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Pound Virginia's Glenn Roberts Credited With The Jump Shot |
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1941 Glenn Roberts Shooting The Jump
Shot
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Glenn Roberts, Sr.
Born
October 25, 1912 in Wise, VA
Died
May 21, 1980 (aged 67)
Height 6 ft. 4 in.
and Weight 198 lb.
Center
for Pound High School
Center
for Emory and Henry College
Pro
Basketball Career 1938-1939
Forward NBL
for Firestone Non-Skids
Awards
Captain All State High School
Team 2-Yrs.
All
State College Team 4 years
All-American
Team 1934-35 season
Member Virginia
Sports Hall of Fame
First inductee
into Emory and Henry
College's
Sports Hall of Fame
Pro Team
"Firestone Non-Skids"
NBL
1938-39 League Champions |
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About Glenn
Roberts
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Glenn Roberts' Pound,
Virginia high school did not field a basketball team his first two
high school years. Roberts’ team won the state championship his
junior and senior years (1930 & 31). The team record for 1930 was 28
wins and 2 losses with 1931 being 35 wins and 0 losses. Roberts was
designated captain of the All-State team both years. Roberts played
varsity ball 4 years (1931-35) at Emory & Henry College scoring
2,013 points in 104 games for a per game average of 19.4 points in
an era when team scores were seldom over 30 or 35 points per game.
Glenn's scoring was a new record for that time and still stands for play
prior to the 1937 revision of the center-jump rule which called for
walking the ball back to the center-line after every basket made and
with the clock still running. (It’s been estimated that this used up
8 to 10 minutes per game.) Roberts scored 1,531 points against
college opposition in 80 games and 482 points against pro and
semi-pro teams in 24 games. Emory and Henry’s overall team record
was 90 wins and 14 losses. His scoring total and per-game average
was featured in Ripley's’ "Believe it or Not" in 1936.
One significant reason for Glenn Roberts’
prolific scoring was his use of a jump-shot. Historian and writer
Stephen Fox, in his book “Big Leagues,” contends, after exhaustive
research, that Glenn Roberts was the very first college player to
utilize a jump-shot to such a scoring advantage. It was an offensive
weapon the opposition had never seen before.
In the 1930s there did not exist the well
defined college conferences as today. Consequently smaller schools
like Emory & Henry were as likely to play the largest of schools as
well as the smaller ones. Emory & Henry regularly played the
University of Richmond, Virginia Tech, University of Tennessee,
William & Mary, East Tennessee State, George Washington, University
of Virginia etc.
A game against the much larger University
of Richmond Spiders is significant. The only team to have an
undefeated season, in the history of Virginia college basketball,
was the 1934-35 Richmond team. Richmond's late coach, Malcolm (Mac)
Pitt, in a letter to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame,
describes how Richmond, in its final game of the season, narrowly
edged Emory and Henry with their defensive efforts being focused
primarily on Roberts. Richmond defeated Emory and Henry, IN
OVERTIME, on Richmond's home court in an era when officiating was
far less than the high caliber profession it is today. The "home
court" was generally considered a 4 or 5 point advantage for the
home team.
Upon graduating, Glenn Roberts received
many professional offers from National Basketball League (NBL) and
other professional teams, but opted for coaching basketball at
Norton High in Norton, Virginia. He turned the program around and
won the district championship in the two years he coached – 1936 and
1937 seasons. He was induced by the Firestone Non-Skids of the NBL
to play for the 1938-39 season. The Firestone team had four
All-Americans including Glenn Roberts – Art Bonniwell of Dartmouth
and John Moir and Paul Nowak, both from Notre Dame. Firestone won
the NBL Easrern Division championship with a 24 and 3 season record.
Next, the team won the NBL Championship by beating the Western Division
champions (Oshkosh All-Stars) in a best of five series. Their .875
winning percentage for the regular season is the highest winning
percentage in the history of the NBL and the NBA (National
Basketball Association). Ironically, the standout player on the team
was a non-collegian, "Soup" Cable, a local Akronite, who averaged 10
points with the other scoring being fairly evenly distributed in the
3 to 6 point range. Glenn Roberts played little basketball in the
two years after college, yet was able to make a significant
contribution to the Firestone teams’ outstanding season. Roberts,
knowing that basketball wasn’t going to be his life’s career, took
advantage of a job opportunity with Firestone after the one
spectacular season.
Glenn Roberts and his six brothers (five of
whom were Virginia High School All State) fielded a team and
dominated the Northeast Ohio industrial leagues during the early
1940s. Roberts and his brothers took a leave of absence from
Firestone in January 1945 to sell war-bonds by barnstorming
Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and West Virginia
where Glenn Roberts' name was still legend. Their opposition was
colleges, pro and semi-pro teams. (On
March 10, 1945,
$50,000.00 was raised in a victory over Milligan College.)
Five of the seven brothers were exempted
from military service during the war years because their Firestone
jobs were critical to the war effort. The other two did a tour of
duty in the navy and army respectfully.
Play with his brothers in the mid forties
was the end of Glenn Roberts’ involvement with basketball with the
exception of two years in the 1960s. He coached Clinch Valley
College of the University of Virginia for two seasons – 1964 through
1966. The team record for the season prior to his arrival was 2 wins
and 19 losses. Roberts’ record was 14 wins and 6 losses each of the
two years he coached. Until Roberts’ college coaching debut the
school had never known a winning season.
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In college basketball, the undisputed first
player to put a jump shot to practical use, were Glenn Roberts of
Emory and Henry College and John M Cooper of the University of
Missouri. Again, noted historian and writer, Stephen Fox, in his
1994 book, “Big Leagues,” shows that Roberts and Cooper both used a
jumper simultaneously in time (early 1930s) and yet totally
independent of each other. Both shot a two handed jumper. The
greatest difference between the two was their scoring averages.
While Cooper’s 11 plus point average was considered great in that
era of low scoring games, it paled in comparison to Roberts’ 19 plus
average.
Roberts’ high school did not have an indoor
gym and therefore had to practice on an outdoor dirt court. Often
when the ground was too muddy for dribbling, the players would just
pass to each other and shoot when someone was open. Roberts, even
when guarded closely, started jumping in the air, with ball in hand,
and released the ball at the apex of his jump.
It wasn't until a decade or so later that
the "jump shot" started to become more widely used. Four players to
be credited with popularizing the jumper in the mid to late 1940s
were Bud Palmer, Belus Smawley, Kenny Sailors and Joe Fulks.
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There are many people, especially
Southerners, who think Glenn Roberts should be in the Naismith
Memorial Basketball of Fame]]. The game of basketball in the 1920s
and 30s did not enjoy the national focus of today. It was more
provincial in focus and coverage. The only possible national focus
was on what would be considered the basketball power structure of
the day, the New England and New York City/New Jersey area.
Supporting this is the fact that all
players, from Glenn Roberts' era, inducted into the Hall of Fame are
from the Northeast with a few from the Mid-West and, of course,
Luisetti from California. As already pointed out, Luisetti had a
chance to show his stuff in New York City.
The geography that Glenn Roberts covered
during his college days was definitely void of National focus and
attention. This fact does not, however, make Glenn Roberts exploits
and contributions to the game any less real or significant. It would
be presumptuous and erroneous to conclude that Glenn Roberts'
caliber of play was inferior because he was never in the crosshairs
of the powerful Northeast press. There is no player in the Hall of
Fame from Roberts' era whose accomplishments come remotely close to
Roberts' scoring achievements and all-around play.
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Glenn's name has been written with both one
and two n's in his first name. Glenn's name has been printed both
ways throughout his life. However, he primarily known as having two
n's in his first name.
To say that Glenn Roberts and his six
brothers were born to humble beginnings, would be an understatement.
Few today could visualize sweeping snow out of every room the next
morning after a snowfall. Probably no one can remember newspaper as
their standard wall paper. It was not an easy life for Charlie and
Orlena Roberts and their brood of seven boys.
Children in the early days of the rural and
agricultural regions of the country were required to work as soon as
they were old enough and a hoe to fit their hands. The average
summer day on South Fork, located five miles (8 km) from Pound,
Virginia, began before dawn with breakfast followed by hoeing,
mowing and whatever else was needed on their farm that produced
corn, potatoes and the ancillary crops needed for food. A few cows,
hogs and lots of chickens rounded out their food sources.
Even though they could have been used full
time on the farm, Mommy Roberts vowed her boys were going to get an
education even if they had to walk to school; and walk they did.
Glenn Roberts started his five mile (8 km) trek before daylight with
lantern in hand, leaving the lantern on the same barn each morning.
There was always time for basketball each day before and after
school.
Glenn graduated from Emory and Henry
College in 1935, where he was in the social fraternity Beta Lambda
Zeta. Rather than take one of the many offers to play professional
basketball, Glenn opted to coach and teach in Norton, VA at Norton
High School for two years. Immediately after college he married
Helen Joyce Keys and had three children, Glenn Jr., Mary Virginia
and Larry Van.
After playing one year of professional
basketball with Firestone (1938-39), he went to work full time for
Firestone where he enjoyed a successful career, working his way up
to being head of Firestone's "Time Study" Department. In 1963 he
resigned from Firestone to join his son, Glenn Jr. in their new tire
business in Norton, Virginia.
At the time of his 1980 death, this
business and the eleven others in Southwest Virginia, Eastern
Kentucky and East Tennessee had become the third largest Firestone
dealer in the country and the largest consumer of Firestone retread
rubber in the country.
Glenn was a shy, humble and soft-spoken
person who never had a known enemy. He very seldom showed anger and
no one ever heard a single curse word emanate from his lips. In
spite of living a healthy life by eating correctly and exercising,
he developed colon cancer in 1978 and succumbed to it in 1980. |
Fox, Stephen (1998).
Big Leagues: Professional Baseball, Football, and
Basketball in National Memory. University of
Nebraska Press. ISBN 0688093000.
Goldblatt, Abe
(1976). The Great and the Near Great: A Century
of Sports in Virginia. Unknown. ISBN
9780915442072.
Emory & Henry
College Sports Information Director, Nathan
Graybeal, Emory, Virginia
Bicentennial
History of Washington County, Virginia
(1776-1876) By J. Allen Neal Copyright 1977 Taylor
Publishing Co.
Newspaper
Clippings from various newspapers and over 100
letters from teammates, opponents, coaches, referees
and sportswriters are on file at Basketball Hall of
Fame with copies available from Bill Lane of
"Kingsport Times News" blane@timesnews.net
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