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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 278505, member: 289"] From "Syracuse Wins World Series", the series I did to commenorate the 50th anniversary of the Nat's championship: [I]Black is Beautiful[/I] Earl Lloyd was one of only two black players on the team in 1954-55. He was a solidly muscled and athletic 6-6 220 and was called “The Big Cat” for his quick and easy movements. He was the team’s strongest player and it’s “enforcer”. But he was also a productive player, averaging double figures for the only time in his career that season with 10.2 points to go with 7.7 rebounds a game in the championship year. Schayes called Lloyd, “a prototypical defensive forward. In those days, teams had a defensive forward and a scoring forward, a scoring guard and a defensive guard. Earl would take the best scorer on the other team. It was a selfless job.” I wonder if Al Cervi though of one forward as being for defense and the other for offense? Lloyd is part of a triumvirate that did for pro basketball, (at least the NBA version) what Jackie Robinson did for major league baseball. The first black player drafted by an NBA team was Chuck Cooper by the Boston Celtics. The first black player signed was Sweetwater Clifton, off the Globetrotters by the New York Knicks. But Earl Lloyd, then with the Washington Capitols, was, due to the schedule, the first black ever to play in an NBA game. His era was so long ago that the Caps were the first integrated team he’d ever played on. He told David Ramsey that he wanted to see if he could cover white men and score over white men. “I kept asking my self, ‘What do you think you are doing here?’ These were the people I had read about. I had no fears but you have to understand, if you have been treated as inferior all your life, it’s easy to believe you are inferior. When I finally realized I did belong, it was an awakening, really. Those white people put their pants on the same way I did. It meant a lot to figure that out.” Lloyd found out he could play with and against anybody, including Bob Brannum of the Boston Celtics, who greeted him with an elbow to the ribs. Lloyd chased him down court and gave Brannum an elbow to the face. “You could hear it all over the gym”, Paul Seymour said. “It was beautiful”. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?