'Burgh's Best to Wear It, No. 15: Chuck Cooper helped break NBA's racial barrier
The Tribune-Review sports staff is conducting a daily countdown of the best players in Pittsburgh pro and college sports history to wear each jersey number.
No. 15: Chuck Cooper
Eye-popping statistics weren’t the reason Chuck Cooper finally earned his place in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.
In six seasons played with three NBA franchises more than a half century ago, the Westinghouse graduate and Duquesne University product averaged 6.7 points, 5.9 rebounds and 1.8 assists.
It was the trailblazing nature Cooper displayed in helping break the NBA’s color barrier that landed the 6-foot-5 forward a display at the museum in Springfield, Mass.
Cooper was the first Black player to be drafted by an NBA team and was one of the league’s first three African-American players in 1950. It’s that distinction, plus his standout career at Duquesne, that warranted Cooper a spot as the best athlete in Pittsburgh sports history to wear No. 15 in a vote by the Tribune-Review sports staff.
After leaving Westinghouse in 1944, Cooper spent a semester at West Virginia State before being called into military service near the end of World War II. When he returned to Pittsburgh, Cooper decided to stay home and attend Duquesne.
Cooper faced racial injustic almost immediately. In December 1946, Duquesne was scheduled to play a home game against Tennessee. With 2,600 fans awaiting tipoff, Tennessee was sent home because its players didn’t want to play against an African-American player.
Duquesne’s players took a team vote, which was “unanimous,” Cooper’s son, Chuck III, told the Tribune-Review last year. “I really believe that’s when the bond with my dad and Duquesne University initially forged,” Chuck Cooper III said.
Cooper led the Dukes to a 78-19 record and two appearances in the NIT, which was the superior postseason basketball tournament of that era. The 1950 team, with Cooper as team captain and leading scorer, finished 23-6 with a No. 6 ranking and advanced to the NIT semifinals.
The Harlem Globetrotters signed Cooper, but allowed him out of his contract so he could pursue a career in the NBA. Already the first African-American to play a college game south of the Mason-Dixon Line, Cooper made history again when the Boston Celtics took him with the No. 14 overall selection in the 1950 draft.
Cooper, Nat “Sweetwater Clifton” and Earl Lloyd were the first three African-American players to suit up in the NBA that season.
Cooper spent four seasons with the Celtics, then had stints with the Milwaukee/St. Louis Hawks and Fort Wayne Pistons before his NBA career ended in 1956.
Cooper died in 1984 at age 57 and was honored posthumously in 2001 when Duquesne retired his No. 15 jersey. The university also is renovating the A.J. Palumbo Center and has renamed the complex UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse.
Others to wear No. 15 for Pittsburgh sports teams include:
• Brashear’s Sam Clancy is the only player in Pitt basketball history with 1,000 career points and rebounds. He left school in 1981 as the school’s fourth-leading scorer with 1,671 points (he is now No. 11), and his 1,342 rebounds remain the most in program history.
After playing a year in the Continental Basketball Association, Clancy turned his attention to football. Intrigued by Clancy’s 6-7, 288-pound frame, Seattle selected him with an 11th-round pick in 1982. Clancy spent 10 seasons with the Seahawks, Cleveland Browns and Indianapolis Colts as a defensive end, and he totaled 30 sacks in 152 career games. He was inducted into the Pitt Athletic Hall of Fame in 2019.
• Johnny “Blood” McNally enjoyed two stints with the Steelers, then known as the Pirates, in the franchise’s infancy. On the second occasion, he was hired by Art Rooney Sr. in 1937 as a player-coach. McNally resigned in the midst of his third season with a 7-25-1 record.
McNally famously attended a game at the Rose Bowl in 1938 while thinking the Pirates had an off week. His team was playing on the other side of the country, but McNally did not lose his job for missing the game.
“I was going to fire him,” Rooney reportedly said. “But the players loved him.”
McNally was a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s inaugural class of 1963, and the Steelers selected him to their inaugural Hall of Honor class in 2017.
• Doug Drabek became only the second — and last — Pirates pitcher to win the National League Cy Young Award when he went 22-6 with a 2.76 ERA in 1990. Drabek was the workhorse of the team’s three consecutive division championship teams, winning 15 games apiece in the 1991-92 seasons.
Drabek had a 92-62 record, 3.02 ERA, 36 complete games and 16 shutouts in six seasons with the Pirates.
• Frank Thomas became the Pirates’ top slugger after Ralph Kiner was traded midway through the 1953 season. Thomas hit 30 homers and drove in 102 runs in 1953, and had at least 23 home runs for six consecutive seasons. In 1958, his final year with the team, Thomas had 35 homers with 109 RBIs. Thomas totaled 163 homers in eight seasons with the Pirates and finished with 286 in 16 years.
• Randy Cunneyworth totaled 101 goals and 216 points in four seasons with the Penguins, beginning in 1985. Cunneyworth scored at least 25 goals three years in a row, including a career-high 35 (and 74 points) in 1987-88.
Check out the entire ’Burgh’s Best to Wear It series here.
Joe Rutter is a TribLive reporter who has covered the Pittsburgh Steelers since the 2016 season. A graduate of Greensburg Salem High School and Point Park, he is in his fifth decade covering sports for the Trib. He can be reached at jrutter@triblive.com.
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