Q&A with Harlem Globetrotters' Kris "HI-LITE" Bruton

In the history of professional sports, no one's lost more games than the Washington Generals. They've lost to the Globetrotters over 13,000 times in the last 50 years, and since they became the International Elite, that record's not likely to change. Losing is what the team's built on. Their old logo was a Globetrotter towering over a General for a slam dunk. Unlike their counterparts, they don't do any fancy dribbling, never spin the ball on their fingertips, and definitely don't sign autographs after a game.

With just a couple minutes before the game Friday night, the Globetrotters let us into the Adams Center and granted us an interview — with a Globetrotter, not a hopeful Elite player. According to the Globetrotters' management, they never do interviews.

So the Montana Kaimin chatted with Globetrotters forward Kris "Hi-Lite" Bruton about his NBA career and what is more fun — the Globetrotters or the NBA.

Q: Where are you from?

A: Originally, I'm from South Carolina, but the team is based in Arizona.

Q: So, if the team's based in Arizona, why are you called the Harlem Globetrotters?

A: The team was never from Harlem. It was started in the ‘20s. All the players were from Chicago, where they played games in the Savoy Ballroom downtown. They'd play exhibitions as entertainment before dances. This guy, Abe Saperstein, saw them play and decided to promote them. He trained them, built them a routine and marketed them as "this team from Harlem." After traveling around for a while, they became the Harlem Globetrotters.

Q: What was your basketball career before the Globetrotters?

A: Because of injuries, I didn't really play in high school. I walked onto a small college team in Columbia, S.C. At Benedict College I became an All-American, and in 1994 I won the national dunk contest. The Bulls drafted me after that, and I've been here since 2001.

Q: Playing in the NBA must've been all business, while this seems to be more theatrics. Is there still a competitive edge to these games?

A: It's all business for us, too. We mix up, though, so that it's business and pleasure. The NBA's all about championships. We're here for the kids. It's no different, though. We do everything they do. We put up shots, we rush. Except that at the end of the day, we sign autographs after the game.

Q: You were in the NBA before this. What's more fun?

A: Being a Harlem Globetrotter is way more fun. What other game can you go out and interact with the crowd like this? It takes a special person to be a Globetrotter, though. We're on the road every day almost the entire year, so you find out pretty fast if you can do it or not. I'm done here in March, then I'll head to Europe for a year after that. At the start of the season, we lose a lot of new guys in the first couple weeks.

dameon.matule@umontana.edu