Creating A Myth

With no historic all-Black basketball league to exploit for cash, Eric Williams of the Toronto Raptors has created one. At least, he's created clothing to sell for top dollar emblazoned with logos of the phony league's fictitious teams.

"Why make up something about cultural history and pawn it off as that?" asks Claude Johnson, a former NBA employee who works for a company, Black Fives, that makes memorabilia of its own.

"It's truly an affront to someone who actually had to go to the back of the diner to eat," adds Johnson, a historian of black baseball who says he belongs to the North American Society of Sport History and the Association of Professional Basketball Researchers.

Well said. But of course, it's not about the heritage. For Williams, it's about the Benjamins.