The Story Of Wat Misaka

In the 1947 draft, the New York Knicks selected Wat Misaka from the University Of Utah, making him the first ethnic minority to play in the NBA.¹

The Big Apple was nothing new to Misaka, who had won the NCAA championship game played at Madison Square Garden with Utah in 1944. After that game, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served a two-year tour in Japan interviewing Japanese civilians about the effects of the U.S. bombings.

He returned to Utah in 1947 and helped the team win the National Invitation Tournament.

The 5-7 point guard played in just three games in the NBA before the Knicks cut him. For Misaka, it wasn’t a matter of race or color: “I felt about the same with our team as I had all the other teams I played with. I never know that I’m different. I only see what I see, and everybody else I see looks alike.”

But he also felt his teammates would try at times to set him up for failure: “There were a couple of New Yorkers on the team. They were a lot smarter than I gave them credit for, as far as looking for their own spots on the team. They gave me information on how to guard certain people that made me look bad.”

After his stint with the Knicks, Misaka turned down an invitation from the Harlem Globe Trotters and moved back to Utah, where he finished his mechanical engineering degree.

Today, he is 88 years old, and wakes up every day at 5:30 a.m. to work as an electrical engineer in Utah.

When asked about the key to his longevity, he simply answered: “Clean living and green tea.”