‘Color
Line’ in NBA
Ryu
Hye-ran
Kyung-pook
National University
Dept. of English Education
There
must be no one who is not surprised by the videos showing splendid techniques
of NBA players at the end of the sports news, even for those who are not
interested in basketball games. NBA, National Basketball Association, is the
most popular league as a single one in the world. There are lots of super stars
in NBA regardless of race and it is still loved by millions of people all
around the world. However, in the progress of NBA’s growing, there were moments
when it was unnatural to see African-Americans play on the basketball court.
NBA was named BAA(Basketball Association of America) in
the beginning, which was a really poor league. Also, it was not the case that
BAA was the sole league, but NBL(National Basketball League) existed in
advance. NBL at that time included teams that became reputable in NBA later
such as Rochester Royals and Minneapolis Lakers. Though NBL was much poorer at
the performance than BAA in the beginning, BAA retained bigger market, meaning
big cities and the owners of the BAA club had gymnasiums. Also BAA brought Minneapolis
Lakers which guaranteed the biggest success because of the splendid performance.
In those days, NBA was still under the difficulties
financially though they wanted to give chances to African-Americans. Also,
Harlem Globetrotters, which is the team to perform basketball acrobatic tricks,
played an important role in the success of NBA as double-header. Thus, it was
not easy to turn their backs on the owner of Globetrotters by choosing
African-American players. However, as the number of teams in BAA increases, the
gap between skills of Minneapolis Lakers and others expanded. Especially New
York Knicks and Boston Celtics, which are popular teams in NBA now, remained in
the lower ranks. They finally started to look for new players and hired
African-American players, Nathaniel Clifton and Chuck Cooper respectively. That
was 1950 when the ‘color line’ in NBA started to break down.
However, still there were limits in race of basketball
court at the moments despite the high performance of African-Americans. It was
normal for them to play only the task that some people regard as unpleasant
like defending and go through limits on participation. Also, discrimination
continued outside the court as well. Chuck Cooper, the first African-American
player nominated in the draft, was rejected to stay at the hotel when he had an
away match in North Carolina.
Of course, in these days, the racial problem still goes
on. Even the news that the owner of LA Clippers made a racist comment is not
far from today. However, it is clear that the ‘color line’ on the basketball
court could not ignore competent African-American players in the end. Now it is
familiar to see them play on the court thanks to their efforts. Though there
were moments when even they were rejected as black people, now the racist
comment by one person throws the whole USA into turmoil. If there had not been
African-Americans’ efforts to overcome discrimination related to race by
proving their competence, Michael Jordan might have been the name nobody
remembers.
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