The Jazz of Modern Basketball: From the 1950s USF Dons to the Golden State Warriors

A Shaping San Francisco Public Talk on Halloween night at 518 Valencia (near 16th).

Shaping San Francisco’s Chris Carlsson digs into the long history of basketball as another season begins. The first African-American players entered the NBA in 1950, while black college stars led the USF Dons to consecutive national championships in 1955 and 1956, inventing a new style of aggressive defensive basketball. Today’s outspoken Warriors embody the decades-long Heritage in which earlier basketball stars pioneered today’s wild improvisational style while resisting the Jim Crow U.S. in which it began.