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Earl Lloyd, the National Basketball Association’s first Black player, has died. Lloyd was 86. Along with three other Black players, Lloyd integrated the formerly all-white league and helped usher in a new age of diversity in professional sports.

Lloyd, born April 3, 1928 in Alexandria, Va., first starred at West Virginia State University.

Although Lloyd made the historic debut, Chuck Cooper was the first Black player drafted by the Boston Celtics, and Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton was the first of the group to sign a NBA contract. Hank Dezonie, a less heralded player, played professional basketball for one season, citing racism as one of the reasons he stopped.

In 1950, Lloyd played for the Washington Capitols for one season before serving a one-year stint in the Army. He then joined the now-defunct Syracuse Nationals and played with this team for six years. In 1955, Lloyd and his Nationals teammate Jim Tucker became the first Black players to win a NBA championship.

In 1958, Lloyd moved to the Detroit Pistons but his time there proved to be the downturn of his career. After just two seasons, Lloyd ended his career in 1960 but continued on as a scout for the Pistons. In 1968, the team made him the NBA’s first Black assistant coach. In 1971, became the team’s head coach, only the second Black person to do so. Lloyd scouted for the Pistons for five seasons after his coaching stint ended in 1973.

In 2003, Lloyd was inducted into the Basketball Hall Of Fame for his pioneering ways. Nicknamed “The Big Cat,” Lloyd stood 6-foot-5 and played the position of small forward.

In 2009, Lloyd released his biography, Moonfixer: The Basketball Journey of Earl Lloyd written with Syracuse writer Sean Kirst.

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