The NBA’s players once considered a boycott in the wake of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, but decided to go on with the Eastern Conference finals between Bill Russell’s Celtics and Wilt Chamberlain’s 76ers.
Later that summer, the biggest advocate for player rights, Oscar Robertson, organized a benefit game in King’s honor on an outdoor court in New York City.
Robertson’s sense of history from that time seems almost as vivid as today’s more recent memories. The black-and-white photos of King and monuments in cities across the country give the appearance of a man from a different century, but he was a very real figure to Robertson.