NEW YORK: As the United States honored the memory of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. this week, Earl Lloyd had the chance to reflect on his own history as the first African-American to play in the National Basketball Association.
It happened Oct. 31, 1950, in Rochester, New York, when the Washington Capitols played Lloyd against the Royals. Lloyd scored 6 points and grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds in the Capitols' 78-70 loss to Rochester.
Lloyd's debut paled in significance to the arrival of Jackie Robinson in Major League Baseball three and a half years earlier. "In 1950, the NBA was like 4 years old," Lloyd said recently by telephone. "We were like babes in the woods. I wouldn't say it was ho-hum. But it didn't get the type of coverage that Major League Baseball got."
The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle didn't even mention Lloyd in its game story, while The Rochester Times-Union wrote only: "Bones McKinney, the Caps' new coach, injected big Earl Lloyd, Negro Star of West Virginia State, into the lineup (after halftime) and he took most of the rebounds."
But the effects of the breakthrough resonate today.
"The history is what it is," said Kevin Garnett, the Celtics forward. "I'm aware of it. The words that come to mind are not only homage, but monumental."
Lloyd was not alone that season. The Boston Celtics made Chuck Cooper, a star at Duquesne, the first black ever drafted. Nat Clifton, a former Harlem Globetrotter who went by the nickname Sweetwater, was the first African-American player to sign a contract with an NBA team when he signed with the New York Knicks in 1950.
Cooper made his debut the day after Lloyd, while Clifton's bow came four days later.
"I truly believe this, that if the Celtics did not draft Chuck in the second round, you could not tell me that the Washington Capitols in 1950 were going to make me the first black player to play in this league," Lloyd said. "No way."
Lloyd, a native of the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, played at all-black West Virginia State and said he had never interacted with whites until he was 22, when he signed a contract for $4,500 after the Capitols drafted him in the ninth round.
"I don't think they purposely picked the three of us," Lloyd said of the NBA owners at the time. "They didn't do an extensive look into your background and all that to make sure we were the right kind of people. But they picked three good people.
"They picked three guys who were decent enough guys to play in this league, gentlemen and decent human beings. There was never any worry to my knowledge about Sweets or Chuck or me, none."
The same could not be said of the fans in Missouri, Maryland and Indiana, he said. He was spit on, asked by fans to see his tail and told to go back to Africa. Lloyd said he was rarely allowed to go into restaurants or hotels with his white teammates. While playing for Syracuse during the 1952-53 season, he wasn't allowed to play at a preseason game at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, because he was black. The Nationals still played the game, and to this day it pains Lloyd that none of his teammates showed any remorse.
But even with the racism he faced, Lloyd doesn't compare it to what Robinson endured.
"There's no comparison, man," he said. "Here's a guy who was all by himself, man. I thank God he had a beautiful, lovely wife who was smart. If he didn't have Rachel, no telling what could have happened to him.
"When I go to high school to speak sometimes and say, 'You want a project, go to your computer, go to Google and throw Jackie Robinson's name in there and see what you get.' The guy was a Renaissance man. Any time your own teammates don't want to play with you? I never experienced that."
Lloyd averaged 8.4 points and 6.4 rebounds in nine seasons for Washington, Syracuse and Detroit. During Syracuse's 1955 championship season, he and his teammate Jim Tucker became the first African-Americans to participate in winning an NBA title. In 1968, Lloyd became the NBA's first black assistant coach with Detroit. In 1971, he became the second African-American head coach after the Celtics' Bill Russell. Lloyd was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003.
Clifton died at 67 on Aug. 31, 1990, in Chicago, while Cooper died at 57 on Feb. 5, 1984, in Pittsburgh. Lloyd and his wife, Ginny, live in a retirement community in tiny Crossville, Tennessee. He turns 80 on April 3.
"I'm in good health but lousy shape," Lloyd said. "My wife tells me I need to get out there and walk."
Lloyd isn't bothered that most NBA players have no idea who he is. All he hopes is that every black NBA player, present and future, live up to the request he once made of a young player.
"One said to me one day, 'Mr. Lloyd, we owe you,' " Lloyd recalled. "I said, 'Let me tell you who you owe, you owe the people that come behind you.' I know Chuck Cooper, Sweetwater Clifton, myself, we made it a better place. If we didn't do that, all of y'all wouldn't be there now.' "
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