As the man who single-handedly integrated every single role in pro hoops, Harry “Bucky” Lew should be more than a footnote. Yet, while the Basketball Hall of Fame acknowledges his status as the first pro baller, it has not inducted him as a member.
In a career that spanned roughly 25 years, Lew was the first Black professional player, coach, general manager, head referee, and franchise owner, all in otherwise white leagues. He even coached college too!
Amateur Champion
Lew got his start in 1898 at the YMCA in Lowell, Massachusetts, just a few years after the invention of the game. Unlike most of the Ys in the country, the Lowell Y was not segregated. Lew became a star and won several YMCA championships.
The Y played some colleges too, and when they upset the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the budding rocket scientists at MIT concluded he might be the best player on the best amateur team in the state.
First Professional
When Lew turned 18, he jumped to the pros, signing in 1902 with Lowell’s Pawtucketville Athletic Club of the young New England Basketball League. Only coming along as a sub for his first game, he got into the action after a teammate was injured and played so well he was soon offered a contract for the season at the league cap of $5 per game.
A crowd favorite, his games drew up to 2,000 fans. While not big numbers by today’s standards, the PAC at times outdrew the Boston Braves, who had an audience of 1600 at their home opener that year.
Injuries and Indignities
The game was rough in those days. The Lowell Sun said that a Manchester, New Hampshire reporter, seeing the game for the first time, described it this way: “Basketball, in short, combines all the exciting elements of boxing, wrestling…football, murder, and a house on fire.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, the hometown hero had his share of troubles on the court. He had to leave one game after being kicked in the stomach, another after sustaining a gash that required stitches, and yet another after getting hit in the eye and the eye swelling shut. He also dislocated his shoulders several times. One of his granddaughter Wendy’s persistent memories is seeing him sitting in his favorite chair wearing a tank top and rubbing his exposed shoulders.
And the tension extended off the court. One newspaper called him his manager’s “colored valet.” Some crowds tried to shout him off the floor. He was denied lodging in New Hampshire. And the game’s best player, Harry Hough, refused to play against him one night.
While he experienced adversity, he had allies too. The local press and fans were solidly behind him. And so was the league. After Hough’s boycott, the Boston Journal reported that the league president told Lew, “I am with you.”
Of course, that allyship only went so far. But if you know anything about the Lews, you know Bucky wasn’t about to give up. With a great-great-grandfather who was a Revolutionary War veteran, and a great-uncle who was a Civil War hero, how could he?
A True Original
Instead, he gave it right back. In one game, where the foul limit was lifted, he had 10 fouls. Yet he wasn’t viewed as a dirty player. He operated within the rules. In an era when fistfights were common, he never engaged in one. Lew was actually known as a gentleman and “a clean and skillful player.”
With a flair for the dramatic, Lew became known for his unique style of play, stunning half-court shots, an impossible-to-steal handle, and an unusual passing style where, when he had no other options, he directed the ball to an open spot on the court and beat everyone else to it. The Lowell Daily Courier may have said it best on December 12, 1902: “Lew is a gentle little man to look at, but when the whistle blows, he becomes a whirlwind.”
Basketball's Dead Ball Era
Lew was a defensive player in a defensive era. Owners thought fans were skeptical of high scoring games, so they worked to keep scores low, by shrinking rims, lifting the foul limit, and outlawing free throws. Lew played standing guard, or a “back,” in the vocabulary of the day, meaning he stayed at the back of the offense, initiating it from a distance while also making sure an opponent couldn’t sneak out for an easy score.
The equipment didn’t help either. The basketball, which had laces like a football to allow access to the air bladder inside, was a lopsided mess as a result and it knuckleballed through the air during long passes and shots. Few realize it was the dead ball era of basketball too.
Allyship and Championships
Bucky played a year for the Lowell PAC, then two more with Haverhill in the NEBL. When he dislocated his shoulder for the third time in the season just before the start of the 1905 Finals, he missed a chance at a league championship, and then a claim to the world championship, as the team’s HOF center, Ed Wachter, brought most of his teammates on a midwestern tour and beat the team that beat team that won the 1904 Olympic Trials.
Despite those setbacks, Lew healed, rebuilt his body, and when the league folded, he formed his own team, the Lowell Five. They barnstormed in a borrowed Packard throughout New England. Lew finally got his pro championship in Vermont 1907. There they immortalized him “the Original Bucky Lew,” known for his original stunts on a basketball court.
Was Lew intimidated by the Jim Crow system that dominated the country in those days, segregating whites and Blacks into separate and unequal lifestyles? Or the revival of the Ku Klux Klan midway through his career? Not so much.
Instead, all that seemed to inspire him. He drew on New England’s various ethnic groups to build a roster the KKK would despise. Players of Irish, French-Canadian, Greek, German, and Jewish descent played with Lew’s Five.
A Place In Basketball Heaven
Lew earned the respect of his peers as both a player and an executive and blazed a trail for nearly a quarter century. Beyond his playing career, he coached and managed otherwise white pro teams and worked as a head referee too. He also coached college at Lowell Textile School, now D1 UMass Lowell, then finally retired from the game in 1926.
He died in 1963 at an age of 79 and is buried in Springfield, Massachusetts, not far from the hall of fame. Whether or not he has been accepted into that club, you know he earned his place in basketball heaven!
About The Author (Chris Boucher)
The Original Bucky Lew is Chris Boucher’s third book. He first learned of Lew as he was looking into his own family history in their shared neighborhood of Pawtucketville in Lowell, MA, where Lew started as a pro.
Despite being a lifelong basketball fan, he had never heard of the man who single-handedly integrated the sport, and when he learned why—Lew had no full-length biography—he set out to write it.
The book is available wherever good books are sold. And if your local bookstore doesn’t have it, ask them to stock it!