pWhen Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey decided to break the color line and integrate major league baseball in the 1940s, he spent years doing exhaustive background research and interviewing players. This role could not just go to an extraordinary athlete, but one of immense character as well br br Things went down with integration in the National Basketball Association a bit differently. The NBA had only formed in 1946, and was still sorting out franchises and struggling for recognition on April 25, 1950 when the basketball owners sat down for the annual player draft. When the second round began, Boston Celtics owner Walter Brown selected an African-American All-American guard out of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh named Chuck Cooper. p pbr A few weeks after the draft, the New York Knickerbockers made a deal to purchase the contract of Nathaniel Sweetwater Clifton from the Harlem Globetrotters he became the second African-American to sign an NBA contract on May 24. S