Some basketball lives play out like a fast break, streaking up court, cutting to the basket, slamming that rock through the rim. Think Larry Bird, who played his first game in the National Basketball Association in 1979 and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1998, a span of just 19 years.
Other basketball lives never seem to achieve any pace, walking the ball up, struggling at the time line, pushing indecisively to the wings, almost turning the ball over, getting it under control again, a possession that feels like it will never get to the rim, that feels like forever.
“It’s going on 70 years,” Chuck Cooper III was telling me in the lobby of the Omni William Penn hotel the other day. “Next year, it’ll be 70 years since he played his first (NBA) game.”
But now that wait is down to five days. This Friday in Springfield, Mass., the Hall of Fame will finally welcome Cooper’s father, the first African American player drafted into the NBA, and the first African American to attain leadership positions in any number of critical civic positions in 20th century Pittsburgh.
It did not require a full century to get Charles Henry Cooper of Westinghouse High and Duquesne University into the basketball Hall of Fame; but it surely must have felt like one. It can get pretty discouraging when you’ve got one million things to do and you’re trying to capstone a legacy.
“No, actually it motivated me,” said Cooper, who’s been directing the Chuck Cooper Foundation since its founding in 2011. “I’ve always done things in his name to continue his legacy. Back in the 1990s when Pittsburgh had a really serious gang problem, I started the Chuck Cooper Youth Development Association to get kids off the streets. We used basketball as a hook, but they had to commit to doing their homework and to mentorship. I would get progress reports and I would actually go to schools to make sure that were doing what they needed to do to be successful.
“Just from a community standpoint, my father was somebody who worked tremendously hard for people of all races in the community, particularly African Americans. What he really believed in was the importance of education, community service, and leadership, and he really did that by example.”
And his son could tell this was the kind of leadership that does not shrink from challenge or discouragement. With the help of Tom Rooney, the veteran sports management executive, Cooper’s long been driving his father toward Springfield indefatigably.
“There were three obstacles,” Rooney said this week. “Chuck died young (57) and was never really celebrated for his breakthrough for African Americans. There was no NBA team in Pittsburgh, so there was no platform for him, no alumni events or old-timers appearances, and then there was the confusion with people telling us that he was already in the Hall of Fame.”
That was because Charles “Tarzan” Cooper, a Philadelphia high school legend who went onto to play 20 years of pro basketball, most notably with the all-black New York Renaissance (the Rens), was indeed the first African American inducted individually, in 1977.
“In fact,” said Rooney, “until it was corrected, the display for Tarzan at the Hall when we visited had Duquesne University as his college, until we pointed it out!”
Tarzan may never have gotten near Duquesne University, but in Chuck Cooper’s tenure there (1946-50), the Dukes won 78 of his 97 games and were twice invited the National Invitation Tournament, then the top showcase for college basketball. In fact, the other component of this whole mission will be solidified soon enough, with the dedication of the UPMC Cooper Field House, the home of the Dukes beginning in the 2020-2021 basketball season.
“Oh my goodness, another tremendous honor,” Cooper said. “My father had a great bond with Duquesne and I think it was established in 1946 when the University of Tennessee came here to play Duquesne. They didn’t want to play against an African American. So the Duquesne team took a team vote, and it came back unanimous. They said if Chuck Cooper can’t play, we won’t play, and they sent Tennessee home with a forfeit loss. So he had a really deep bond with the university, and to see Duquesne recognize him with a premier athletic center after all these years is tremendous.”
Cooper’s writing a book about all this, with a working title of The Chuck Cooper Story: Breaking Barriers. There is no shortage of either compelling narrative or fascinating characters. He’ll include his uncle, Cornell, who his father said was the family’s best athlete. Cornell had competed in track against Jesse Owens and went on to an entertainment career. It will further have to include a terrible night in the mid-‘70s when Chuck Cooper was shot at Three Rivers Stadium during a Steelers preseason game. The shots came from outside the stadium and the shooter was never found, but the basketball legend remembered that he had just leaned back in his upper deck seat when the bullet hit him in the leg. Had he not leaned back, he’d likely have been struck in the head.
“Rocked my world, I was 12,” said Chuck III. “I get emotional just thinking about it. I know he was looking for me to go to that game, but I was out running the neighborhood somewhere.
“One of things I always recall is how many people would come up to him, all the time. He loved people. He took as much time as necessary with all of them. After he passed away, I would say hundreds of people told me stories. ‘Your dad did this for me, helped somebody in my family out, found somebody a job.’ He truly loved the city of Pittsburgh.”
Friday night, Chuck III will be on stage in Massachusetts, and he’s still getting his head around it.
“They ask you for presenters,” he said. “We tried to think of guys he had a lot of respect for. Our contingency includes Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Julius Erving, Ray Allen, Larry Bird. We’re tremendously honored.”
All of those NBA greats know what a singular contribution Chuck Cooper made to their game. They know as well that his embrace by the Hall is long overdue.
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com and Twitter @genecollier.
First Published: September 1, 2019, 12:00 p.m.