Globetrotters Legend, Wilmington Native Meadowlark Lemon Dies At 83

A spokesman for the Globetrotters confirmed that Lemon died on Sunday in Scottsdale, Arizona where he lived.

When Lemon joined the team, the Globetrotters were still better known then the New Knicks and the Boston Celtics and played in front of bigger crowds.

He played in over 100 countries, travelled more than four million miles and averaged 325 games per year during his prime.

In 2000 Lemon was honored with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s John Bunn Award for lifetime contributions to the sport, and three years later was a Hall of Fame inductee.

“For a generation of fans, the name Meadowlark Lemon was synonymous with the Harlem Globetrotters”, Globetrotters CEO Kurt Schneider said in a press release.

Meadowlark was the most sensational, awesome, incredible basketball player Ive ever seen, Chamberlain said in a television interview not long before he died in 1999. Lemon, born in Wilmington, N.C., was also a minister. He quickly became noted for his entertaining performances on the court, as well as his comedy off it. After he retired from the team in 1979, he went on to establish many of his own basketball squads.

Lemon left the Globetrotters in 1978 over a contract dispute and subsequently formed his own traveling teams, including Meadowlark Lemon’s Bucketeers and Meadowlark Lemon’s Harlem All-Stars. The team played several games in Moscow during the Cold War and met with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

The Globetrotters became world famous, even playing games in Moscow during the Cold War when they met Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

ROSE: Still, Meadowlark Lemon insisted Globetrotters were more than just court jesters, as he told NPR in 2001.

In the 1970s, Mr. Lemon appeared in movies, including “The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh”, and was featured on talk shows and in the cartoon “Scooby Doo”, with Scatman Crothers doing his voice.

Despite his reputation as primarily an entertainer on the hardwood, Meadowlark Lemon was well-respected and recognized by many for his pure basketball acumen, and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003.

Lemon revealed he first saw the Globetrotters play on a cinema newsreel when he was an 11-year-old schoolboy. He never lost that connection to the fans.