HOUSTON – When Lionel Hollins heard about the passing of Earl Lloyd, the first African-American to play in an NBA game, he immediately thought back to his only conversation with the man, on a phone call two years ago while he was still coaching the Grizzlies.
“Bob Lanier said that Earl [Lloyd] had called him, and he was going to call him back and asked me if I’d ever talked to him,” Hollins said of the sequence that occurred at a practice on UCLA’s campus. “I said no, and he said, ‘I’ll let you talk to him.’
“I told [Lloyd] I was so grateful, but he was so humble. … He was honored that I would call him, and I was like, ‘Man, you have no idea. I’m honored and privileged to have the opportunity to talk to you, one of the greats and giants of the game, and giants of our community.’”
Lloyd, who passed away Thursday, made history by playing for the Washington Capitals in 1950, just days before Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton and Chuck Cooper played for the Knicks and Celtics, respectively.
Because the three of them came into the league at the same time, Hollins said, none of them received the same kind of attention Jackie Robinson did for breaking baseball’s color barrier in 1947. But Hollins said that shouldn’t minimize Lloyd’s achievement.
“He was the first one to play in a game, and all of those guys endured much abuse and had to go through the same stuff as Jackie Robinson did,” Hollins said. “Not to be able to stay in hotels or be able to eat at certain places, all of that stuff was going on while they were trying to achieve their goals of playing in the NBA.
“What Earl told me was like, ‘I’m not a hero. I was just trying to play basketball and earn a living.’ That’s how he looked at it, and in doing what he did, and in the way he did it, he became a hero.”
Things are much different now, with multi-million dollar salaries, charter flights and five-star hotels, all of which made it hard for players to comprehend what life must have been like for Lloyd as he tried to break the NBA’s color barrier.
“I’m sure it’s something that was extremely challenging on a lot of levels,” Nets point guard Jarrett Jack said. “You’d think he played against guys who didn’t like you because of the color of your skin or race, but he probably had those same fights with other teammates, coaches, your own home fans, and to be able to go out there and weather all that and still handle it and still do your job and perform … I couldn’t imagine.
“Having a wife and family at the game, I wonder what that family room was like, even if there was one at that particular time, allowing everyone to fraternize with one another. Just the things we probably take for granted that they had to deal with on a day-to-day to play basketball. … I really couldn’t begin to process what they had to go through.”