(Courtesy: Lowell Sun 1903)
LOWELL — 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 Hall of Fame acknowledges his status as the first pro baller, it once again passed over him in its recent announcement of its class of 2024.
Lew became the first Black professional player, coach, general manager, head referee, and franchise owner, all in otherwise white leagues, in a career that spanned a quarter century.
Yet it’s now been 66 years since Gerry Finn, a sports reporter for the Springfield Union who interviewed Lew just before the Hall first opened its doors, asked in 1958: “When they’re handing out memberships in the Basketball Hall of Fame, how about a vote for Bucky Lew? Is there anyone in the hall who can say he doesn’t deserve it?”
(Courtesy Boston Globe 1904)
Lew got his start in 1898 at the YMCA in Lowell, Massachusetts, then turned pro when he reached 18. He signed with Lowell’s Pawtucketville Athletic Club (PAC) of the young New England Basketball League in 1902. 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.
He was a fan favorite on a popular team. According to former Hall statistician William Himmelman, “Lowell [was] a hotbed of enthusiastic and knowledgeable basketball fans…with the PAC drawing over 2,000 fans for some games, big numbers for turn of the century sports.”
The game was rough in those days. 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, Lew suffered his share of injuries and indignities. 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.
Yet, in an era when fistfights were common, he never threw a punch in a game. According to the Lowell Courier Citizen of 1915, “Lew is known throughout New England among basketball fans as an exceptionally clean as well as skillful player.”
The game’s best player and highest scorer, Harry Hough, refused to play against him one night. Hough took the court, but refused to engage while Lew was on it. The only time he moved was to dodge the basketballs fired at his head by Lew’s teammates.
The papers said there was more to it than race. The Waterbury Evening Democrat of 1904 wrote: “Hough quit because he was afraid to measure his abilities with…Bucky Lew, one of the best backfield players in the country.” The Lowell Daily Courier of 1902 may have said it best: “Lew is a gentle little man to look at, but when the whistle blows, he becomes a whirlwind.”
While Lew 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 of 1904 reported that the league president told Lew, “I am with you,” and threatened to expel Hough from the league if he refused again.
Bucky played for a year with the Lowell PAC before being picked up by the newly expanded Haverhill team. 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 center, Ed Wachter, brought most of his teammates on a midwestern tour and beat the team that won the 1904 Olympic Trials.
Lew took a short break and married Florence Smith of Fitchburg as he healed and rebuilt his body. When the New England Basketball League (NEBL) folded, he finally got his pro championship in Vermont 1907. There they immortalized him as “the Original Bucky Lew,” a nickname he earned with his original stunts on the court.
Later, he organized his own independent teams based out of Lowell and Nashua and brought them all over New England. He drew on various ethnic groups to build a roster the revived Ku Klux Klan of the mid-1910s had to despise. Lew’s Five included players of Irish, French-Canadian, Greek, German, and Jewish descent.
Amongst Lew’s other achievements, he refereed games, coached at Lowell Textile School (now D1 UMass Lowell), and partnered with William Sullivan (the father of Patriots founder Billy Sullivan) to revive the New England League.
Perhaps his true legacy is his link to the Brooklyn Dodgers’ full integration of major league sports. Nashua Dodgers president Fred Dobens assured the organization in the mid-1940s that his city would welcome the first Black players to play in the US while Robinson started in Canada. How did he know? Because as a high school basketball star, Dobens’ teams entertained crowds at the halftime of Lew’s games in the 1920s!
(Courtesy: Springfield Union 1963)
Lew finally retired from the game in 1926 and moved his family to Springfield, Massachusetts, during the Depression. He died in 1963 and lies buried in the city’s Oak Grove cemetery, not far from the Hall. Whether or not he has been accepted into that private club, most basketball fans will agree that he surely earned a place in basketball heaven!
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! Amazon URL: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1613098960
