Trailblazers in Black History: Don Barksdale

 

By Curtis Harris

The 2016 NBA All-Star Game will be the first held outside the United States. But until Pau Gasol was named as the replacement for injured Bulls teammate Jimmy Butler, it nearly held an even more interesting first distinction: the first NBA All-Star Game with no white players.

Even as the NBA is predominantly black, there has always been at least one white All-Star. European influence in recent years has helped, be it Gasol, his brother Marc or Dirk Nowitzki. Like Pau Gasol this year, these players deserved to be in the game. But they also make for a dramatic contrast from the NBA's very first All-Star showcase, held in Bostin in March 1951.

The league itself was nearly all white in its second season, with four black players rostered that season: Boston’s Chuck Cooper, New York’s Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton, Tri-Cities’ Hank DeZoine and Washington’s Earl Lloyd. Those four men broke the NBA’s color barrier that season, but it was up to another player, who arrived the following season, to ultimately break the All-Star color line.

In October 1951, 28-year-old Don Barksdale joined the Baltimore Bullets. Raised in California, Barksdale was a fantastic athlete and basketball star on the West Coast from his collegiate days at UCLA — before John Wooden arrived — and his sterling play for the AAU’s Oakland Bittners. 

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Source: Sporting News