Chris Acker, older brother of Detroit Pistons rookie Alex Acker, recently signed with the ABA's Pittsburgh Xplosion. Chris Acker played his college ball at Chaminade in Hawaii, and spent some time with the ABA's Detroit Wheels earlier this season. He made quite an impression in his Pittsburgh debut, exploding (or is it "xploding") for 27 points, eight assists, and six rebounds.

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Many people probably do not even recognize the name Earl Lloyd. But unlike the well-recognized Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Lloyd never became a household name.

But the Alexandria native is one of the key athletic figures in our time because of the social implications he had in the National Basketball Association and for the grace and class in which he accepted his role as a barrier breaker.

Lloyd attended school at Parker Gray in Alexandria and was the first African-American to break the color barrier in the NBA. He did so on Oct. 31, 1950. He spent nine years in the NBA and was a member of the NBA champion Syracuse Nationals team in the 1954-55 season. He concluded his playing career with the Detroit Pistons in 1960, and eventually became the Pistons' head coach — the second African-American to ever be named a head coach in the league.

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At 68, Adubato enjoys coaching and teaching -- he spent 18 seasons as a high school and college coach in New Jersey before getting his first NBA job -- and he likes the lifestyle of the WNBA. The league's short season allows him to spend most of the year at home in Orlando, Fla.

"I could have gone back [to the NBA as an assistant], but I wanted to watch my 15-year-old son play in high school," says Adubato, who got his first NBA coaching job as an assistant to Dick Vitale with the Detroit Pistons. "This gives me all the time in the world to do it. I still enjoy coaching. This is fun. It is a great challenge. It is four months. It is not 11 months. Thirty-four games plus the playoffs -- that's a piece of cake."