basketball player; basketball coach
Personal Information
Born c. 1928; raised in Alexandria, Virginia; married, wife's name Charlita; two children: Kevin and Kenneth.
Education: earned education degree, West Virginia State College, 1950.
Military/Wartime Service: served in U.S. Army, 1951-52.
Career
Professional basketball player and coach. One of three African Americans drafted by NBA teams, 1950; became NBA's first African American player to play on October 31 of that year, playing for Washington Capitols; signed with Syracuse Nationals, 1952; played on Nationals NBA champion team, 1955, as one of first two African Americans to win championship; signed with Detroit Pistons, 1958; became assistant coach with Pistons, 1960; became NBA's first African American non-playing coach with Pistons, 1971-73; worked as job-placement administrator, Detroit Public Schools, 1970s and 1980s; community liaison work with Bing Steel, Detroit, 1990s.
Life's Work
"People know who Jackie Robinson is. Why don't they know about Earl Lloyd?" Chicago sportscaster and former NBA player Johnny (Red) Kerr asked in an interview with Sports Illustrated. Lloyd himself, possessing of a modesty rare among basketball players of the present day, is quick to downplay the comparison, pointing out that he shared the spotlight in his debut year of 1950 with two other African-American draftees. Nevertheless, Earl Lloyd has a place in history and in the record books as the first African-American player to take the court in an NBA basketball game, and his story offers more inspiration than he admits for those seeking to overcome barriers in their lives. Lloyd also went on to become the NBA's first non-playing African American coach later in his career.
Born circa 1928, Lloyd grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, living under the strict regime of Southern segregation in the era before civil rights. His selection in the 1950 NBA draft also marked for him a different and more personal milestone: he told the Washington Times that "[t]o that point I had never sat next to or even talked to a white person before." Lloyd attended all-black West Virginia State College. As a youth, he received some advice from his mother that he later recounted to Sports Illustrated: "Stupid people do stupid things," she told him. "Small people do small things. Don't let them get to you." It was advice he would need and heed later in his life.
Offered Globetrotters Slot
A basketball standout at West Virginia State, Lloyd mulled an offer to take what he considered the only professional basketball opportunity open to him at the time: a slot with the razzle-dazzle, acrobatically inclined Harlem Globetrotters, whose on-court antics delighted basketball audiences of the day. But as Lloyd finished college in 1950, Jackie Robinson had broken baseball's color barrier three years before and had begun the long and arduous dismantling of the institutional racial segregation that pervaded American life. Lloyd's coach saw changes coming in other sports, and, perhaps mindful of the NBA scouts in the stands who were keeping an eye on his hot prospect, warned Lloyd to keep his options open.
Though Lloyd became the first African American player in the NBA, he was not the first one drafted. Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach, who ironically was later responsible for building the great and largely-white dominated Celtics basketball dynasty of the 1980s, was the first basketball decision-maker to break with tradition; the Celtics picked Duquesne forward Chuck Cooper in the second round of the 1950 NBA draft. Once the doors had been opened, two more African American players were picked. Nat (Sweetwater) Clifton, a Harlem Globetrotter forward was drafted by the New York Knickerbockers and became the first African American to sign an NBA contract.
Lloyd was selected by the Washington Capitols in the ninth round of the draft. He himself credited Auerbach for his own chance to enter the NBA. "I don't think you can put a price tag on what [Auerbach] has done for the black athlete," he told the Washington Times. "I believed then and I believe now that if Red Auerbach had not drafted Chuck Cooper, the Washington Capitols would not have drafted me," he continued. Reporting to the Capitols training camp, Lloyd faced a sharp period of adjustment.
Overcame Fears
"So first off, you're shocked," Lloyd told the Detroit Free Press. "When you get to camp, you're awestruck, because you're around these players you've heard about for years. And when you get treated like an inferior human being all of your life, you start to believe it. . . I said, 'What am I doing here?'" he recalled. But Lloyd had the mental discipline, and more important the skills, to ride out this period of self-doubt. "About the fifth day of training camp," he told the Free Press, "the light goes on and you say," 'Hey, these guys are no better than I am.' By the start of the regular season I was in the starting lineup."
On October 31, 1950, Lloyd became the NBA's first African-American player to play when the Capitols took the court in Rochester, New York, against the Rochester Royals. Only 2,184 fans were in attendance, and this milestone in African-American history went unreported by the same national press that had closely scrutinized Jackie Robinson's debut three years earlier. One reason, Lloyd has pointed out, was that professional basketball was then in its infancy. Teams were located in out-of-the-way places, attendance was low, and national media coverage was sparse.
In Rochester, where the city's schools were already integrated and the fans used to seeing African American players, the game went off without incident. Things were not so pleasant at the Capitols' second game of the year, played at home against the Minneapolis Lakers. Lloyd's parents were in the crowd, and had to endure numerous racist remarks from disgruntled white fans. Things got even worse in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Lloyd and a white teammate, walking off the court arm in arm after a Capitols' victory, were spit on by fans. "When you went to Fort Wayne to play," Lloyd told Sports Illustrated, "you had to do some emotional yoga to get ready because you knew what was coming." he continued.
Lloyd has repeatedly maintained that the challenges he faced were minor compared with those surmounted by Robinson. He pointed to the fact that while Robinson fought physically with his own teammates, he (Lloyd) was never even insulted with a racial slur on the court from a teammate or even from an opposing player. But Lloyd often faced difficulties in obtaining public accommodations when on the road with the Capitols. One night in Fort Wayne, the Van Orman Hotel refused to let him eat in its restaurant with the rest of the team. Capitols coach "Bones" McKinney tried to soften the blow by coming to eat in Lloyd's room, but Lloyd (quoted in the Detroit Free Press) told the coach, "No, you don't have to do this. There's no use both of us being miserable."
Nicknamed "The Big Cat"
At times, Lloyd told Sports Illustrated, he "wanted to lash out at somebody." But he persisted, bringing a copy of Down Beat magazine on the road with him and seeking out jazz clubs, where all were made welcome. Other African American players joined the league and things got easier. Lloyd moved to the Syracuse Nationals in 1952, and when the Nationals won the NBA championships in 1955, Lloyd and teammate Jim Tucker became the first African Americans to win an NBA title. Nicknamed "The Big Cat" for his height and speed, Lloyd gained a reputation as a fine defensive player. He closed out his playing career with the Detroit Pistons from 1958 to 1960; over his pro career Lloyd averaged 8.4 points and 6.4 rebounds per game.
In the days before multimillion-dollar salaries and celebrity endorsements, professional athletes often had to begin new careers when their playing days were over. Lloyd, married and the father of two, stayed on in Detroit and became an assistant coach with the Pistons in 1960. In 1971 he notched a final first on his belt when he was named the team's coach: although Celtics star Bill Russell had broken coaching's color barrier when he served as the Celtics' player-coach in the late 1960s, Lloyd was the league's first non-playing African-American coach.
Compiling a record of 22 wins and 55 losses, Lloyd was fired by the notoriously fickle Pistons in 1973 and dropped off the basketball radar screen. He moved into a job-placement career with Detroit Public Schools. The honors that began to flow his way began when his name appeared as the answer to a question on television's Jeopardy quiz show in 1988; the contestant at the time did not know Lloyd's name. In the 1990s Lloyd worked for the steel and auto-parts company of former Piston Dave Bing, who had played for Lloyd during his years at the helm of the Pistons. By the year 2000 he had retired to a home in Tennessee. "I can't count up to $5 million," he told the Detroit Free Press, "but it makes me feel good to know that I was part of contributing something to enable young black kids to make big money," he concluded.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Detroit Free Press, February 26, 1989, p. E9; January 14, 1992, p. D1; March 16, 2000, p. B2.
- Insight on the News, March 29, 1999, p. 42.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, February 27, 2000.
- Sports Illustrated, November 28, 1994, p. 8.
- Washington Times, February 18, 1999, p. 1.
— James M. Manheim
