Joe Fortenberry: Difference between revisions

'''Joe Cephis Fortenberry''' (April 1, 1911 &ndash; June 3, 1993) was an American [[basketball]] player who competed in the [[1936 Summer Olympics]]. He was a captain of the American basketball team, which won the gold medal<ref name=NYTObit>{{cite news |title=Joe Fortenberry, Olympic Captain, 82 |newspaper=The New York Times |date=June 5, 1993 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/05/obituaries/joe-fortenberry-olympic-captain-82.html?mcubz=2}}</ref> in the first Olympics to include basketball.▼

After college, Fortenberry played for the Ogden Boosters in Utah, then with the McPherson Oilers in McPherson, Kansas. This was the team that won the AAU National Championship in 1936, prior to the Olympics. ▼

He played two games at the Olympics, including the final. He was the high scorer in the gold medal game, scoring 8 points in a 19-8 victory, and averaged a tournament-leading 14.5 points per game.<ref name=Daly>{{cite book|last=Daly|first=Brian I.|title=Canada's Other Game: Basketball from Naismith to Nash|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xeCu-0EUtmgC&pg=PA94|date=September 9, 2013|publisher=Dundurn|isbn=9781459706347|pages=94–95}}</ref> The game was held in appalling conditions, outdoors on a muddy clay court, which made dribbling almost impossible, in steady rain and with winds that "blew the ball around wildly".<ref name=Daly/>▼

After he played in the Olympics, Fortenberry played five seasons with the [[Phillips 66ers]], the perennial power in the AAU basketball league, the premier basketball league in the United States before the NBA. He played from the 1936-1937 season through the 1940-1941 season, winning an AAU national championship in 1940.▼

He is credited with being one of the first, if not the first, to slam dunk the basketball; this appeared in a ''[[The New York Times|New York Times]]'' article by Pulitzer Prize winning sports reporter, Arthur Daley, in 1936. He could still dunk when he was 55 years old, according to his son.<ref>Interview with his son, PBS, ''Antiques Roadshow'' #2103, Fort Worth, Hour Tree, first airdate January 16, 2017.</ref> He is also credited as the cause of the [[goaltending]] rule, because he could so easily slap the ball away, and ending the jump ball after every successful basket, because he usually got the tip. ▼