Asian Men Can Jump

The NBA’s First APA Player Remembers

By Sam Cacas, AAV Contributing Editor

He may not exactly be "like Mike," but the Japanese-American hoopster who played his way through World War II to become the NBA’s first-ever Asian-Pacific-American is still a star figure in APA sports history

February 8, 1999 - A little more than 52 years have passed since Wataru (Wat) Misaka stepped on a basketball court and became the first Asian Pacific American to play in the National Basketball Association. But to this 76-year-old native of Ogden, Utah, his shot at professional basketball "doesn’t seem like a long time ago."

Recalling his NBA and college basketball career from his home in Bountiful, Utah, Misaka emphasized that he "always felt athletically talented." In high school, he was a four-letter man--in football, baseball, basketball and track. At the University of Utah, he led the Utes to a National Collegiate Athletic Association championship in 1944 and a 1947 National Invitation Tournament. At the time, the NIT championship was a more highly coveted and acclaimed accomplishment in college basketball than the NCAA championship.

The Nisei’s forte was defense. "Though I was not much of a scorer, I defensed whoever I was guarding so they couldn’t dribble around me and I was also good at denying a pass to the person I was guarding," he said, vividly recalling a 1947 game against Kentucky in which he was assigned what had become a familiar task: guarding the opposing team’s highest-scoring player.

In typical "Wat" fashion, he completely shut down that Kentucky player, who was averaging 20 points per game at the time. Or almost completely.

"He scored one point on a free throw off a foul that I didn’t commit," Misaka admitted.

The nation’s first APA pro hoopster recalls that before the Second World War, the students, fans, and players generally treated him well. Since he lived outside of the western military exclusion zone, he avoided evacuation into a concentration camp, but he recalls visiting a friend at the Topaz, Arizona camp. Although he kept playing through the war, he remembers playing a college game in which some fans screamed, "Get the dirty Jap!"

Such experiences were not uncommon in his day-to-day life growing up in Ogden, Utah, especially after World War II started. "People would say, ‘You better get out of the way’ when I walked near them on the sidewalk, and many of them would try to pick fights with me."

Misaka felt it was "quite a compliment to be the number one pick of the Knicks in 1946 attributing the honor as well as his making the team to his collegiate reputation. But at the time it happened, he did not think much of it. "In those days, many players continued to stay in school to get more education and earn more money than they would playing pro basketball." In the three games Misaka played, he recalled playing about 10 minutes each game, and getting several steals.

"I was pretty much aware that I was the first Asian Pacific American to play in the league," he explained. "But my teammates were very cordial with me and thus I didn't dwell much on being a minority person." Misaka pointed out, however, that his NBA career was much too brief for him to make any judgment about his experience.

And 42 years after playing three games for the New York Knicks under the legendary coach Joe Lapchick, Misaka says it would be mere speculation to say he was cut because he was Japanese American. In retrospect, he say "I’m more upset now about being cut than I was when it happened, because looking back and seeing the players who didn’t get cut, I believe it was unfair for them to cut me."

He added that it was rare for a college player – especially a number one pick like himself – to be cut from a team. In those days, playing college basketball was the high point of any organized basketball player's career since the professional basketball leagues were not yet firmly established, explained Misaka. "It came as a complete surprise to me," he said. "While I have no evidence of any racial animosity on the part of the coach, I was given no explanation for being cut by the team owner – Ned Irish – who only told me that the coach made the decision."

Misaka later turned down an offer from basketball mogul Abe Saperstein to play for the Harlem Globetrotters in order to return to school, where he later earned an engineering degree. He went on to work for the Sperry company in Utah for more than 20 years before retiring and working as a contract manufacturer in Bountiful.

Very few APAs have tried to follow in Misaka’s NBA journey. According to league records, a Chinese national player made the Los Angeles Clippers in 1994, but chose to play on his country’s Olympic team before the regular season started and has never returned; a few mixed-race APAs played briefly during the last 20 years. But 52 years after leading the way for future Asian Pacific Americans, Misaka is "very hopeful that there will soon be another person of Asian descent playing in the NBA."