Harlem Globetrotters 'Clown Prince' Dies

Former Harlem Globetrotters star Meadowlark Lemon, known as the "Clown Prince" of the famed travelling basketball team, has died at the age of 83.

Lemon's wife and daughter confirmed to the team that he died on Saturday, Globetrotters spokesman Brett Meister said.
Mr Meister did not know the cause of death.

A portrait of the 'Clown Prince of Basketball' from 1968

Lemon is widely considered the Globetrotters' most popular player, having performed with the team during its heyday from the mid-1950s to the late-1970s.
Over the course of 24 years, Lemon delighted popes, presidents, kings and queens with his basketball skills and jokes.
He played in over 100 countries, travelled more than four million miles and averaged 325 games per year during his prime.
Lemon was inducted to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and to the International Clown Hall of Fame for both his contribution to the sport and his role as an entertainer.

Lemon was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003

"My destiny was to make people happy," he said during his induction to the basketball hall of fame in 2003.
In an interview shortly before his own death, NBA great and former Globetrotter Wilt Chamberlain said: "Meadowlark was the most sensational, awesome, incredible basketball player I've ever seen.
"People would say it would be Dr J or even Jordan. For me it would be Meadowlark Lemon."
Growing up poor in North Carolina, Lemon claimed he rigged his first hoop out of a coat hanger and an onion sack, and that his first shot was made with an empty milk can.

He first contacted the Globetrotters before graduating from high school and joined the team in 1954.
Over the next two decades, Lemon missed just one game, which he said came in 1955 after he ate a bad bowl of goulash in Germany.
Lemon left the Globetrotters in 1979 to start his own team, the Bucketeers. He went on to play for a variety of teams before rejoining the Harlem side for a short tour in 1994.
Lemon became an ordained minister in 1986 and spent the last years of his life trying to spread a message of faith through basketball.
He worked as a motivational speaker and toured the country to meet with children at basketball camps and youth prisons.
"I feel if I can touch a kid in youth prison, he won't go to the adult prison," Lemon said in 2003.