They Cleared The Lane

San Francisco Examiner sportswriter Thomas debuts with a minutely detailed history of the integration of the National Basketball Association.
When the Basketball Association of America merged with the National Basketball League to form the NBA in 1949, neither group had black players. The next year, New York Knickerbockers owner Ned Irish pressured the NBA's board of governors to allow him to purchase the contract of Harlem Globetrotters star Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton. The board also voted to permit the drafting of two college players, Duquesne University's Charles Cooper and West Virginia State's Earl Lloyd. The Boston Celtics picked Cooper in the second round, but Lloyd (who went to the Washington Capitols in the ninth round) is generally credited as the first African-American player because his opening game was one night earlier. Clifton, whose Knicks contract was signed nine days after the 1950 draft, was the most talented of the newcomers and led his team to three straight NBA finals. While the extreme racial prejudice that had greeted Jackie Robinson in 1947 was fading, players still faced separate and unequal facilities. Each year of the '50s saw more African-Americans enter the league (an excellent appendix lists them from 1950–65), but by the early '60s, quotas of four blacks per team were an unspoken rule. Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor, and Wilt Chamberlain came into the league in the late '50s; their brilliant skills attracted white crowds and led to African-American dominance of the league. The first three black coaches, Russell, Al Attles, and Lenny Wilkens, led their teams to NBA titles, but Thomas gives precedence to Hall of Fame coach John McLendon, who studied in 1933 with John Naismith, the inventor of the game, and was the first African-American to lead an integrated team; he also taught Dean Smith, Michael Jordan's coach at the University of North Carolina.
A good introduction to the men who revolutionized the NBA. (20 b&w photos)