SOUTH PASADENA >> News flash: the first non-white NBA player wasn’t black, and Jeremy Lin wasn’t the first Asian-American to play professional basketball.
Both titles go to 5-foot-7 Wat Misaka, who was the New York Knicks’ first draft pick in 1947. The first black player in the NBA was drafted three years later.
Misaka’s journey from being a star basketball player for the University of Utah to helping the Utes win the 1947 NIT championship is documented in “Transcending: The Wat Misaka Story.”
“He was playing for an entire community that was behind barbed wire,” a speaker says in the documentary’s trailer before it cuts to a sports broadcaster saying, “New York sports crowds love a Cinderella story. They know the extra burden that keeps tearing away at an athlete whose racial strain happens to be different. The Utes have a word for it and his name is Misaka.”
Filmmakers Bruce Alan Johnson and Christine Toy Johnson’s documentary will be screened for free at the South Pasadena Public Library Community Room at 7 p.m. Thursday. Reservations for the award-winning film are not necessary. Refreshments will be provided.
The filmmakers have said they hope people who hear Misaka’s story will be “reminded that the human spirit is powerful and transcending.”
Misaka’s skill and talent were showcased at a time when racism against Japanese-Americans was at an all-time high in the post-World War II era.
Some 11,212 people of Japanese descent were less fortunate than the Misakas and were processed to be interned in Topaz, Utah. The internment camp was open from Sept. 11, 1942 to Oct. 31, 1945.
Misaka played only three NBA games and scored seven points before he was let go. The Harlem Globetrotters offered Misaka a job, but he declined and returned to Utah to become an engineer.
The filmmakers hint the Knicks’ general manager, Ned Irish, might have become less enamoured with Misaka because of racial taunts he heard along the road.
Although Misaka admits some teammates gave him faulty advice to make him look bad on the court, Misaka repeatedly has said his 5-foot-7 stature was the main catalyst for his release as the team’s point guard.
After the program, there will be a Q & A session with the filmmakers.
