Elgin Baylor

Elgin Gay Baylor was born in Washington, D.C., during the Jim Crow era, where Black children were barred from city recreation centers and forced to play on dirt courts. Attending Seattle University, Baylor led the underdog Chieftains to the 1958 NCAA Championship game, earning Final Four Most Outstanding Player honors before being drafted number one overall by the Minneapolis Lakers in 1958.

Baylor single-handedly saved the struggling Lakers franchise from bankruptcy. Before Baylor, professional basketball was a terrestrial game played below the rim. Baylor introduced the modern aerial acrobatics of hanging in mid-air, double-clutching, and spinning the ball off the backboard at impossible angles. In his 1961–62 season, while serving on active duty in the US Army Reserves at Fort Lewis and only playing on weekend furloughs without practicing, Baylor averaged an astonishing 38.3 points and 18.6 rebounds per game.

In Game 5 of the 1962 NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics, Baylor scored an immortal 61 points and grabbed 22 rebounds at Boston Garden—a single-game scoring record in the NBA Finals that stands to this day. Over a 14-year career, he averaged 27.4 points and 13.5 rebounds per game, earning 11 All-Star selections. In 1959, Baylor took a principled stand by boycotting an NBA regular season game in Charleston, West Virginia, when his Black teammates were refused hotel rooms, advancing the civil rights struggle in professional sports.