Editor’s note: This story on CIAA legend Earl Lloyd, who died Thursday at age 86, was originally published on March 2, 2007.
FAIRFIELD, Tennessee – Earl Lloyd can’t come up with the number of CIAA basketball tournaments he has attended. There are too many for him to keep track of.
Instead, he remembers the cities.
“Richmond, Norfolk, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Raleigh, “ Lloyd says. “Now Charlotte.”
Lloyd is perhaps best known as the first African American to play in an NBA game. But this week he is content to be one of the thousands of CIAA fans in town for the tournament at Bobcats Arena.
But he is also one of the scores of former players who faithfully make the annual trip to the event, to reconnect with old teammates, foes and coaches in hotel lobbies and restaurants. They walk together to the games in a glistening uptown arena that’s nothing like what they played in almost 60 years ago.
Lloyd, 78, now lives comfortably with his wife Charlie in a sun-drenched home in a resort called Fairfield Glade, a retirement community that sits atop Tennessee’s Cumberland Gap.
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