A father's legacy lives on.(basketball coach Joe Lapchick)(Brief Article)

Fifty years ago I wondered what was wrong with my father because so many people seemed angry with him.

My earliest memory of childhood is looking outside my bedroom window and seeing my father hanging in effigy. For years, I picked up the upstairs phone extension without him knowing as he took anonymous "nigger lover" calls downstairs.

What I did not understand then was that as coach of the New York Knicks, my father, Joe Lapchick, had signed Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton from the Harlem Globe-trotters. The Boston Celtics' Walter Brown had drafted Chuck Cooper from Duquesne, and Earl Lloyd was signed by the Washington Capitols. Those three were the NBA's first black players, and the league's color barrier fell 50 years ago this season.

The NBA justifiably will celebrate these men. However, just as we belatedly celebrate the lives of Negro leagues baseball players, it will be in part righting a wrong.

While the first black players in the NBA traveled an easier road than Jackie Robinson did in baseball, it was still a considerable struggle. I am proud that my father played a major role in integrating what would become the most integrated sport in the world.

There were no integrated pro basketball teams when my dad played for the Original Celtics. Those Celtics became the first white pro team to play an all-black team. The rivalry between the Celtics and the New York Rens became legendary, and both teams eventually were inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Just as no white team could beat the Celtics, no black team could beat the Rens. But they surely could play against each other in a topsy-turvy series in which victories would be exchanged through the years.