Bunny Levitt - Globe Trotters

Before Dave Hopla the Shot  Doctor showed his magic touch there was Bunny Levitt a 5' 4" Mr Basketball.

An Article By People magazine  Staff February 09, 1976 12:00 PM

At 5'4", Bunny Levitt Is Still Basketball's Master at Teaching the Art of Free Throws


Harold “Bunny” Levitt, 5’4″, looked up at members of the defending state champion basketball team at Evans High School in Orlando, Fla. “Now, let’s get to work,” the 65-year-old Levitt snapped. “I’m gonna show you how to get the ball game from your opponent. I’m gonna show you how to hold the ball where nobody can even touch it. I’ll show you seven different dribbles. But the first thing I’m gonna teach you is how to be a good passer. Watch how I do it. I get close to him and fake like that, fake like that, fake like that and then let go. If I do this, he moves here and he moves there—Wow! I’ve got him! “That’s all there is to passing, fellows, cross my heart.” Levitt had gotten a little carried away.

 His specialty is supposed to be teaching players to shoot free throws. But they don’t call you “Mr. Basketball” if you can only shoot free throws.
Actually, they don’t call Bunny Levitt “Mr. Basketball”; Bunny Levitt does.

Ever since the day in 1935 when he set a still unbroken record (as of the time of this article in1976) of 499 consecutive free throws, he has avoided hiding his light under any baskets whatsoever. Levitt  set the record at a YMCA carnival in Chicago ( a Chicago Sun-Times-sponsored event on April 6, 1935).

 With “35 tumblers somersaulting behind him and the hard ‘spiked’ drives of volleyballers flashing past his head,” according to one newspaper. Shooting underhand—which he still advocates, especially for an arm-weary player late in a game—Levitt missed on his 500th shot. Undaunted, he pitched in 371 more in a row before he was stopped again, this time by janitors who felt that 3 a.m. was an inappropriate time to watch free-throw shooting. Levitt later said in an interview in the spring 2005 issue of Ocala Life Magazine. " I missed on my 500th shot, I must have choked."

Abe Saperstein general manager of the all-black Globetrotters called the next day and recruited Levitt to tour with his Harlem Globetrotters as a halftime attraction. Saperstein also offered $1,000 to anyone who who dared to go head to head with him  and beat Levitt in a free-throw shootout. In Bunny’s three years with the Trotters the Globetrotters never had to pay a dime.

After his years touring with the Globetrotters , Levitt became a salesman with the  Converse shoe company  and assisted with basketball clinics sponsored by the company. He also became a free throw shooting coach.


During that time Levitt’s pupils included such standout NBA players as Pete Maravich, Bill Sharman, Calvin Murphy and Tom McMillen. Bunny’s most conspicuous failure among the pros was Wilt Chamberlain, who is notorious for his dismal record at the free-throw line. “He didn’t practice,” Levitt says.

McMillen, an Atlanta Hawks forward in the NBA who was a seventh grader when he first met Levitt, remembers and still follows much of Levitt’s advice. “He never tires of working with kids,” McMillen says. “He’s a remarkable man.” Niagra University coach Frank Layden, an old pal who later coached the Utah Jazz inthe NBA, adds: “If you don’t give him things to do, he gets mad at you. In the morning he’ll work with little kids and at night he’ll end up holding court.”

But then what else could be expected from a man whose motto is, “The best things in life are free throws.”

Here is a  short video of Bunnys appearance on an old TV Show called What's My Line.