Lemon played 24 seasons and by his own estimate more than 16,000 games with the Globetrotters, the touring exhibition basketball team known for its slick ball-handling, practical jokes, red-white-and-blue uniforms and multiyear winning streaks against overmatched opponents.
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He spent 22 years with the Globetrotters, eventually overtaking the central role as the team’s floor general and ringmaster, helping the team string together 2,495 consecutive wins while playing in front of global audiences in more than 100 countries worldwide.
Meadowlark Lemon was an iconic star of the Harlem Globetrotters from 1954 to 1978.
“Meadowlark was the most sensational, awesome, incredible basketball player I’ve ever seen”, Wilt Chamberlain, who played alongside him with the Globetrotters before becoming eligible for the NBA, once said in a television interview, according to the Times.
Lemon and his Globetrotters became world-famous, even playing in Moscow during the Cold War, and featuring in a Hanna-Barbara cartoon series in the 1970’s. In his prime, Lemon was ranked among the most recognizable athletes in the world. He died this past Sunday in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Both expert player and entertainer, Lemon was the ringmaster of the team that delighted the world with their court antics.
Lemon was six foot three inches tall, and was one of the Globetrotter players that helped to garner large crowds to their events.
Meadowlark has played basketball before Kings, Queens, Presidents, Popes, and for millions of fans all over the World!
After leaving the Globetrotters, Lemon led his own traveling basketball group and performed into his 70s.
“My destiny was to make people happy”, he said as he was inducted into the basketball hall in 2003. Born in Wilmington, North Carolina, Meadowlark Lemon III attended the screening of a movie at the age of 11.
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In his later years, Lemon served as a minister and motivational speaker. Lemon said he rose every day at 4 a.m. and, after prayers, headed for the gym to run sprints and practice shooting. One memory is seeing Meadowlark try a hook shot from the upper level of the old Omni courtyard when the trotters played in the courtyard.
