It's also worth noting that, in 1963, little Loyola of Chicago had won the national championship with four black starters.
1966 MICHIGAN BASKETBALL ROSTER PROFESSIONAL
And in December 1964, whatever statement the multi-champion Celtics were making resonated around the NBA.īut Auerbach made a bigger statement in 1966, a month after the Texas Western win in the NCAA tournament, by naming Russell as Celtics coach, the first black athlete to coach a major professional team. Auerbach could also have started John Havlicek, instead of Naulls, for the injured Tom Heinsohn. Was it Red Auerbach's strongest lineup? Probably not.
1966 MICHIGAN BASKETBALL ROSTER PRO
Louis (incidentally at the time the Southern-most city in pro sports). Jones, Tom Sanders and Willie Naulls, on Dec.
But that rule had also become grist for the cynical joke of the time: You play two blacks at home, three on the road and five in the fourth quarter.įamously, the Boston Celtics were the first team to start five blacks – Bill Russell, Sam and K.C. There probably still was the unspoken rule that you tried not to start more blacks than whites. Black basketball players were becoming tokens no more. But more than just the superstars, the NBA rosters were filling up with black supporting players. Black players had begun to gain their opportunities in the early-to-mid-50s, when nobody paid much attention to pro basketball, and a decade later they were dominating the game – from Maurice Stokes to Bill Russell to Elgin Baylor to Wilt Chamberlain to Oscar Robertson. In sports, nowhere was racial equality becoming more of an issue than in basketball. Some of it was inspiring, much of it was ugly. Race in sports had been bubbling for 20 years, ever since Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball. Schools had been integrated by the Supreme Court, voting and housing rights had been integrated by Congress, campuses had been integrated by the National Guard. Some have speculated race being a factor, though it's unlikely since WKU didn't integrate until 1963 with Dwight Smith.īut so much in the 1960s had to do with race. There were a few undercurrents going on at that event, mostly having to do with WKU's hopes that it might get to face Kentucky at long last.Īpparently, the big school in Lexington had refused to play the little brother from Bowling Green for reasons unknown. There were a handful of play-in games, and one of the teams to make it was the Hilltoppers from Western Kentucky, who thus got to join Michigan, Dayton and Kentucky for the weekend in Iowa City. Only about 20 teams from around the country qualified, mostly based on winning their conference championships, and then 16 of them gathered in four first-round sites. This was a different era for the tournament. Taking advantage of the perks that that allowed, I scored some press tickets to the NCAA regional tournament at the University of Iowa and some friends and I piled into a car for the four-hour drive from Champaign-Urbana to Iowa City. In March 1966, I was the sports editor of The Daily Illini, the campus newspaper at the University of Illinois.
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