Elgin Baylor Holds Back Tears During Statue Ceremony
Eight occasions, former Lakers shooting guard Michael Cooper was chosen either first- or second-team all-protection. Cooper feels for anybody who was ever assigned to guard Baylor. Elgin Baylor was decided to not cry during a ceremony Friday night time to unveil his statue outdoors Staples Center, and the previous Los Angeles Lakers great once more delivered as he did regularly all through his stellar 14-year profession. As for every thing else Baylor hoped to accomplish – clearly articulating his gratitude for the honour, remembering to thank those closest to him, allowing himself to benefit from the moment – the Basketball Hall of Famer nailed all of that as nicely.
On February 3, 1954, in a sport towards his old Phelps group, he scored 31 within the first half. Playing with 4 fouls the whole second half, Baylor scored 32 more points to establish a brand new DC-area document with 63 points. This broke the point document of 52 that Western’s Jim Wexler had set the yr earlier than when he broke Baylor’s earlier document of forty four. However, as a result of Wexler was white and Baylor was black, Baylor’s document did not obtain the identical press protection from the media, including the Washington Post, as Wexler’s. One pioneer and NBA legend that seems somewhat unappreciated and MIA in lots of conversations concerning the biggest Lakers and small forwards ever is Elgin Baylor.
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Baylor reappeared for the 1954 season as a senior playing for the lately opened all-black Spingarn High School. The 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m), 190 lb senior was named first-team Washington All-Metropolitan, and was the primary African-American player named to that team. He additionally won gained the SSA’s Livingstone Trophy as the realm’s finest basketball player for 1954. He completed with a 36.1 average for his eight Interhigh Division II league games. 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 colleges in Washington, D.C., were segregated, so he only performed against different black high school groups.
Then Baylor went about saving the financially troubled Lakers franchise. The staff was situated in Minneapolis then, but after dominating the NBA within the early ’50s, it fell on exhausting instances. In it completed 19-53, by far the worst report within the league. The Lakers made Baylor, who nonetheless had a yr of school eligibility left, the primary choose within the draft and signed him for $20,000, massive bucks in those days.
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Lakers greats pose after the disclosing of a statue of Minneapolis and Los Angeles Lakers player Elgin Baylor, second from left, exterior Staples Center in Los Angeles Friday, April 6, 2018. From left are Jerry West, Baylor, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, musician Bill Withers, and Shaquille O’Neal. ‘Marvelous’ Marvin Hagler, the middleweight boxing nice whose title reign and career ended with a loss to ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard in 1987, died Saturday at 66.