Fred Thomas in Basketball
Fred Thomas in Basketball
By Heidi LM Jacobs
While Fred Thomas was a multi-sport athlete, his true passion was basketball. Thomas’ legendary basketball career began when he started attending Patterson Collegiate where he worked with legendary Panther coach Eddie Dawson. Thomas didn’t make the team in Grade 9 but Dawson saw, as Techko describes, “some spark of future greatness” in Thomas and gave him a basketball filled with paper to discourage him from dribbling.[1] With constant practice, Thomas was able to work on shooting and passing. The following year, Thomas “more than made the team” and he was starting to perfect his “patented hook shot.” Thomas later described Dawson as “a great man who understood problems, big or small; he taught me to concentrate on the task at hand and to have confidence in myself.” While at Patterson, Thomas led the basketball team to an All-Ontario championship at Hart House at University of Toronto beating Ottawa’s Glebe Collegiate in April 1941.
Techko writes that the “Fabulous” Fred Thomas will always be remembered for the sensational game he played against the Harlem Globetrotters before a packed house at Kennedy Collegiate on February 23, 1941: “The Globetrotters lost to Assumption that night, 49-45. Ken Fathers, then a young Windsor Star reporter summed up Fred’s unforgettable play: ‘His performance was amazing and the most amazed were the confused Globetrotters” (Techko).
Varsity Action Against U. of T. and Western, 1948
After serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force, Thomas was honourably discharged at the end of World War II. He enrolled at Assumption College (now the University of Windsor) in the fall of 1945. The 1949 Assumption College yearbook, The Ambassador, describes how in December 1945, a “tall, athletic looking man stepped out on the floor of the Assumption Gym, grabbed a basketball, and took a long pivot shot which split the radius of the rim perfectly That was the beginning of the greatest athlete to ever grace the campus of Assumption College. The athlete was Frederick Sinclair Thomas" ("The Thomistic Era"). During his four years at Assumption, Thomas was said to have “broken every possible scoring record in basketball” and his name became a “byword from one end of Canada to the other.”
In 1948, he helped Assumption reach the Varsity Men’s Senior Finals. In the 1947-1948 season he scored a record 47 points against Toronto YMHA and in the 1948-49 season, 639 points, setting a single season record at the University of Windsor. According to the Harlem Globetrotters’ publicity portfolio, Thomas scored a career 2,059 points which made him, at the time, third on the all-time NCAA scoring list (Techko). Techko writes that “these totals are all the more amazing when one considers that basketball in that era was relatively low scoring in comparison with basketball played today.”
Fred Thomas and teammates, 1947
After graduating, Thomas played baseball locally in the summer and played professional football briefly with the Toronto Argonauts. The Canadian Football League had desegregated in 1946 and Thomas was the first Black Canadian and second Black athlete to play for the team.
Basketball, however was his main passion. In the fall of 1949, he was invited to the Harlem Globetrotters training camp in Chicago for training camp with the Globetrotters. He then signed with an all-Black touring team, the New York Renaissance, founded in Harlem. After one season with the Renaissance, Thomas joined a Globetrotter affiliate team, the Kansas City Stars.
In 1950, a Canadian Press poll called Fred Thomas the second most significant Canadian basketball player in the first half of the twentieth century, in part for his stellar contributions to the Assumption College basketball team. BC’s Norm Baker was listed as the first. In spite of this recognition, Thomas was left off Canada’s Olympic Roster in 1952 and Canada was represented by an all-white basketball team. It was thought to be Thomas’s greatest professional disappointment. Woody Campbell, a classmate of Thomas’s said, “To this day I don’t know why he wasn’t selected for our [Olympic] team because we [were] really only one player away from winning a medal” (Windsor Star, 1981). Thomas ended his basketball career with the Toronto Tri-Bells basketball team and a knee injury ended his professional athletic career.
His contributions to basketball were noted locally, nationally, and internationally. He was inducted into a number of Sports Halls of Fame, including the Windsor-Essex County Sports Hall of Fame (1981), the University of Windsor Alumni Sports Hall of Fame (1986), the Afro-American Hall of Fame (1994), the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame (1995), and, of course, the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame Order of Sport (Athlete Category) in 2024.
"He was great, as great as anyone in Canada." -- Stanley "Red" Nantais
Aside from his prowess on the basketball court, off the court Thomas was also known for his work ethic and determined demeanor. He was said to demonstrate “qualities of teamwork and leadership that mark him as an all-around star" and always “at his best when the chips are down. It is in the tough games that he has his greatest nights" (Tony Techko, “Fred Thomas.” Windsor This Month, nd, 12-13. Tony Techko Collection, Archives and Special Collections, University of Windsor (Accession 03‐008 Box 51).
As one Windsor sportswriter noted, “There was probably never a Canadian basketball player who so dominated the key area and was so deadly with the hook shot as Fred Thomas. He played the game with the grace of a swan and the agility of a gazelle" (Ken Fathers quoted in Tony Techko, “Fred Thomas.” Windsor This Month, nd, 12-13. Tony Techko Collection, Archives and Special Collections, University of Windsor (Accession 03‐008 Box 51).
Thomas’ years on the Assumption College basketball team is still referred to as the “Thomistic Era” and he earned a reputation as one of Canada’s best basketball players. In an undated, handwritten note, Assumption’s coach Stanley “Red” Nantais said “He was great, as great as anyone in Canada” (Techko collection).
For more information about Assumption College (later the University of Windsor) see:
Assumption College Through the Decades, a web-project by Devon Fraser (2021)
Pure Zeal: A History of Assumption College 1870-1946 by George McMahon (2002)
[1] See Tony Techko, “Fred Thomas.” Windsor This Month, nd, 12-13. Tony Techko Collection, Archives and Special Collections, University of Windsor (Accession 03‐008 Box 51).
[2] Ken Fathers quoted in Tony Techko, “Fred Thomas.” Windsor This Month, nd, 12-13. Tony Techko Collection, Archives and Special Collections, University of Windsor (Accession 03‐008 Box 51).