Guest post - “The NBA in Black and White”

 While this book has been on my radar, I received a request to post this review on my blog and frankly, I know I would not have done this as well as Syl did, so I will simply post the review and let you enjoy.  

Book Review: Ray Scott’s The NBA in Black and White

A Memoir, a Tribute to Black Trailblazers, and a Lesson in Race 

By Syl Sobel

 

Today’s basketball stars often acknowledge that they stand on the shoulders of African American players who came before them. They credit stars of the 1960s and ‘70s like Elgin Baylor, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, and Wilt Chamberlainfor building the foundation for today’s game and opening doors for Black athletes.  

But what about the generation of Black players before them, the groundbreakers of the 1950s who cleared a path for African-Americans in the NBA? Men like Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper, and Sweetwater Clifton who broke the league’s color barrierin 1951? Or pioneers who came after them like Hank DeZonie, Don Barksdale, Ray Felix, Jim Tucker, and the great Maurice Stokes, who labored in the trenchesat a time when the NBA had an unwritten quota on African Americans and expected them to rebound, play defense, and run the floor, but not score or overshadow the white stars?

Thanks to Ray Scott, former great NBA and ABA player and coach and a member of the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame, today’s players and fans now have a chance to remember players the NBA forgot. In The NBA in Black and White: The Memoir of a Trailblazing NBA Player and Coach, which Scott wrote with prolific basketball author Charley Rosen, we learn about all of these players and morealong Scott’s journey from Philadelphia high school star, to NBA and ABA star, to the first African-American to be selected as NBA Coach of the Year. Scott doesn’t just tell their story – he lived it with them. He is one of the last remaining links to the first generation of African American NBA players who made the modern game possible. 

Scott began his career in the playgrounds and high school gyms of Philadelphia where he competed against Chamberlain, Hal “King” Lear, Guy Rodgers, and other city legends. He went to the University of Portland where he played against University of Seattle star Elgin Baylor; to the Catskills where he, Chamberlain, and other college players competed against each other and visiting pros in summer exhibition contests; and to the Eastern Basketball League where he teamed with fellow Philly great Sonny Hill and developed his game for three years after he left Portland, and played with and against some of the best basketball players you probably never heard of, like Lear, Wally Choice, Dick Gaines, Tom Hemans, and former Globetrotters Andy Johnson (a former Philadelphia Warrior), Carl Green, Roman Turmon, and Gene Hudgins. 

In 1961, the Detroit Pistons made Scott their no. 1 draft pick and fourth overall. He played nine years in the NBA for Detroit and Baltimore, battling Chamberlain, Russell, Nate Thurmond, Willis Reed, Robertson, Baylor, and other greats of that era, averaging a double-double at 14.9 pts. and 10.5 rebounds per game. Then he ended his playing career with the Virginia Squires in the ABA where one of his teammates was a young Julius Erving. 

Scott readily traces his lineage and his development as a player, coach, and personto Earl Lloyd, who not only was the first African American to play in an NBA game, but was also the league’s first Black scout and assistant coach. Lloyd was the scout who recommended that the Pistons draft Scott, became Scott’s valued mentor as Detroit’s assistant coach, was the head coach who hired him as an assistant in 1972, and who Scott replaced as head coach when Lloyd was fired early that season. 

Lloyd was Scott’s confidante who not only taught him how to prepare and conduct himself on the court, but off of it as well. Lloyd helped Scott navigate the delicate balance of being a Black NBA player and coach in what was still a white league in the early 1960s, with many false preconceptions about Black athletes and culture. 

As the title suggests, race and its influence on professional basketball are as important an element in Scott’s story as the game of basketball itself. Scott’s career spans the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, and he weaves race into his story from his personal observations, insight, and involvement.

Scott’s racial consciousness was born during his childhood in Philly and matured through his basketball and life experiences. Lloyd introduced Scott to Dr. Martin Luther King during a chance airport meeting, and after King’s assassination Scott became Coretta Scott King’s bodyguard. He met Malcolm X, befriended Muhammed Ali, and played pick-up basketball in Harlem with H. Rap Brown (“a good player”).

Scott recalls how he informed his college search by identifying which college programs already had their “quota” of African American players and which played games in places that were hostile to Blacks. He explains how the Eastern League became the landing place for many great Black players who were limited by the small number of NBA teams at that time and the NBA’s unwritten quotas. He remembers how he and other Black NBA players were denied service at restaurants in some cities, and how white owners undervalued Black players and coaches thinking they required a lower standard of living than their white contemporaries.

Scott recounts these and many personal slights now not with bitterness but as teaching points.

“My purpose . . . in writing this book is to explore, and hopefully to encourage a better understanding of, a certain portion of the history of “We the people” as I have experienced it,” Scott says in the Prologue. “My ultimate aim is not to shock but to encourage readers to think.”

Scott succeeds, on three levels. First, he describes a remarkable life in which he has excelled not only at the highest levels of professional sports but also in business and community service. 

Second, he adds to the growing literature on African American basketball players who are finally getting recognition for their contributions to the game. Other recent books on this topic include Claude Johnson, Black Fives: The Epic Story of Basketball’s Forgotten Era (2022); Syl Sobel and Jay Rosenstein, Boxed Out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League (2021); Douglas Stark, Breaking Barriers, A History of Integration in Professional Basketball(2018); Earl Lloyd and Sean Kirst, Moonfixer: The Basketball Journey of Earl Lloyd (2011); Mark Johnson, Basketball Slave: The Andy Johnson Harlem Globetrotter Story (2010); Ron Thomas, They Cleared the Lane: The NBA’s Black Pioneers (2002); Bijan C. Bayne, Sky Kings: Black Pioneers of Professional Basketball (1997).

But perhaps most importantly, Scott sees in basketball and its history of racism a hopeful metaphor for society. “In so many ways,” he writes, “the NBA and the WNBA are showing the way for a future in which all Americans have a seat at the table.” 

To the extent one agrees that basketball has succeeded in furthering opportunities and inclusion for African Americans, it provides both lessons and optimism for the future.

 

Syl Sobel is a writer, attorney, and the coauthor, with Jay Rosenstein, of Boxed Out of the NBA: Remembering the Eastern Professional Basketball League. His website is www.sylsobel.com.