John McLendon was a major contributor to the development of modern basketball and coached on both the college and professional levels during his career.
18 Facts About John McLendon
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John McLendon has been enshrined three times in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.
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John McLendon's mother died in the 1918 flu pandemic which would lead to the temporary break-up of his family.
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John McLendon became enamored with the sport of basketball while on a field trip from Dunbar Elementary to the new Northeast Junior High School in Kansas City, Kansas, where he saw his first official basketball court.
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John McLendon soon became an all-around athlete at Sumner High School and chose basketball as his favorite sport, although he failed to make the basketball team at Sumner.
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However, McLendon was not permitted to actually play college basketball, as the KU varsity team was segregated and would not suit up its first black player until 1951.
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John McLendon graduated with a master's degree in physical education from the University of Iowa in 1937.
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However, while coaching at North Carolina College for Negroes, John McLendon participated in "The Secret Game", a match against a team from Duke University, which was the first collegiate basketball contest where blacks and whites competed on the same floor.
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John McLendon led the Eagles to eight CIAA Championships.
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John McLendon's teams were credited with increasing the pace of the game of basketball from the slow tempo of its early years to the faster tempo that prevails today.
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John McLendon was a three-time winner of the NAIA Coach of the Year award and won three consecutive NAIA championships at Tennessee State, making him the first college basketball coach ever to have won three consecutive national titles.
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John McLendon's hiring made history, as he became the first African American head coach in professional sports.
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John McLendon was replaced as coach by Bill Sharman of the recently defunct Los Angeles Jets of the ABL; under Sharman, the team completed the season and won the league championship.
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John McLendon was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1979 as a contributor.
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John McLendon was selected in 2007 for the second entering class of the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame for his coaching achievements.
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John McLendon was inducted into the Cleveland State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2007, where his wife Joanna accepted the award on his behalf.
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John McLendon's coaching legacy is chronicled in the documentary Black Magic, which originally aired as a two-part series on ESPN in March 2008.
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John McLendon was the 2021 recipient of the NCAA Theodore Roosevelt Award.