The Story Of Earl Lloyd

Pro baseball was integrated in 1947, but what about basketball?  In the fall of 1950 three players were ready to suit up. Chuck Cooper was the first Black player to be drafted by a NBA team, while Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton was the first to sign a contract with the league, but it was Earl Lloyd, on October 31st who became the first African-American to play in an NBA game when he entered the court to take on the Rochester Royals as a member of the Washington Capitols.  

Standing 6’6” Lloyd had been a two-time All–American player at West Virginia State University where he helped lead the team to an undefeated season in 1948.  A high school standout, Lloyd was named to the All-South Atlantic Conference three times and the All-State Virginia Interscholastic Conference twice before picking West Virginia State. After graduating with a B.S. in physical education, he found himself in the line up for the Harlem Globetrotters, next to Cooper and Clifton, before his ninth round pick in the NBA draft. 

Cooper would make his debut with the Boston Celtics just one day later and Clifton played his first game for the New York Knicks on November 4.  The NBA’s season opener schedule had determined which of the three would be the first Black player in the league. 

With Jackie Robinson and other Black players already on the baseball field, the debut of African-Americans in the NBA was not met with the same level of tension or attention.  Baseball was the more popular sport and many college teams were already integrated.  “Mr. Lloyd, and my dad too, gave Jackie a lot of credit for making things easier for them,” said Chuck Cooper III. “Certainly not easy, but easier.”  

The three supported each other that first year.   Earl’s son Kevin Lloyd said, “There weren’t as many teams, so they played against each other a lot. Every time my father went to Boston, it was Chuck’s responsibility to take care of my father. And vice versa. Same with New York, ‘Sweetwater’ would take care of either one of them. They had to. They were tight-knit.”  

While officially integrated, the NBA continued to have an unwritten, unofficial secret quota on Black players; no NBA team had more than four black players on their team until the 1963 Celtics despite drafting mostly Black rookies.  Why did it end?  The launch of the American Basketball League, creating a run for good players.   

In the NBA today nearly three quarters of the players are Black and diversity doesn’t end on the court. The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida (UCF) 2023 NBA Racial and Gender Report Card gave the league a combined grade of an A.   That year there were 16 head coaches and 13 general managers of color and 48.5 percent of assistant coaches were of color.