HistoricSiteMarkers
Progressive & Modern Era

The SPHAs Basketball Team

Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

The South Philadelphia Hebrew Association was a dominant professional team from 1918 to 1959, winning 12 league championships. During its heyday in the 1930s, the team was all Jewish. Owner/coach Eddie Gottlieb was a seminal figure in the establishment of the NBA. Instrumental in the growth of pro basketball in its formative years, in later years the team toured with the Harlem Globetrotters. Home games were played here at the former Broadwood Hotel.

Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

The Story

From 1918 to 1959, the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association fielded one of professional basketball's dominant teams, the SPHAs, who racked up a dozen league titles from their home court at the old Broadwood Hotel. In the 1930s the roster was entirely Jewish, a source of pride in an era when the sport was still finding its footing. Owner and coach Eddie Gottlieb went on to help found the NBA, and in later years the team barnstormed alongside the Harlem Globetrotters.

Why it matters

The SPHAs capture a formative chapter in American pro basketball and the story of urban immigrant communities who found identity and belonging through sport.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

In the first decades of the twentieth century, American cities were crowded with immigrant communities working to find a foothold and a place in the wider culture. South Philadelphia was one such neighborhood, dense with families building new lives, and like immigrant enclaves across the country, it looked for institutions that could offer both community and pride. Athletic clubs and neighborhood associations were part of that fabric, giving young people a place to belong.

Professional basketball, in these years, was a rough and unglamorous business. It was far from the polished national spectacle it would later become — a game played in dance halls and rented rooms, with teams that came and went and leagues that rose and folded. The sport was still finding its shape, its rules, and its audience.

It was in this scrappy, formative world, beginning in 1918, that a team rooted in a South Philadelphia community association made its name. The era rewarded toughness, loyalty, and the kind of tight-knit identity that a neighborhood team could provide, and it offered a rare stage on which an immigrant community could shine before the broader public.

People & events

The team grew out of the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, and from 1918 to 1959 the SPHAs were a dominant force in professional basketball, capturing a dozen league championships over their long run. During their heyday in the 1930s, the roster was entirely Jewish — a point of deep pride for a community at a time when the sport, and American life more broadly, was far from free of prejudice.

At the center of it all was Eddie Gottlieb, the team's owner and coach, a figure whose influence reached well beyond this single club. Gottlieb became a seminal figure in the founding of the NBA, one of the people who helped turn a loose collection of regional teams into the organized professional league that would come to define the sport in America.

The SPHAs played their home games at the former Broadwood Hotel, whose floor became the stage for their championship years. In later seasons, as the game and the team changed, they took to the road, touring alongside the famous Harlem Globetrotters — a barnstorming chapter that carried their brand of basketball to audiences far beyond Philadelphia.

Its place in the American story

The SPHAs capture a formative chapter in the history of American professional basketball. In the years when the pro game was still fragile and improvised, teams like this one helped it survive and grow, and Eddie Gottlieb's hand in founding the NBA links this neighborhood club directly to the league that would become a global institution. To trace the NBA's roots is to pass through stories like this one.

Just as important is what the team meant beyond the scoreboard. An all-Jewish squad, celebrated by its community and competing at the top of its sport, gave a real answer to the prejudices of its era. It is a vivid example of how immigrant and minority communities in America so often found identity, visibility, and belonging through sport when other doors were harder to open.

The SPHAs' story sits at the intersection of two great American narratives — the rise of a beloved national game and the long effort of newcomers to claim their place in the country's shared life. That is why a local team from South Philadelphia belongs to the national story.

If you visit

This marker sits in the heart of Philadelphia, where a hotel ballroom once doubled as one of the proving grounds of early professional basketball. Stand here and try to picture it: not a modern arena, but a hotel floor packed with neighbors, the game still young and intimate, championships being won in a room built for something else entirely.

The pleasure of this spot is in the contrast between then and now. The sport that fills enormous arenas today grew from humble rooms like the one that stood here, and this marker lets you connect the polished modern game back to its scrappier, more human beginnings.

It makes a great stop for anyone interested in sports history or in the layered immigrant story of South Philadelphia. Read the marker, take in the surrounding city, and carry with you the image of a neighborhood team that punched far above its weight — and of a coach from this corner of Philadelphia who helped invent the league the whole country now watches.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

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Related people

  • · Eddie Gottlieb

Themes & tags

ImmigrationLandmark

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