Jahmani Swanson is an American basketball entertainer for the Harlem Globetrotters.
Born with dwarfism, Swanson is 4-foot-5 inches (134 cm) tall.
Nicknamed "Mini Michael Jordan" for his ball handling skills, [1] he is well known for his online basketball videos involving him playing against players in street-ball who are almost twice his height. Some photos from these videos have made several online news stories. He played for Monroe College, a junior college in the Bronx, and played professionally with other touring exhibition teams.
Born in the Bronx and raised in Harlem, he was a star player in the New York Towers Basketball team, who is one of the most successful teams in the Dwarf Athletic Association of America. He has also competed in the World Dwarf Games.
In 2017, Swanson signed with the Harlem Globetrotters to be a part of their 2018 "Amazing Feats of Basketball" World Tour. Nicknamed "Hot Shot," he will tour the world with the famous team.
Jahmani has travelled all around the world playing basketball, but is known to go to schools in his spare time to promote people with Dwarfism to do sports and other activities despite their height.
He has inspired many children and adults, while also teaching people about dwarfism.
The Harlem Globetrotters are an American exhibition basketball team. They combine athleticism, theater, entertainment, and comedy in their style of play. Over the years, they have played more than 26,000 exhibition games in 124 countries and territories, mostly against deliberately ineffective opponents, such as the Washington Generals and the New York Nationals (1995–2015). The team's signature song is Brother Bones' whistled version of "Sweet Georgia Brown", and their mascot is an anthropomorphized globe named "Globie". The team is owned by Herschend Family Entertainment.
Abraham Michael Saperstein was the founder, owner and earliest coach of the Harlem Globetrotters. Saperstein was a leading figure in black basketball and baseball from the 1920s through the 1950s, primarily before those sports were racially integrated.
The Washington Generals are an American basketball team who play exhibition games against the Harlem Globetrotters. The team has also played under several different aliases in their history as the Globetrotters' perennial opponents.
Meadow Lemon III, known professionally as Meadowlark Lemon, was an American basketball player, actor, and Christian minister. For 22 years, he was known as the "Clown Prince" of the touring Harlem Globetrotters basketball team. He was a 2003 inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Ordained in 1986, in 1994 he started Meadowlark Lemon Ministries in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Nathaniel "Sweetwater" Clifton was an American professional basketball and baseball player. He is best known as one of the first African Americans to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Marques Haynes was an American professional basketball player and member of the Harlem Globetrotters, notable for his ability to dribble the ball and keep it away from defenders. According to the 1988 film Harlem Globetrotters: Six Decades of Magic, Haynes could dribble the ball as many as 348 times a minute.
Samuel Lee Worthen is an American former NBA player who currently is touring as the coach of the Washington Generals, the team that perennially loses to the Harlem Globetrotters. He was well known for his play at the Rucker Park Tournament.
Paul "Pablo" Robertson (1944–1990) was an American professional basketball player and member of the Harlem Globetrotters. At college, Robertson played on the 1962–63 Loyola University Chicago squad that won the NCAA tournament, although Robertson was dropped in the middle of the season due to poor grades.
Kareem Reid is a former point guard in the National Basketball Development League. He played college basketball for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks, and went on to play professionally in several leagues in the United States and Europe. Reid is also a well known street-ball player in the Bronx, playing in the Rucker Park league, where he won three consecutive championships at the Entertainers Ballers Classic from 2002 to 2004.
In athletics terminology, barnstorming refers to sports teams or individual athletes who travel to various locations, usually small towns, to stage exhibition matches. The term is primarily used in the United States. Barnstorming teams differ from traveling teams in that they operate outside the framework of an established athletic league, while traveling teams are designated by a league, formally or informally, to be a designated visiting team.
Luis Fernando Da Silva Jr., also known as Trikz, is an American actor, basketball player, author, and producer. He gained fame after headlining the 2001 Nike Freestyle ad campaign.
Orlando Radhames Antigua Fernández, nicknamed "Hurricane", is a Dominican-American basketball coach and former player who is currently the associate head coach at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He had also been an assistant there from 2017 to 2021. He was most recently an assistant coach under John Calipari at the University of Kentucky. He is widely known as becoming the first Hispanic and the first non-black player for the Harlem Globetrotters in 52 years when he signed in 1995. After his retirement from playing professional basketball he was named an assistant coach at Pittsburgh, the University of Memphis, and the University of Kentucky. In 2014, he was named the head coach at South Florida, which he held until 2017. He also served as the head coach of the Dominican Republic national basketball team from 2013 to 2015.
Grayson Scott "The Professor" Boucher is an American professional streetball player. He is most known for playing on the highly stylized, international AND1 Mixtape Tour; he has also appeared in several movies including, Semi-Pro, Ball Don't Lie, and Hustle and he is a playable character in several video games.
Paul Sturgess is a British former professional basketball player. He was officially measured by Guinness World Records in November 2011 at 7 ft 7.26 in (2.32 m) and 325 lb (147 kg). Sturgess was the tallest college basketball player in the United States.
Maurice James Escovilla Shaw is a Filipino-American professional basketball player for the Manila City Stars of the Pilipinas Super League. In Shaw's early years, he attended Washington Union High School in Fresno County, California. After high school, he began his professional career playing for the world famous Harlem Globetrotters, while attending Hutchinson Community College simultaneously.
Milton Leon Banks, was an American basketball player best known for his seasons spent touring with the Harlem Globetrotters. He started his basketball career at Cal Poly Pomona in 1979, he was a member of several 3x3 (basketball), or Hoop-it-up championship teams, Dino Smiley's Drew League, and was named to the Venice Beach's basketball Hall of Fame in 2012 along the likes of Kobe Bryant.
Charles "Tex" Harrison was an American basketball player, born in Indiana and raised in Texas, who played and coached for the Harlem Globetrotters for six decades. Harrison was the first player from a historically African American college to receive All-American honors.
The 1948 Globetrotters–Lakers game was a dramatic match-up between the Harlem Globetrotters and the Minneapolis Lakers. Played in Chicago Stadium, the game took place two years before professional basketball was desegregated. The Globetrotters' 61–59 victory – by two points at the buzzer – challenged prevailing racial stereotypes about the abilities of black athletes.
Larry Darnell Rivers, also known as Gator Rivers, was an American basketball player, coach, business owner, and civil servant. He performed as a dribbler for the Harlem Globetrotters from 1973 to 1986, eventually taking over the main dribbler role from Curly Neal. As player-coach during his last year with the Globetrotters, he led the team's nationwide search for their first female player.
Inman William "Big Jack" Jackson was an American professional basketball player. He was a long-time member of the Harlem Globetrotters and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022.