Glenn Roberts
Pound Virginia's Glenn Roberts Credited With The Jump Shot
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
Links to Information 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.
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.
Basketball Hall of Fame
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.
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.
References
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
Article From: Wikipedia
