Elgin Gay Baylor ( ; September 16, 1934 – March 22, 2021) was an American professional basketball player, coach, and executive. He played 14 seasons as a forward in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Minneapolis/Los Angeles Lakers. Baylor was a gifted shooter, a strong rebounder, and an accomplished passer, who was best known for his trademark hanging jump shot. The No. 1 draft pick in 1958, NBA Rookie of the Year in 1959, 11-time NBA All-Star, and a 10-time member of the All-NBA first team, Baylor is regarded as one of the game's all-time greatest players. In 1977, Baylor was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 1996, Baylor was named as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. In October 2021, Baylor was again honored as one of the league's greatest players of all time by being named to the NBA's 75th Anniversary Team.
Baylor spent 22 years as general manager of the Los Angeles Clippers, having managed the team for the majority of the Donald Sterling ownership period. He won the NBA Executive of the Year Award in 2006. Two years later, the Clippers relieved him of his executive duties shortly before the 2008–09 season began.
His popularity led to appearances on the television series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in 1968; the Jackson 5's first TV special in 1971; a Buck Rogers in the 25th Century episode "Olympiad"; and an episode of The White Shadow titled "If Your Number's Up, Get Down".
Early life
Elgin "Rabbit" Baylor was born in Washington, D.C., on September 16, 1934, the son of Uzziel (Lewis) and John Wesley Baylor. He began playing basketball when he was 14. Although he grew up near a D.C. city recreation center, African Americans were banned from using the facilities, and Baylor had limited access to basketball courts growing up. He had two basketball-playing brothers, Sal and Kermit. After stints at Southwest Boys Club and Brown Jr. High, Baylor was a three-time All-City player in high school.
Baylor played his first two years of high school basketball at Phelps Vocational High School in the 1951 and 1952 seasons. At the time, public schools in Washington, D.C., were segregated, so he only played against other black high school teams. There, Baylor set his first area scoring record of 44 points, versus Cardozo H.S. During his two All-City years at Phelps, he averaged 18.5 and 27.6 points per season. He did not perform well academically and dropped out of school (1952–53) to work in a furniture store and play basketball in the local recreational leagues.
Baylor reappeared for the 1954 season as a senior playing for the recently opened all-black Spingarn High School. The , senior was named first-team Washington All-Metropolitan, and was the first African-American player named to that team. Baylor also won the SSA's Livingstone Trophy as the area's best basketball player for 1954. He finished with a 36.1 average for his eight Interhigh Division II league games.
On February 3, 1954, in a game against his old Phelps team, Baylor scored 31 in the first half. Playing with four fouls the entire second half, Baylor scored 32 more points to establish a new DC-area record with 63 points. This broke the point record of 52 that Western's Jim Wexler had set the year before when he broke Baylor's previous record of 44. However, because Wexler was white and Baylor was black, Baylor's record did not receive the same press coverage from the media, including the Washington Post, as Wexler's.
College career
Despite his success as a high school basketball player, no major college recruited Baylor because at the time, college scouts did not recruit at black high schools. While some colleges were willing to accept Baylor, he did not qualify academically. A friend of Baylor's who attended the College of Idaho helped arrange a football scholarship for Baylor for the 1954-55 academic year. Baylor never played football for the school, however; instead, he was accepted to the college's basketball team without having to try out. He outperformed the other players on the team that season, averaging over 31 points and 20 rebounds per game.
After the season, the College of Idaho dismissed its head basketball coach and restricted the scholarships. A Seattle car dealer interested Baylor in Seattle University, and Baylor sat out a year to play for Westside Ford, an Amateur Athletic Union team in Seattle, while establishing eligibility at Seattle. The Minneapolis Lakers drafted him in the 14th round of the 1956 NBA draft, but Baylor opted to stay in school instead.