Bob Lutz: Richard Lapchick’s fight for diversity had an early spark

Richard Lapchick’s work in human rights and race in sports was triggered unknowingly, when he was a five-year-old and unwittingly and innocently witnessed the brutal treatment of his father, New York Knicks coach Joe Lapchick.

“I saw this man who for me was my best friend and he was not liked,” said Richard Lapchick, who will speak about “Diversity in Sports” on Tuesday night at 7 at the Dugan Library and Campus Center at Newman. “And strongly not liked by a lot of people.”

Why?

Because Joe Lapchick drafted and signed Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton in 1950. Clifton became the first black player to sign an NBA contract and the second to play in an NBA game.

A young Richard saw the outrage initiated by his father’s courage when he noticed an image of his dad swinging from a tree across the street from his house where people were picketing against the inclusion of a black player on what previously had been an all-white team.

And to this day, 65 years later, it’s an image Lapchick still sees. And battles.

He has fought apartheid in South Africa, worked for the United Nations, founded the Center for the Study of Sport in Society and established the National Consortium for Academics and Sports.

He pushes for colleges and professional sports franchises to hire minorities into positions of power.

He has written 17 books, more than 500 articles and given more than 2,800 speeches across the world. He’s spoken to the United States Congress, United Nations and in the European Parliament.

And it all goes back to Sweetwater Clifton, who played seven seven NBA seasons after signing as a 27-year-old following two years in the Army fighting in World War II.

“I was really too young to understand it at the time,” Lapchick said. “But later on I was able to put everything into perspective and realize that my father must have been doing something really important.”

Lapchick has been fighting for diversity since. And although he might not have known it at the time, he developed a bond with Clifton, a Chicago native who played college basketball at Xavier of Louisiana in New Orleans.

Lapchick is on a special committee for the Basketball Hall of Fame that each season selects one player from the era before the NBA was integrated to be inducted. In 2014, that player was Clifton, who died in 1990 at the age of 67 after averaging 10 points and 8.2 rebounds during his pro career.

“I was thrilled and honored to be a part of that,” Lapchick said.

After Clifton’s basketball and baseball career ended — he was a first baseman for the 1949 Chicago American Giants in the Negro League — he returned to Chicago and, Lapchick said, became a taxi driver.

Lapchick, who spoke on human trafficking Monday in Boston, made at least two trips to Chicago every year, he said, and always hoped Clifton would pick him up. But what was the chance?

A year or so before Clifton died, though, Lapchick got into the back seat of a taxi and recognized the driver. It was Sweetwater. The chance, it turned out, was good.

“It was the first time I had seen him since 1958,” Lapchick said. “That cab ride probably should have lasted no more than 30 minutes but we were probably together for over an hour.”

There was a lot to talk about.

Lapchick’s father, who struggled to contain his anxiety when coaching, coached in the NBA for nine seasons and bookended those years with 11 and nine seasons at St. John’s, winning four NIT championships.

He died in 1970, about the time his son was starting to wage a fight against apartheid, a fight that eventually led to a meeting with South African president Nelson Mandela in 1994.

Lapchick has been keeping close tabs on the situation at the University of Missouri, where Missouri university system president Tim Wolfe resigned Monday amid criticism of the school’s handling of student complaints about race and discrimination.

He said he was disappointed by a study just released that shows no progress in the hiring of minorities and females for leadership positions inside athletic departments at American universities.

“We’re more white and more male than at any time since we’ve been doing this study for the past 11 or 12 years,” Lapchick said.

His work is never finished and sometimes progress can be difficult to quantify.

“I think part of what happened at Missouri is that the president and leadership there thought things were good,” Lapchick said. “And they didn’t really listen very closely when voices on campus told them to start considering some changes.”

Change has been Lapchick pursuit for many years. And his mission continues, thanks to the injustices seen through the eyes of a 5-year-old.

This story was originally published November 9, 2015 at 8:55 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Richard Lapchick’s fight for diversity had an early spark."