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The business of losing

Amazing Sport Stories: Bill Walton’s The Grateful Team
Amazing Sport Stories: Bill Walton’s The Grateful Team
Episode • Jul 29, 2024 • 17m

Since the 1950s, basketball's Harlem Globetrotters have entertained audiences with their showboating, dunks and pranks in exhibition games all over the world. Their perennial opponents, the Washington Generals, have endured more than 17,000 defeats at their hands, with crowds booing and mocking them as the Globetrotters bamboozle them with flashy skills, tricks and dribbles.

So what's it like to play for a team whose only job is to lose? Some former Generals say it's one of the best jobs they've ever had, even if it did involve being humiliated on the court every night.

That is, except for the one night that it didn't...

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Amazing Sport Stories • The business of losing • Listen on Fountain