Transcending: The Wat Misaka Story is both enlightening and entertaining.
The 2011 film from Christine Toy and Bruce Alan Johnson documents the story of the first minority player in the NBA, Wat Misaka.
Pasadena News reports the filmmakers will be appearing at a free screening of the film at the South Pasadena Public Library Community Room at 7 p.m. Thursday.
“He was playing for an entire community that was behind barbed wire,” said the narrator referring to the incarceration of Japanese Americans just a few years before Misaka took his University of Utah Utes to win the 1947 NIT Championship. “New York sports crowds love a Cinderella story. They know the extra burden that keeps tearing away at an athlete whose racial strain happens to be different. The Utes have a word for it and his name is Misaka.”
Misaka became the number 1 draft pick of the New York Knicks that year, but only played in three games. He says some of his teammates went so far as to give him poor advice to make him look bad on the court.
You can check out a trailer of the film below.
