Dante Cunningham noticed when he reported for work in Minnesota this fall that his new Timberwolves team is unlike any for which he has ever played.

"Day One, we were all in the elevator and I kind of looked up," he said about a crowded ride with many of his new teammates, "and I was just like, 'Where is everybody?' "

Everybody, in this case, being black teammates. Come opening night on Friday, Cunningham will be one of five black players on a 15-man Wolves team that has reversed the National Basketball Association's historical racial percentages with a roster that is the league's whitest since the Boston Celtics teams of the 1980s.

Raised in Washington, D.C., and educated at Villanova, Cunningham played his first four professional seasons for three different teams in a league where American-born black players constituted 78 percent of roster spots last season and have been at least 75 percent since 1991-92.

Twin Cities black leaders have noticed, suggesting the franchise strategically has rolled back the calendar by decades in a league that long has been at the forefront of diversity among America's professional sports leagues.

"How did we get a roster that resembles the 1955 Lakers?" asked Tyrone Terrell, chairman of St. Paul's African American leadership council. "I think everything is a strategy. Nothing happens by happenstance."

That strategy, Terrell and others in the black community believe, is to sell tickets to the Wolves' fan base, which is overwhelmingly white.

"Patently false,'' said David Kahn, Wolves president of basketball operations. He and other Timberwolves executives instead call it a coincidence of circumstance and a purposeful plan to scour the globe for the best players they can possibly obtain. They will start the season with players from Russia, Montenegro, Spain and Puerto Rico, a total of five international players among a group that also includes five white American-born players.

Included is injured All-Star Kevin Love, the game's greatest American-born white player -- a vanishing species in the league -- since John Stockton starred for Utah in the 1990s.

When everyone's healthy, the Wolves will start Love alongside Europeans Ricky Rubio, Andrei Kirilenko, Nikola Pekovic and American Brandon Roy, a three-time former All-Star who in attempting a retirement comeback on degenerative knees is their only black starter.

Roy said he never noticed the distinction until a friend mentioned it after he signed as a free agent with the Wolves in July.

"It's just basketball," Roy said. "I never really had to feel like I'm the only black guy out here. I've played on teams that maybe had all black guys and the feeling is just the same when I'm out there on the floor playing with these guys.

"The only problem we have is in the weight room, arguing over what music we're going to listen to."

A changing game

From a historical perspective, the NBA long has been the leader in America's professional sports in providing opportunity for blacks. It was the first to have a black head coach, a black general manager and the first to have blacks claim more than 80 percent of roster spots in a single season.

For many blacks, the NBA is identified as an important part of this country's civil rights movement.

In 1957, the league was 93 percent white. The number of black players rose throughout the 1960s, even though many believed there was an unspoken quota system among league owners that former Celtics great Bill Russell, the NBA's first black head coach, once described as "you're allowed to play two blacks at home, three on the road and five when you're behind."

The number of black players increased dramatically in the 1970s. By the early 1980s, the NBA's popularity sagged, and some blamed it on too many blacks playing before a fan base that was quite white.

In 1984, the league promoted to commissioner a lawyer named David Stern, who insisted teams remain color blind when building rosters. Later that season, the Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers played the first of consecutive NBA Finals in which race -- the Celtics had eight white players including superstar Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Danny Ainge on their 11-man roster, the Lakers with stars Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy were perceived as the black team -- was a prominent story line.

The league's television ratings and revenues soared.

In the present-day NBA, the number of American-born white players continues to diminish -- 85 were on rosters in 1990, 48 by 2005 and nine were regular starters a season ago -- while the sports blossoms globally and the number of international players rises.

Turning back the clock?