Basketball, Men

The Olympic basketball tournament of 1904 was listed in the Spalding’s Official Basketball Guide as “The First Olympic World’s Basket Ball Championship.” The events were held on 11-12 July, in the infield at the Olympic Stadium, on a court measuring 50 feet by 70 feet. The event was absolutely dominated by the Buffalo German YMCA, who won games by such scores at 97-8, 77-6, and 105-50. The Buffalo Germans were the greatest basketball team of that era, and were later enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a team. They had won the Pan-American Exposition in 1901 and had not been defeated since that time.

Donald Sayenga has written about the famous Buffalo German YMCA team. Portions of his article are as follows:

“The Buffalo Germans were a very small group of German-speaking men who played together as one of several teams sponsored by the Buffalo (New York) Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The new Buffalo Central YMCA (which opened in 1903) was a huge organization with thousands of members, one of the world’s largest YMCA associations.

“The famous Buffalo Germans basketball team had carried away all honors at the Pan-American Exposition [in 1901]. At that Exposition eight of the country’s leading basketball teams were entered in competition and the Buffalo Germans won the championship by defeating all of the others. They scored a total of 81 points in the tournament to their opponents’ 27. This is more remarkable because the average age of this team in the Pan-American year was only 18.

“Following their Olympic triumph, the team manager arranged a country-wide tour which included the playing of 87 games and of these they won 69 and lost 18. In 1907 the team started the greatest winning streak of their career, playing 111 games from then through the season of 1910-11 without a single loss. During all these years the team included only nine different men and they carried only six on their tours. This great team began its career in the gymnasium of the German department of the Buffalo YMCA and played games and practised there until 1905. An unfortunate misunderstanding with the administration of the German department forced them to leave the YMCA just as they were beginning the greatest years of their career. They reluctantly moved across the street to Orioles Hall and continued there for the rest of their career. In retrospect, it seems that the YMCA gave up a tremendous asset through this action.

“The Buffalo Germans represent a rare case of a whole team which has been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. As single individuals, however, they remain obscure. Historian William G. Mokray credits the Buffalo Germans as perhaps being the first great professional basketball team.”

However, the basketball events in the 1904 Olympics are hardly of Olympic caliber. No foreign teams entered or competed. The championship doubled as the AAU Championship for 1904. In addition, restrictions on team events at the 1904 Olympics put severe restrictions on many foreign countries entering teams. It was required that the athletes not only represent a single country but that they all be members of the same club. This rarely happened with foreign teams. Finally, in 1904, there were essentially no foreign countries playing basketball. For these reasons, we do not consider the basketball events of the 1904 World’s Fair as part of the Olympic Games, but only list them as a demonstration sport, and this decision is shared by most Olympic historians.