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Filipinos Build Basketball Floor To Greet Harlem Globetrotters

Philippine Mahogany, one of the most versatile of building woods, was adapted to a new use on its home island recently in honor of a visiting basketball team. Abe Saperstein, manager of the barnstorming Harlem Globetrotters, told the story through Red Smith's nationally syndicated column.

Filipinos, Saperstein says, are "baserk" about basketball. So "baserk" that 11,000 workers from a sugar plantation near the town of Bacolod sat all day in a driving rainstorm waiting to watch the local team tange with the Globetrotters and the Boston Celtics. The Celtics accompanied the Harlem team on the world tour.

The game at Bacolod was played in a clearing cut out of the sugar cane. In the middle of the clearing, built especially for the Globetrotters' exhibition, was a basketball floor. It was constructed entirely of solid Philippine Mahogany.

As Saperstein describes it: "Here was this solid mahogany floor that the sugar rancher had built just for this one game and afterwards he would just have it torn up and throw it away, I guess."

It is the guess of Insular Lumber Company, who supplied the flooring from their nearby Fabrica mills, that the basketball court will be allowed to remain so that local teams can indulge their enthusiasm for the game, but they were happy to hear that it served the exhibition well for 45 minutes after soaking-with the spectators-all day in the rain.