Basketball has become a billion-dollar industry and the man who gave the sport one of its most effective offensive weapon, the jump shot, continues to be ignored on the national scene.

The late Glenn Roberts Sr. was again overlooked by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame when the Enshrinement Class of 2009 was announced.
Roberts became a legend playing for Emory & Henry College from 1932 to 1935 and for the semi-pro Firestone team at Akron, Ohio, in the National Basketball League - a forerunner to the NBA.

"Our high school (Pound, Va.) did not have an indoor court when I played,'' Roberts said before his death. "Because of our eagerness to play basketball, we practiced in all kinds of weather. At times it was too muddy to dribble. We would often congregate under the basket and practice in an unorganized way. Whoever recovered the ball after a missed shot was on his own to get off the next one - against the combined efforts of everyone.

"By jumping as high in the air as I could, I started to get the ball to the basket consistently. Before long, I succeeded in making some shots. I became accurate with the jump shot in high school but it was in college that I developed multiple moves such as the forward and backward pivot and dribble to maneuver into a better shooting position.''

At Emory & Henry he averaged 16.2 points and earned all-state honors, an almost unheard-of feat as a freshman. Roberts raised his scoring clip to 22.3 points during a 17-1 sophomore season.

He got 19.7 per game as a junior when the Wasps went 20-1 and 18.3 the next year while the team was going 19-4. Roberts' innovative release became so popular, it ended the two-hand set shot era.

During his career, E&H had a 68-12 record. Playing for the small college in Southwest Virginia obviously was a disadvantage in getting national publicity even though the Wasps competed against Virginia Tech, the University of Tennessee, Richmond and William & Mary.

He hit around 60 percent from the field and 80 percent on the foul line, and gathered in a majority of the Wasps' rebounds.

Roberts' image was illustrated in Ripley's Believe It or Not after he completed his college career with 1,531 points. This total was exceptional considering team scores were generally low during that era.

After turning down numerous offers, he finally agreed to play for Firestone in 1938 while employed by the tire company. He played against legendary UCLA coach John Wooden, who was with Indianapolis.

In his only season with Firestone, Roberts' team won the NBL championship with a 24-3 regular-season record and beat the Oshkosh All-Stars in a best-of-three series.

He later enjoyed playing on a touring team with his five brothers - Percy, Darrell, Harry, Ola and Wallace. All had been standouts at Pound.

To no avail, Tennessee sports editors Tom Siler (Knoxville News Sentinel) and Edgar Allen (Nashville Banner) were involved in a push to get Roberts elected to the Hall of Fame.

More recently, the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame and more than 100 luminaries, including Hall of Famers Denny Crum and Ben Carnevale as well as sports columnists, game officials, former teammates and opposing players and coaches, have written letters to the organization on his behalf.

It's interesting to note that no Hall of Fame player born before 1930 represents the nine heavily populated Southern states - Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Its list of inductees is heavily weighted toward the Northeast and Midwest.

Readers interested in seeing Roberts receive his due by not getting benched again by the selection committee are urged to send e-mails to Hall of Fame president John Doleva and curator/historian Matt Zeysing. Those addresses are: jdoleva@hoophall.com  and mzeysing@hoophall.com