Today, the NBA is 76% Black, 3% Latino, and 1% Asian. It’s not exactly diverse, but numbers like those make it easy to forget that at one point in history professional basketball was 100% White. Anyone who cares anything about sports in this country, and plenty of people who don’t, know the name Jackie Robinson, the man who broke baseball’s color barrier when he was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Of course basketball, too, had its own Jackie Robinson, a man who paved the way for the 80% of minority players in the NBA today. Though his may not be a household name, his story is every bit as fascinating. If you haven’t heard of him before, now’s the time to learn about basketball’s Jackie Robinson, Mr. Wataru “Wat” Misaka.
 
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