On Top of the World : Being a Harlem Globetrotter Has Been Unbelievable for Compton’s Wun Versher

Wun Versher could barely believe it. The Harlem Globetrotters had called. He had tried out. He had made the team. Now the former Dominguez High and Compton Community College standout was racing home to tell his family, thinking all the way that this was unbelievable.

His family felt the same.

“They didn’t believe me,” Versher said. “My grandparents were the worst. Not until I put a uniform in front of them, and even then I think they had doubts.”

No one is doubting Versher now. After a seven-month tour with the Globetrotters, he is home in Compton for the summer, having been chosen the team’s most improved player by his teammates. And his grandmother told the whole neighborhood.

“My grandmother is a Globetrotter maniac,” Versher, 24, said. “The phone has been ringing off the hook since I made the team.”

The phone wasn’t ringing much after the 6-foot-4 Versher had graduated from Arizona State a year ago. He played in the Summer Pro League in Irvine and was invited to a Continental Basketball League camp for a proposed team in Mexico.

But all the while, the Globetrotters were watching. Scouts Marvin Walters and Chad Gorth liked Versher’s athleticism and invited him to the team’s fall camp in Moorpark.

“I walked into this gym and all the Globetrotters were there,” he said. “I worked out with them for a while and then they offered me the job. It happened so fast. I kept thinking that these couldn’t be the real Globetrotters.”

Very real, but surreal to Versher, who never imagined he would be playing basketball after leaving Arizona State.

“I’m not one of those guys who thought he’d be playing in the NBA,” Versher said. “When I was at Compton College I knew I could play Division I, but I wasn’t thinking about playing pro, anywhere. When I graduated from ASU, I was ready to get on with something else.”

But an agent contacted Versher and asked him to attend a few tryouts. Versher saw no harm in that, but after the CBA camp decided he was through. Then the Globetrotters called.

“The Globetrotters were really the only [basketball] thing I would have done at that point,” Versher said. “I knew that it had a chance to be something different, a fun type of basketball.”

*

Unbelievable. That is what Versher whispered to himself as he walked out onto the floor for his first performance as a Globetrotter. The arena in Buenos Aires was full. So was Versher’s mind, his thoughts racing with all he needed to remember to get through his first game.

Versher stared across the court at the Washington Generals, the long-time foe of the Globetrotters who are in their final year of existence. Globetrotter brass has decided to phase out the Generals and create a new opponent, hoping that will breathe new life into the shows. They are counting on young athletic players such as Versher to do the same.

But in the first game of a month-long tour of South America, Versher could think only of the mistakes he was bound to make. He had gone through a brief training camp in November, but all of that seemed lost on this night.

“I knew I was going to mess up,” he said. “But I didn’t. I didn’t mess up until my second game, and then I messed up a lot. I thought I was going to get fired.”

What Versher got, though, was a vote of confidence. Clyde Sinclair, Reggie Perkins, Arnold Bernard, and Coach Tex Harrison talked to him after the game, assuring him that mistakes were expected.

“The coaches and other players told me that with the rookies, they wanted to see the competitiveness and the athletic ability, the dunking and the rebounding,” Versher said. “They will teach you how to entertain, teach you what the old Globetrotters did, but that takes time.”

Versher has had plenty of time to learn. A 2 1/2-month trip through the United States followed the South America tour, and there were three shows in the Los Angeles area. On March 19 he played in the Sports Arena, in front of family and friends.

“It was the easiest game of the whole tour,” Versher said. “I wasn’t nervous at all. It was just nice to be home again.”

It was a short visit, though, and soon Versher was off to Europe for 31 games, ending June 5.

“Nothing I have ever done before could have prepared me for all this,” Versher said. “You’re always moving, from one town to the next, from one hotel to the next.

“People always ask me about practice, how much time we put in going over the plays, but the truth is, we hardly ever practice. We don’t have time to practice because we are playing almost every day.”

*

Unbelievable . That is what the children say to Versher. Young eyes stare up at him as he tells what it is like to be a Globetrotter. Kids huddle around him on the basketball courts at Baldwin Hills Recreation Center. He talks hoops with them, talks school, maybe shows off a dunk or two. It is nice to be unbelievable.

Versher had planned to relax during his three-month break but instead took a job at the park. He helps organize games for the children and might put on a basketball camp later in the summer. Recreational management was his major in college. That was the career he had been planning on, what he would be doing full time if he weren’t a Globetrotter.

“Trying to be a role model,” Versher says, laughing a little at the cliche. “That sounds funny. I’m not out there trying to squash anybody’s dreams, telling them not to try and make it to the NBA, because who knows, maybe they will make it.

“But sometimes I throw a little ‘stay in school’ at them. Hopefully, they’ll listen. I tell them to shoot for something, even if it is the NBA. I want them to believe in what they’re doing.”