A father's legacy lives on

Sporting News, The, Jan 8, 2001 by Richard Lapchick

Fifty years ago I wondered what was wrong with my father because so many people seemed angry with him.

My earliest memory of childhood is looking outside my bedroom window and seeing my father hanging in effigy. For years, I picked up the upstairs phone extension without him knowing as he took anonymous "nigger lover" calls downstairs.

What I did not understand then was that as coach of the New York Knicks, my father, Joe Lapchick, had signed Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton from the Harlem Globe-trotters. The Boston Celtics' Walter Brown had drafted Chuck Cooper from Duquesne, and Earl Lloyd was signed by the Washington Capitols. Those three were the NBA's first black players, and the league's color barrier fell 50 years ago this season.

The NBA justifiably will celebrate these men. However, just as we belatedly celebrate the lives of Negro leagues baseball players, it will be in part righting a wrong.

While the first black players in the NBA traveled an easier road than Jackie Robinson did in baseball, it was still a considerable struggle. I am proud that my father played a major role in integrating what would become the most integrated sport in the world.

There were no integrated pro basketball teams when my dad played for the Original Celtics. Those Celtics became the first white pro team to play an all-black team. The rivalry between the Celtics and the New York Rens became legendary, and both teams eventually were inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Just as no white team could beat the Celtics, no black team could beat the Rens. But they surely could play against each other in a topsy-turvy series in which victories would be exchanged through the years.

My father saw the effects of society's segregation. He saw the Rens leave most towns each night on their team bus because they could not get hotel rooms. The Celtics could eat in the best restaurants in a town; the Rens usually packed their food for the bus ride because few restaurants would serve them.

The bus was their home and restaurant, and my dad witnessed incidents at gas stations when the proprietor met the Rens with a rifle and prevented them from refueling.

Joe Lapchick also witnessed fan hostility directed at the Rens by white fans who were not ready to watch black and white men act as equals.

My father would embrace Charles "Tarzan" Cooper before each game to show the crowd where the Celtics stood. The Celtics also helped to deal with promoters who were ready to cheat the Rens out of their share of the game money. When my father learned that the checks for the Rens were bouncing, the Celtics insisted that the promoters pay the Rens in cash, even when the Celtics were paid by Check.

My father saw those injustices and was appalled by them, but years went by before he understood racism's personal toll on men he considered friends.

Born to Czechoslovakian immigrant parents, he knew nothing about black Americans except that his friends told him to fear that black men would take jobs from white men. Then the Rens came into his life, and his eyes were opened.

But for years, they were opened only part of the way. Bob Douglas was the creator and main force behind the Rens. My dad came to appreciate him and the leadership he offered basketball.

He often asked Douglas out for a drink but was always told, "Not tonight, Joe." Finally, he asked Douglas why he never wanted to join him for a drink. While my father knew there were bars that would not serve black people, Douglas stunned him by saying that he didn't want to go to a bar that would serve him because he'd still receive icy stares from unwelcoming white customers.

They talked for hours that night. My father left deeply embarrassed with the realization that he had known nothing personal about Douglas or the Rens until that conversation. Disappointed in himself, he knew that night that he had subconsciously ignored the impact of racism on people he cared for.

The two met again at a Basketball Association of America owners' meeting in 1947 in Philadelphia. My father, as coach of the Knicks, pushed for the admission of the Rens to the all-white BAA, the NBA's predecessor. When the owners rejected the Rens, my father was so frustrated that he told Douglas he was going to resign. Douglas, all too familiar with rejections, insisted my father stay with the Knicks with the hope that he might get another chance to break the color barrier.

That chance came when my dad signed Clifton before the 1950 season.

My father died in 1970 at the age of 70. The funeral befitted a man who had played a worthwhile role in sports and culture. At the cemetery, a black man took me in his arms and said, "I'm Bob Douglas, an old friend of your dad. These are members of the Rens."

Bob Douglas taught my dad about race and racism, and those lessons were, fortunately, imparted to me. That's why any recognition of that accomplishment holds a special place in my heart.

Richard Lapchick is the director of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society.