Kevin Lloyd leaned forward, his tone marking the seriousness of his point.
“If you (were to) go to my father’s house,” Lloyd said. “You’d never know he played basketball unless he told you.”
Such is the fate of the NBA’s pioneers. The NBA debuts 75 years ago of Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper and Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, the league’s first Black players didn’t garner headlines.
Technically, Wataru “Wat” Misaka, a 5-foot-7 point guard of Japanese descent, broke the NBA’s color barrier in November 1947 as a member of the New York Knicks in the Basketball Association of America (BAA). Seven months before Misaka’s debut, Jackie Robinson took the field with the Brooklyn Dodgers for the first time.