Don Haskins

Don Haskins coaching in the championship game. Credit: Wikipedia

Although Haskins wasn’t the first coach to recruit or play black players, the 1966 championship shattered racial fantasies and put him and Texas Western on the map for breaking basketball’s racial injustices. Haskins didn’t care about the color of his athletes' skin. He recruited based on how good they were. He barely acknowledged anything about the race of his team. 

While most white people believed that at least one white man was needed on the floor to lead a team, Haskins didn’t believe in this theory. Haskins thought that you just needed the team's best players to win. Haskins’ best players happened to be black. During the championship, David Lattin said the team realized that Haskins was going to play only Texas Western’s black players. 

“Right after the pre-game meal, like about 3 in the afternoon, he called all the Southern African-American players who were going to play in that game into my room and said, ‘Adolph Rupp said at a press conference that five African-Americans couldn’t beat his five white boys,” Lattin recalled. “Then he said, ‘Well, it’s up to you.’ Then he walked out of the room. He didn’t say anything else about it.” Don Haskins seldomly mentioned anything about the race of his team. He recruited players for their skill, not the color of their skin.