Philadelphia Tapers

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The Philadelphia Tapers were originally the New York Tapers, an NABL club team sponsored by the Tuck Tape Company. They were a top AAU club team in the 1950s featuring many former collegiate stars and pro players. In 1960, Tuck Tape owner Paul Cohen moved the Tapers to Washington and joined the fledgling American Basketball League of Abe Saperstein as the Washington Tapers. The team was a failure in Washington and Cohen made the unprecedented move of transplanting the team in mid-season back to New York as the New York Tapers. This too failed and when the ABL began their second season in 1961, the Tapers were moved to Philadelphia, where Cohen hoped to take advantage of the fact that this basketball hotbed had just lost its beloved Warriors (and Wilt Chamberlain) to San Francisco. The Tapers team did not finish this season in its new venue, either. This time, it was the league that folded (on December 31, 1961) and the Tapers were no more.

During their time, the Tapers boasted of many outstanding players. Star of the team was Georgia Tech guard Roger Kaiser, who later became an outstanding small college coach at West Georgia and Life Colleges. Also starring on the team was the mysterious Sylvester Blye, a strapping 6-9 player who saw his college career at Seattle University quashed after one game when officials discovered that he had been playing professionally for the touring Harlem Clowns. Blye then went to work for Tuck Tape and became the team's signature player. He was known as a legend in the New York Rucker league and was a full-fledged star in the ABL, but no NBA team ever called on him after the league's demise. Another notable Taper was point guard Cleo Hill, who was a superstar at Winston-Salem State University several years prior to Earl Monroe. Hill was a number one draft pick of the NBA St. Louis Hawks but was mysteriously cut a year later. His stay with the Tapers also did not result in a call by any NBA teams, which Hill attributed to racism. [In fact, NBA teams at the time largely subscribed to an unwritten code that limited black players on the rosters and generally saw (at most) two black players start at home and three on the road. Reserve players at the time were almost all white].