New York Times
Haynes unveiled his gift publicly for the first time in a tournament game against Southern University in February 1945. In a previous round of the tournament, Haynes had watched Southern humiliate an outmanned squad from a tiny school, Samuel Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson University), whose coach, fresh out of the Army before he signed with the Dodgers, but after he had achieved fame as an athlete at U.C.L.A. was Jackie Robinson.
Langston whipped Southern, and for the game’s last two minutes or more, to pay Southern back for its poor sportsmanship and to avenge Robinson, Haynes dribbled out the clock.
“He dribbled behind his back and between his legs, dribbled the ball two inches off the floor and higher than his head,” Ben Green wrote in his 2005 history of the Globetrotters, “Spinning the Globe.” “Two Southern players chased him, but he dribbled right through them. He circled around the key in one direction, then back the other way, weaving in and out of the Southern players. Just when they seemed to have him boxed in, he would feint in one direction and slam on the brakes so suddenly that they’d slide right past him, falling over themselves.”
The crowd of 2,500 bellowed and cheered, rose to its feet and showered the floor with programs and small coins. “They threw their hats, and even their shirts,” Mr. Green wrote. “No one had ever seen anything like this before on a basketball court. And, in truth, there had never been anything like this on any basketball court. Not on any court, anywhere, since Dr. Naismith invented the game. What Marques Haynes was doing with a ball had never ben done.”
After graduating from Langston, Haynes played for the Globetrotters for several years, a time when the team was so popular that the fledgling N.B.A. often scheduled games on the same bill as Globetrotter games in order to help draw fans.
The Magicians were successful enough in the early days that Haynes turned down two offers to play in the N.B.A., from the Philadelphia Warriors in 1953 and the Lakers in 1955.
(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/sports/marques-haynes-harlem-globetrotters-star-dribbler-dies-at-89.html)
