The one team that has done more than any other to promote basketball internationally has never been invited to compete for a spot in the Olympic Games. That should be corrected. Can somebody out there give me a good reason why the Harlem Globetrotters shouldn’t be invited to try out for the 2012 Games as an at-large team? Take your time. I’ll whistle Sweet Georgia Brown while you’re thinking.

At a time when the U.S. team consists of NBA megastars who are playing for Nike Glory as much as Old Glory, when teams from various parts of the world are built around American college players, and when the NBA relies heavily on players from Europe, Asia, and Africa, why not give a shot to a team that has played more than 20,000 games in 118 countries?

It wouldn’t be the first time the Globetrotters were asked to put aside their comedy act to play serious hoops. In February, 1948, the Globies hung a 61-59 upset on the best team in the fledgling NBA, the Minneapolis Lakers of George Mikan, the 6-foot-10 star who was the game’s dominant player at the time.

As recently as this decade, the Globetrotters have played serious exhibitions against college teams such as Michigan State (a 72-68 loss on Nov. 13, 2000) and Texas-El Paso (an 89-88 loss on Nov. 15, 2003). On March 31, 2006, they lost to the NABC College All-Stars.

Those defeats prove that the Globies are vulnerable, indeed, when they have to play somebody other than the Washington Generals. But they also beg the question of why the organizations that run international basketball wouldn’t recognize their contributions to sport and society by giving them a crack at Olympic gold.

Although their early history is murky, the Globetrotters were formed in Chicago, not Harlem, in the late 1920s. After Abe Saperstein became involved with the team, he named them the Harlem Globetrotters because, at the time, Harlem was the cultural center of America’s African-American community and Saperstein wanted to make sure everyone knew the team was black. Ironically, the Globetrotters didn’t actually play a game in Harlem until 1968.

When I was a kid growing up in Mt. Sterling, Ky., my grandfather took me to the Trimble Theater in the early 1950s to see a movie about the Globetrotters entitled Go, Man, Go!  The stars were Dane Clark, who played Saperstein; a young Sidney Poitier, who played Globies star Inman Jackson; and Reece “Goose” Tatum and Marques Haynes, who played themselves.

I was enchanted on several levels. First, it was the first time I had ever considered sports as show biz. Second, it introduced me to Brother Bones’ whistling version of Sweet Georgia Brown, a song that still makes me want to twirl a basketball on my index finger, whip a pass behind my back, or dribble between my legs.

But third, and most important, it made me question some of the ugly stuff I had overheard adults saying about black people. They seemed fun and friendly, just like the characters on the Amos n’ Andy Show. But there was a dark side to the movie that I never considered it until the 1960s civil-rights movements forced everyone to look at racial attitudes in new ways..

In his book about Connie Hawkins, author David Wolf wrote, “In the Globetrotters’ successful movie, Go Man Go!, the most memorable scene was a combination of every caricature of the slothful, stupid, but physically superior Negro. Marques Haynes, the great ballhandler, dribbled around the entire opposing team (white, of course) while his Trotter teammates dozed on the floor. Then Haynes passed the ball to the gangling Goose Tatum, the team’s first great clown, who looked up superciliously from the comic book he was reading, picked the ball out of the air with one hand, and flipped it in the basket.”

Ironically, the Globetrotters’ 1948 victory over the Minneapolis Lakers turned out to be one of the worst things that ever happened to Saperstein, who had a vested interest in keeping the NBA lily-white. So according to Bill Russell in his book Go Up for Glory, Saperstein went ballistic in 1950 when Celtics owner Walter Brown made Chuck Cooper the league’s first black player.

“Saperstein threatened Walter Brown,” wrote Russell. “Saperstein thought he had a lock on all Negro players. He came at Brown hammer and tongs and told Walter that if the Celtics signed Cooper, then the Globetrotters would boycott Boston Garden.”

Brown didn’t cave, and the Celtics built an NBA’s greatest dynasty around Russell. Although Russell turned down an offer from Saperstein when he graduated from San Francisco in 1956, the player who became his greatest nemesis, Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain, played for the Globetrotters in 1958-’59. (He had left Kansas after his junior year and, due to a rule in effect at the time, couldn’t sign with an NBA team until his class had graduated.)

The Globetrotters also provided Hawkins with a paycheck when the NBA blackballed him for allegedly being involved in a point-shaving scandal during his undergraduate days at Iowa. The NBA eventually relented, but only after a massive lawsuit had been filed on behalf of Hawkins and others.

“When he left the (Globetrotters) in the fall of 1966,” wrote Wolf, “he had turned an important corner in the process of growing up. He was more polished, self-confident, and aware of the world around him. On the court, by playing the clowning game, he had acquired many of the colorful, distinctive traits – the one-handed rebounding, the sleight-of-hand drop passes around the basket – that became his trademark…”

Of all the men who have played for the Globetrotters through the years, the one I knew best was Dallas Thornton, whom I had covered at Louisville Male High and Kentucky Wesleyan College. I assure you that Dallas had game. Maybe not quite good enough for the NBA, as has been the case historically with most Globies, but plenty good enough to compete in international competition.

I interviewed Dallas when the Globies stopped in Louisville in the early 1970s. He told me that the show on the floor was only part of what the players did in their travels. They did clinics, visited hospitals, and spoke in classrooms. They encouraged education and good health practices.

As a result, the team’s trademarks – the “Magic Circle” warmup, the slapstick comedy routines, and the red-white-blue striped jerseys – are just as beloved in Angola as they are in Altoona. Nobody has ever heard the Globetrotters accused of being “Ugly Americans.” They’re better ambassadors for the U.S. than lots of the bureaucrats who staff our embassies.

Unlike Team USA, today’s Globetrotters aren’t stocked with world-class talent. The days are long gone when a Chamberlain or a Hawkins would fall into the Globetrotters’ laps. Today they get most of their players from the small colleges, not the major programs. In other words, for every Globetrotter from Florida State (“Tank” Mathews) or St. John’s (“Slick Willie” Shaw), there are several from outposts such as Shaw (“Airport” Greenup),  Benedict (“Hi-Lite”  Bruton), and Georgia Perimeter (“Rare Air” Clark).

The Globies carry U.S. passports, but they’re really citizens of the world. They’re at home wherever they go. They would draw huge crowds and TV ratings. One-sided games would never be a problem because no matter if they got too far ahead or too far behind, the Globies could always turn to their comedy routines.

There’s only one team in the world that has dribbled behind the Iron Curtain and the Great Wall, dunked its way through democracies and dictatorships, and designated the likes of Nelson Mandela and Pope John Paul II as honorary members.

It’s time to reward the Globetrotters by letting them go for the gold in 2012.