backs
of guys like King who broke down the heavy doors
so that others could comfortably walk right through.
A true pioneer and the ultimate Iron Man, William
Dolly King. A name that is definitely worth remembering.
Thanks for taking this deep dive with us. We'll
see you next time.