Philadelphia Sphas

[4] After this season, each YMHA withdrew its support for the team, citing dissatisfaction with the game's violent nature.

[4] After losing their sponsorship from the YMHA, Gottlieb, Passon, and Black approached the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association about sponsoring the team.

[6] In their single season in the Manufacturer's League, the team (known as Philadelphia Passon, Gottlieb, Black since they competed through Passon and Black's sporting goods store) turned in an overall 8–6 record, finishing 3rd in the first half of that season and 6th (out of 8) in the second half.

[9] Due to the success of the Sphas against teams in the Philadelphia area, and frustration with playing in the "poorly managed" Eastern League in 1924–25, owner Eddie Gottlieb set up games against professional teams from the newly-formed American Basketball League.

[10] The Sphas played a six-game stretch against the Brooklyn Arcadians, Fort Wayne Caseys, Cleveland Rosenblums, Washington Palace Five, and a team from New York's Metropolitan League, the Paterson Legionaires.

[12][14] With the 1946 advent of the Basketball Association of America, the immediate predecessor of the NBA, the ABL became a minor-league, and the Sphas would remain there as a semi-professional team until 1949.

1949 would be the last year the Sphas were affiliated with a league, but thanks to Gottlieb's friendship with Abe Saperstein, president and owner of the Harlem Globetrotters, the Sphas lived on as one of the exhibition teams that the Globetrotters would play, although they would retain only the franchise name, not the Jewish makeup of the team.

Instead, Saperstein had asked Red Klotz to create a separate exhibition team because the Sphas had beaten the Globetrotters on more than one occasion.

[16][17] After creating the Generals, Klotz sold the Sphas to one of his players, Pete Monska, who coached the team "for a year or two until it disbanded [in October 1959.