The Globetrotters bring their slapstick brand of hoops to town for the first time in nearly 40 years.
By Randy Whitehouse
Staff Writer

When your job for 24 years is basketball and fun, and you get to work in over 100 countries and before over 100 million people worldwide like Hubert “Geese” Ausbie did, it’s easy to spot a tough crowd.

There was a time during the Cold War that Ausbie thought he had run into the toughest crowd of all, when he performed along with the Harlem Globetrotters in Russia.

“We started playing and doing our thing and they weren’t applauding or laughing or making any noise or anything,” Ausbie said. “We thought we were doing something wrong.”

When the Globetrotters are doing it right, which is basically every night, the air is filled with laughter, applause, “Sweet Georgia Brown” and, at least for a few seconds after one of their classic skits, confetti. On this particular night, though, only the pounding of a leather ball on a hardwood floor and the swish of nylon nets broke the dead silence of a sold out arena.

That is, until they stopped playing.

“After the game, they stood up and applauded and didn’t stop for about a half-hour,” Ausbie said. “I’d never seen anything like it.”

The Harlem Globetrotters can expect a similar, if more forthcoming, welcome when they return to Lewiston for the first time in nearly 40 years at 7 p.m. Monday, March 29 at the Colisee.

This is the Globetrotters’ first appearance in Lewiston since 1967. The team, now in its 78th season, used to play the Lewiston Armory fairly regularly in the 1960s.

Ausbie was in his seventh year with the Globetrotters the last time they visited Lewiston, then acting as their “Clown Prince”, a sort of ringmaster presiding over, and often carrying out, the team’s on-court shenanigans. He retired from the court in 1985, but has stayed with the organization for 40 years. He was honored as one of the team’s “Legends” in 1994, joining the likes of Wilt Chamberlain, Connie Hawkins, Marques Haynes and Meadowlark Lemon. Currently, the 65-year-old Ausbie is the team’s vice president of global ambassadors.

One of Ausbie’s roles is mentoring today’s players. It makes sense, then, that his favorite is Matt “Showbiz” Jackson, the Globies current “Clown Prince.”

“I like ‘Showbiz’, because he’s got a lot of antics,” he said.

“Plus, he always said I was his favorite Globetrotter,” Ausbie confessed with a chuckle.

While some of the team’s comic routines and tricks have changed over the years, little has changed about being a Globetrotter, Ausbie said.

“We have a lot of young guys and I tell them to have a good personality, a good attitude towards the game and people, especially kids,” he said. “Kids love the Globetrotters.”

Many who watched Ausbie when they were kids are now parents and grandparents bringing a new generation of kids to delight in the next generation of “Geese” Ausbies and “Curly” Neals.

The Harlem Globetrotters know no age limit, Ausbie said, and basketball and fun never get lost in the translation.

“The Globetrotters are still universal,” he said. “Everybody smiles in the same language.”