NBA: Oscar Robertson: The superstar no one wanted

Oscar Robertson is one of the greatest legends in NBA history. His triple double season is unforgettable to this day. The conditions for his career were very poor: All his life he fought against racism and his critical perception in public. But he should have changed the league decisively. Today, Robertson turns 79.

“Oscar Robertson is the best basketball player I’ve ever played,” John Havlicek takes a short break. The Big O is considered to be the most complete player of his generation. NBA experts compare him to the greatest legends of all time:”He was the Michael Jordan of his time,”explains Red Auerbach, a nine-time master trainer with the Boston Celtics.”In many ways.”

In fact, Oscar Robertson and superstars such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird are now in the NBA’s Hall of Fame. But Robertson’s career was different from that of the later NBA luminaries:”Being the world’s greatest basketball player didn’t mean anything to Oscar,”says his long-time team mate Wayne Embry,”but he wasn’t allowed to eat in a restaurant. Nevertheless, he had to sit in the last cinema row if he wanted to watch a film. He still had to take a seat on the bus in the area assigned to him.”

Robertson’s star in the basketball sky is highest when no one really wants to see him there. At the beginning of the 1960s, racism still dominates the image of society in the USA. It is the beginning of protest movements by the African American population and Martin Luther King’s work in the United States, but coloured people continue to be seen as second-class people. Nobody wants to cheer them.

“The media, the advertising industry, the audience, they all wanted white people as heroes. But unfortunately, Oscar was simply an outstanding player,”explains George Vecsey of the New York Times. Robertson’s dominance and inexorability doesn’t even want to fit into the image of the lower race created over centuries. Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain have already been chosen as MVPs in the NBA, but Robertson’s position and style of play are a thorn in the side’s side.

“The assumption was that blacks aren’t smart. They are stupid,”explains Robertson,”It was said that they could not dribble, could not control the ball in the backcourt. For the Point Guard, this public perception is nothing new. He was born in Tennessee, but his family moved later, so he went to high school in Indianapolis. Even as a child, he became acquainted with two types of racism: southern and northern.

Robertson’s mother exercises three jobs at the same time to feed her three sons. When little Oscar asks for a basketball for his birthday, the family’s money is not enough. Until he can play on the school team, Robertson trains his distance throw by throwing rags tied together with cord into a basket in front of the house.

The training seems to pay off: In 1955, Crispus Attucks won the championship with his high school Crispus Attucks – as the first purely black school in Indiana’s history. The following year, the team repeats this feat and does not lose a single game throughout the season. Also a premiere in Indiana. Nevertheless, Robertson and his team-mates in Indianapolis are not celebrated idols. We were told that the blacks would otherwise be rioting in the city centre,”says Robertson.

Robertson ignores the fact that he is insulted in games against other schools by fans and opponents:”I didn’t care,”he says,”it just made me play harder.” The 18-year-old at the time is not shy or frightened. Observers describe him as too proud to be provoked by his opponents.

When he was named reigning “Indiana Mr. Basketball” went to Indiana College in 1957 to fulfill a life’s dream and run up for the Hoosiers, but Robertson also reached a limit. At the meeting on campus, the Hoosiers coach disrespectfully confronts him, even insulting Robertson:”I would never have gone there,” recalls The Big O.”For Nothing in the World.

Robertson chooses the college of Cincinnati instead and dominates most opponents there. In three years, he was voted College Player of the Year three times, is best scorer three times and entered the Final Four twice. However, he is deprived of the great leap, as well as the respect of white society.

Often he has to stay overnight separately from the crew, as the hotels do not allow him access. When he faces Wake Forest with his Bearcats in North Carolina, he receives a letter from the Ku Klux clan threatening to shoot him as soon as he crosses the border.

“I was a young man, played basketball in a purely black school, came to university as the first black man in history and was threatened by the clan. I’ve been told over and over again that I shouldn’t do certain things. It’s a miracle that I didn’t kill anyone,”says Robertson. The Guard retains control as best he can. But it rumbles inside him.

Page 1: Childhood full of poverty, racism and harassment

Page 2: The Triple-Double-Season, late successes and the fight for a career