Wat Misaka

Who they were

Wataru Misaka was an American professional basketball player. A 5-foot-7-inch (1.70 m) point guard of Japanese descent, he broke a color barrier in professional basketball by being the first non-white player and the first player of Asian descent to play in the Basketball Association of America (BAA). The National Basketball Association (NBA), which was created in 1949 with the merger of the BAA and the NBL, later adopted the BAA's history and thus considers Misaka to be the first non-white player of the league.

Early life

Educated at: Ogden High School and Weber State University.

Early life Misaka was born a Nisei (second-generation Japanese-American) in Ogden, Utah , to Tatsuyo and Fusaichi Misaka. [ 1 ] He grew up poor with his two younger brothers. His family lived in the basement of his father's barber shop between a bar and a pawn shop in a bad area on 25th Street , which was also rife with prostitution. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] He recalled the neighborhood as being a "ghetto". [ 4 ] Despite all the hardship,

Path and career

Professional career Misaka was selected by the New York Knicks in the 1947 BAA draft . He debuted as the first non-Caucasian player in the BAA (later known as the NBA) in 1947, the same year that Jackie Robinson broke the baseball color line . [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The first African-American did not play in the NBA until 1950. [ 1 ] There were no press conferences or interviews to commemorate Misaka's first game. [ 3 ] "It wasn't a big thing," he said. "Nobody cared." [ 3 ]

Why this date

Wat Misaka appears on our November 20 calendar for 2019 as a death entry.