76 years ago: Earl Lloyd becomes the first Black player in an NBA game, with 6 points and 10 rebounds in Rochester

Seventy-six years ago this month, on Tuesday, October 31, 1950, a 22-year-old rookie forward from Alexandria, Virginia, checked into a game for the Washington Capitols at Edgerton Park Arena in Rochester, New York. Earl Lloyd scored 6 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in a 78-70 loss to the Rochester Royals, and with that he became the first Black player to appear in an NBA game.

Almost nobody noticed at the time. One local game story that week mentioned him in a single line, as the big newcomer from West Virginia State whom coach Bones McKinney sent in after halftime and who “took most of the rebounds.” Lloyd himself remembered the night the same way for the rest of his life.

“I stepped onto the court and the world kept spinning,” he said years later. “No one said a word, not the fans, players, anybody. Nothing was ever said about me being the first black. They acted as if I was a player, period.”

Three pioneers in five days

Lloyd was the first partly because of the calendar. Three Black players entered the NBA in the fall of 1950, and the Capitols simply opened their season before the Celtics or the Knicks did.

• Earl Lloyd, Washington Capitols, Tuesday, October 31: Royals 78, Capitols 70 in Rochester. Lloyd went 2-of-3 from the field and 2-of-3 at the line for 6 points, with 10 rebounds and 5 assists. A ninth-round pick, the 101st player chosen in the 1950 draft, he was the first Black player to play in an NBA game.
• Chuck Cooper, Boston Celtics, Wednesday, November 1: Pistons 107, Celtics 84 at North Side High School Gym in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in front of 2,743 fans. Cooper scored 9 points on 3-of-6 shooting and 3-of-3 free throws. Picked 13th overall in April 1950, he was the first Black player drafted by an NBA team.
• Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, New York Knicks, Saturday, November 4: Blackhawks 87, Knicks 76 at Wharton Field House in Moline, Illinois. Clifton, 28, scored 16 points on 7-of-16 shooting and took 12 rebounds. Bought from the Harlem Globetrotters that summer, he was the first Black player to sign an NBA contract.

All three of their teams lost. A fourth Black player, Hank DeZonie, joined the Tri-Cities Blackhawks a month later, debuting on December 3 and playing five games.

The famous rookies were elsewhere in the box scores. Bill Sharman, the future Hall of Fame guard, also made his NBA debut in Lloyd’s game and went 2-of-15 for Washington. Bob Cousy debuted alongside Cooper in Fort Wayne and led Boston with 16 points. The Royals team that beat Lloyd that night, led by Arnie Risen’s 20 points and with Red Holzman coming off the bench, went on to win the 1951 championship, beating Clifton’s Knicks in seven games in the Finals.

As the NBA celebrates the 75th Anniversary of the historic 1950-51 season, we look back at the NBA debuts of the league’s three Pioneers and first black players: Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper and Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton.

75 years ago today (10/31/1950), Earl Lloyd, the first Black… pic.twitter.com/iYQgwn5uYV

— NBA History (@NBAHistory) October 31, 2025

The box score in Rochester

• Final: Rochester Royals 78, Washington Capitols 70, the season opener for Washington.
• By quarter: Washington 12-17-17-24; Rochester 25-18-20-15. The Royals led 43-29 at halftime, and the Capitols won the second half by six.
• Earl Lloyd: 6 points (2-3 FG, 2-3 FT), 10 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 fouls. He missed only two of his six shots, on a night his team shot 26-of-91.
• Capitols: Fred Scolari scored 18, Chick Halbert and Frank Kudelka 12 each, and Dick O’Keefe 8.
• Royals: Arnie Risen scored 20, Bobby Wanzer 12, and Bob Davies and Pep Saul 11 each.

What it was like

Lloyd never let anyone make him into a lone hero. Jackie Robinson had broken baseball’s color line three and a half years earlier, and the NBA was a four-year-old league playing in high school gyms and small arenas. Lloyd always said the comparison was unfair to Robinson.

“I don’t think my situation was anything like Jackie Robinson’s, a guy who played in a very hostile environment, where even some of his own teammates didn’t want him around,” he said. “In basketball, folks were used to seeing integrated teams at the college level. There was a different mentality. But of course, the team did stay and eat in some places where I wasn’t welcome.”

He remembered one hotel in Fort Wayne in particular. “They let me sleep, but they wouldn’t let me eat. They didn’t want anyone to see me. Heck, I figured if they let me sleep there, I was at least halfway home,” he said. “You have to remember, I grew up in segregated Virginia, so I had seen this stuff before. Did it make me bitter? No.”

When a diner refused to serve him on the road, McKinney, a North Carolinian, took his own dinner up to Lloyd’s hotel room and ate with him. “You know he didn’t have to do that,” Lloyd said. “Things like that you don’t forget.”

Later, in Syracuse, teammate Johnny “Red” Kerr remembered walking off the floor in Fort Wayne after a win with his arm around Lloyd. “Some fans just spit on us,” Kerr said. “It wasn’t because we had won the game. They were spitting at Earl.”

Seven games, then a champion

Lloyd’s first stay in the league lasted seven games. He was then drafted into the U.S. Army, and the Capitols folded in January 1951, about halfway through the season. Syracuse picked up his rights in the dispersal draft, and after missing the 1951-52 season for military service he joined the Nationals in 1952.

He became a defensive forward who usually guarded the other team’s best scorer. In 1954-55 he averaged 10.2 points and 7.7 rebounds as Syracuse won the championship over Fort Wayne in seven games, and Lloyd and teammate Jim Tucker became the first Black players to win an NBA title. He finished his career with two seasons in Detroit, retiring in 1960 with 560 games, 8.4 points and 6.4 rebounds a game.

Lloyd stayed with the Pistons as a scout and assistant, and in 1971-72 he became their first Black head coach. It did not last; Detroit went 22-55 under him across parts of two seasons. “Coaching is only fun if you win,” he said later, laughing. “I didn’t win. It wasn’t fun.”

Cooper played six seasons, the first four in Boston, and averaged 9.3 points and 8.5 rebounds as a rookie. Clifton spent seven seasons with the Knicks, made the All-Star team in 1956-57 and averaged 10.0 points and 8.2 rebounds over his career. Cooper died in 1984 and Clifton in 1990. Both were elected to the Naismith Hall of Fame decades later, Clifton in 2014 and Cooper in 2019. Lloyd was inducted as a contributor in 2003, and he died on February 26, 2015, at 86.

Last season, the league marked the 75th anniversary of 1950-51 by honoring the three of them as its Pioneers. Lloyd would probably have shrugged at the fuss. “When you’re 70 years old, if you start telling people that you were the first black man to play in the NBA, people look at you like you’re crazy,” he once said. “Besides, I’ve never been one to blow my own horn.” But on a Halloween night in Rochester 76 years ago, with almost nobody watching, a ninth-round rookie walked onto the floor and the league was never the same.