USA TODAY International Edition
Barksdale one of pioneers in hoops
During Black History Month, with the series 28 Black Stories in 28 days, USA TODAY Sports examines the issues, challenges and opportunities Black athletes and sports officials face after the nation’s reckoning on race in 2020.
Maybe you’ve heard of Don Barksdale, maybe you haven’t.
Regardless, you need to know his important story.
Barksdale is the NBA’s first Black All- Star, voted on the East team by other players in 1953.
Barksdale’s NBA career was short, just four seasons, because Black players were prevented from playing in the league until 1950.
While not as famous as some of his pioneers of the era – such as baseball’s Jackie Robinson, MLB’s first Black player, and basketball’s Earl Lloyd, the NBA’s first Black player – Barksdale was influential.
He was also the first Black player to play for the U. S. Olympic basketball team, winning a gold medal at the 1948 London Games, and became the first Black player named to the consensus All- American team in 1947 while at UCLA.
Barksdale died in 1993 at 69.
“Don was one the of the best,” former San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh said in the documentary “Bounce: The Don Barksdale Story.”
“He was way ahead of this time. He had great moves – under the basket, outside, got way up above the rim.”
In those four seasons – two with the Baltimore Bullets and two with the Boston Celtics, just two years before Bill Russell arrived – Barksdale averaged 11 points and eight rebounds, with his best season coming in 1952- 53 at 13.8 points and 9.2 rebounds per game.
“Unfortunately, I was 29 or 30 when I turned pro because the NBA had been closed to Blacks for so long,” Barksdale told LA84 Foundation in 1991. “I had lost three or four good years that I could have been playing.
“I do not think I ever reached my potential in pro ball.”
Of his time and ahead of his time, Barksdale embodied “More Than An Athlete” seven decades before it became a slogan and action item.
Barksdale was a businessman, entrepreneur, music industry insider, real estate investor and philanthropist.
Born in Oakland, California, in 1923, Barksdale was the son of Mississippians who headed west as part of the great migration from the South that Isabel Wilkerson documented in her Pulitzer Prize- winning book, “The Warmth of Other Suns.”
That didn’t make Barksdale immune from racism and a Jim Crow- like system. Though he attended a desegregated high school, only one Black player was allowed on the basketball team, and Barksdale never made the team.
He still loved the game and played at parks, developing skills that caught the attention of a coach at Marin Junior College. After two seasons at Marin, UCLA noticed, and Barksdale was offered a scholarship. In a weird sequence, he played eight games for UCLA in the winter of 1943, and after the season, he was summoned to serve in the Army in World War II. Barksdale returned to UCLA for the 1946- 47 season.
Following college, he played for AAU teams, which were hugely popular at the time, and then was named to the Olympic team. There he played for U. S. assistant coach and Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp, who among many things is known for racist language and a reluctance to recruit Black players to Kentucky.
“I started out with a very stormy relationship with Adolph Rupp,” Barksdale told the LA84 Foundation. “When we came back on the ( S. S.) America, which is the ship that transported all the athletes in ’ 48, he made it his business to wait for me at the gangplank when we embarked at New York. In addition, he told me that it was a pleasure coaching me in his first experience working with a Black player.”
During his playing days, Barksdale endured racism. He received death threats and was unable to stay in hotels or eat at restaurants with his white teammates.
He also understood his path to financial freedom would not be in basketball. In college, he opened a record store, one of the few Black record shops in Los Angeles at the time. He also worked as a prominent and popular DJ, became a beer distributor, opened entertainment clubs – where some of the best Black musicians and entertainers performed – and owned real estate.
“I had studied business at UCLA and had learned that real estate was a good investment,” he told LA84. “The advice was, ‘ Buy property and do not sell it.’ When I played pro ball I would buy a piece of property every year and it was the smartest move I ever made in my life. Right now I am set for life because I bought property back in ’ 51, ’ 52 and ’ 53 and I still have it.”
His work in music made him more famous than he ever was playing basketball.
“Lou Rawls and I would have an act every week in my club,” Barksdale told LA84. “The acts were Lou Rawls, B. B. King, Ike and Tina Turner, Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, Jackie Wilson, the Whispers, the Pointer Sisters, Count Basie, Joe Williams, Arthur Prysock. They were all unbelievable acts. They would receive airtime on R& B stations, but the white stations would not play them. As a result, we knew them, but the Caucasians did not know them. These acts were mine for four or five years.”
When Oakland Public Schools encountered financial difficulties that threatened sports in the 1980s and ’ 90s, Barksdale started the Celebrity Waiters luncheon to raise money for boys’ and girls’ sports. He enlisted his friends from sports and entertainment to wait on tables: Rawls, King, Walsh, Willie Mays, Al Attles, Ronnie Lott, Ollie Matson. He raised $ 1 million for his Save High School Sports Foundation.
Former NBA players Gary Payton and Antonio Davis, who played prep basketball for Oakland public schools, were beneficiaries of Barksdale’s efforts.
“When I got to know him and finally saw what he was trying to do, I thought to myself, ‘ This man maybe is a saint,’ ” longtime Oakland- area writer Dave Newhouse said in the Barksdale documentary.
Now, you know a little bit about Don Barksdale.
There are many reasons why the Texans have recently been one of the great cosmic examples of putridity.
It’s the way the former coach, Bill O’Brien, made inexplicable trades. Like dumping DeAndre Hopkins for a bag of peanuts and Jadeveon Clowney for a bag of candy corn. Or blowing a 24- 0 lead against the Chiefs in the divisional playoff round. Or their shameful treatment of Deshaun Watson. Or the firing of one of the smartest PR people in the league, Amy Palcic, the first woman to hold full public relations duties in the history of the NFL.
It’s the history of awful Texans ownership with Bob McNair calling players “inmates.” Or it’s the fact a graduate of the Clown Academy of Red Nose Floppy Shoes College having an influential position in the organization.
The list goes on. It’s like something from a dystopian NFL future.
But out of all the disgraces, JJ Watt departing is one of the biggest.
The NFL is brutal and other historic players didn’t finish their careers with the team where they became stars. Joe Montana went to Kansas City after the 49ers. Jerry Rice left. John Unitas departed Baltimore for San Diego. Emmitt Smith finished his career in Arizona. So a 31- year- old Watt ending his career elsewhere is far from unusual even for players of his Hall of Fame caliber.
However, this doesn’t feel like Watt is leaving for any reason other than what’s become of the Texans. They have been strip- mined of not just resources but also intellectual power. It’s getting better with a new general manager and coaching hires but it’s too late when it comes to Watt.
It might take years for the Texans to recover from the self- inflicted damage from awful ownership and doofus cornballs who shouldn’t be near a secondrate comedy club, let alone part of an NFL front office.
This isn’t a case of a competent franchise deciding to go with a younger player, or someone they think is the future, like when the 49ers went from Montana to Steve Young, or the Patriots releasing Tom Brady because they thought he was done ( oops).
Watt won’t say this but he’s leaving because he can see and he’s not dumb. A massive rebuilding is coming because the coaches and front office have been grossly incompetent for years.
Watt’s departure is the logical end of the Texans’ futility.
Is Watt what he was five years ago? No. Few players are.
Yet there’s no question he can play. ESPN Stats & Information says he ranked 15th out of 119th for qualified pass rushers in pass rush win rate.
No one should feel sorry for Watt. He’s rich and healthy. Watt will eat. He’ll be fine.
It’s just ... a waste.
Watt could end up somewhere like the Buccaneers, Steelers or Chiefs, and if he does land in those places, he’ll take a deep, relaxing breath. He’ll be like an astronaut who softly pilots her ship to the surface of a beautiful, faraway moon after a long voyage through space.
If Watt plays for a good franchise it will seem different, weird and alien. He’ll see something he hasn’t seen in a long time. He’ll see competence.