Great Athletes BASKETBALL doc

Publisher’s NoteGreat Athletes: Basketball is part of Salem Press’s greatly expanded and redesigned Great Athletes se-ries, which also includes self-contained volumes on baseball, boxin

BASKETBALL

Editor in Chief: Dawn P Dawson Editorial Director: Christina J Moose

Managing Editor: R Kent Rasmussen

Manuscript Editor: Christopher Rager

Research Supervisor: Jeffry Jensen Production Editor: Andrea Miller

Photo Editor: Cynthia Breslin Beres Acquisitions Editor: Mark Rehn Page Design and Layout: James Hutson Additional Layout: Frank Montaño and Mary Overell Editorial Assistant: Brett Weisberg

Cover photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters/Landov

Copyright © 1992, 1994, 2002, 2010, by Salem PressAll rights in this book are reserved No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner what-soever or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, record-ing, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright ownerexcept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews or in the copying of imagesdeemed to be freely licensed or in the public domain For information, address the publisher, Salem Press,P.O Box 50062, Pasadena, California 91115

∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National Standard for Permanence of per for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-1992 (R1997)

Pa-Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Great athletes / edited by The Editors of Salem Press ; special consultant Rafer Johnson

p cm

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN 978-1-58765-473-2 (set : alk paper) — ISBN 978-1-58765-488-6 (basketball : alk paper)

1 Athletes—Biography—Dictionaries I Johnson, Rafer, 1935- II Salem Press

Publisher’s Note vii

Introduction xi

Contributors xvii

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 1

Ray Allen 5

Carmelo Anthony 8

Nate Archibald 11

Paul Arizin 14

Charles Barkley 17

Rick Barry 20

Elgin Baylor 23

Sergei Belov 26

Mike Bibby 28

Dave Bing 31

Larry Bird 34

Carol Blazejowski 37

Bill Bradley 39

Elton Brand 42

Kobe Bryant 45

Vince Carter 49

Sam Cassell 52

Tamika Catchings 54

Wilt Chamberlain 57

Cynthia Cooper 60

Michael Cooper 63

Krešimir^osi6 66

Bob Cousy 68

Dave Cowens 71

Billy Cunningham 74

Dramen Dalipagi6 77

Bob Davies 79

Baron Davis 82

Dave DeBusschere 84

Vlade Divac 87

Anne Donovan 90

Clyde Drexler 93

Joe Dumars 96

Tim Duncan 98

Alex English 101

Julius Erving 104

Patrick Ewing 107

Walt Frazier 110

Joe Fulks 113

Nick Galis 116

Kevin Garnett 118

Pau Gasol 121

George Gervin 124

Artis Gilmore 127

Manu Ginóbili 130

Tom Gola 133

Gail Goodrich 135

Hal Greer 138

Cliff Hagan 141

Penny Hardaway 144

Tim Hardaway 147

John Havlicek 150

Connie Hawkins 153

Elvin Hayes 156

Marques Haynes 159

Walt Hazzard 161

Tom Heinsohn 164

Grant Hill 167

Chamique Holdsclaw 170

Robert Horry 173

Dan Issel 175

Allen Iverson 178

Mark Jackson 181

LeBron James 184

Gus Johnson 187

Larry Johnson 190

Magic Johnson 193

K C Jones 197

Sam Jones 200

Michael Jordan 203

Jason Kidd 207

Toni Kukoc 210

Bob Kurland 213

Bob Lanier 215

Joe Lapchick 218

Meadowlark Lemon 220

Lisa Leslie 222

Nancy Lieberman-Cline 226

Rebecca Lobo 229

Clyde Lovellette 232

Jerry Lucas 234

Hank Luisetti 237

Bob McAdoo 240

Tracy McGrady 243

Kevin McHale 246

Karl Malone 249

Moses Malone 252

Pete Maravich 255

Hortåncia Marcari 258

Slater Martin 261

Ann Meyers 264

George Mikan 267

Cheryl Miller 270

Reggie Miller 273

Earl Monroe 276

Alonzo Mourning 279

Chris Mullin 282

Dikembe Mutombo 285

Steve Nash 288

Curly Neal 291

Dirk Nowitzki 293

Hakeem Olajuwon 296

Shaquille O’Neal 300

Robert Parish 304

Candace Parker 307

Tony Parker 310

Chris Paul 312

Gary Payton 315

Dramen Petrovi6 318

Bob Pettit 321

Paul Pierce 324

Scottie Pippen 327

Frank Ramsey 330

Willis Reed 332

Oscar Robertson 335

David Robinson 338

Dennis Rodman 342

Bill Russell 345

Arvydas Sabonis 348

Dolph Schayes 350

Oscar Schmidt 353

Frank Selvy 355

Bill Sharman 358

John Stockton 361

Amare Stoudemire 365

Sheryl Swoopes 368

Goose Tatum 371

Diana Taurasi 373

Nikki Teasley 375

Isiah Thomas 377

Nate Thurmond 381

Jack Twyman 384

Wes Unseld 387

Dwyane Wade 390

Ben Wallace 393

Bill Walton 396

Charlie Ward 400

Spud Webb 403

Chris Webber 406

Jerry West 409

Nera White 412

Lenny Wilkens 414

Dominique Wilkins 418

Natalie Williams 421

Lynette Woodard 424

John Wooden 427

James Worthy 431

Yao Ming 434

Bibliography 439

Basketball Resources on the World Wide Web 441

Glossary 444

Basketball Players Time Line 448

Fifty Greatest NBA Players 455

WNBA All-Decade Team 456

Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame 457

John R Wooden Award 461

USA Basketball Athlete of the Year Awards 462

NBA Top Draft Picks 465

NBA Rookies of the Year 467

NBA Most Valuable Players 468

NBA Defensive Players of the Year 469

NBA Sixth Man Award 470

NBA Scoring Champions 471

WNBA Top Draft Picks 475

WNBA Rookies of the Year 476

WNBA Most Valuable Players 477

WNBA Defensive Player and Sixth Woman Awards 478

WNBA Scoring Leaders 479

Name Index 483

Country Index 485

Position Index 487

Team Index 489 Great Athletes: Basketball

Publisher’s Note

Great Athletes: Basketball is part of Salem Press’s

greatly expanded and redesigned Great Athletes

se-ries, which also includes self-contained volumes on

baseball, boxing and soccer, football, golf and

ten-nis, Olympic sports, and racing and individual

sports The full 13-volume series presents articles

on the lives, sports careers, and unique

achieve-ments of 1,470 outstanding competitors and

cham-pions in the world of sports These athletes—many

of whom have achieved world renown—represent

more than 75 different nations and territories and

more than 80 different sports Their stories are

told in succinct, 1,000-word-long profiles

accessi-ble in tone and style to readers in grades 7 and up

The 13 Great Athletes volumes, which include a

cumulative index volume, are built on the work of

three earlier Salem Press publications designed

for middle and high school readers—the 20

slen-der volumes of The Twentieth Century: Great Athletes

(1992), their 3-volume supplement (1994), and the

8 stouter volumes of Great Athletes, Revised (2002).

This new 13-volume edition retains articles on every

athlete covered in those earlier editions and adds

more than 415 entirely new articles—a 40 percent

increase—to bring the overall total to 1,470 articles

This basketball volume adds 41 new articles to

the 108 in the previous edition to cover a total of

149 basketball players The content of other

arti-cles has been reviewed and updated as necessary,

with many articles substantially revised, expanded,

or replaced, and the bibliographical citations for

virtually all articles have been updated

Informa-tion in every article is current through the late part

of the 2008-2009 basketball season

Criteria for Inclusion

Within these pages, readers will find articles on

virtually all the legends of basketball—from

Ka-reem Abdul-Jabbar and Nate Archibald to John

Wooden and James Worthy In selecting new names

to add to Great Athletes: Basketball, first

consider-ation was given to undeniable players whose

ex-traordinary achievements have made their names

household words, such as Michael Cooper, Lisa

Leslie, Steve Nash, and Brazil’s legendary Oscar

Schmidt Consideration was next given to playerswho during the early twenty-first century appeareddestined for great future achievements, such asCarmelo Anthony, Candace Parker, and Yao Ming

Organization

Each article covers the life and career of a singlebasketball player, and all names are arranged inone alphabetical stream Every article is accompa-nied by at least one boxed table, summarizing thecareer statistics, honors and awards, records, andother milestones that set apart each great player.Most articles are also accompanied by photographs

of their subjects Every article also lists up-to-datebibliographical notes under the heading “Addi-tional Sources.” These sections list from three tofive readily available books and articles containinginformation pertinent to the athlete and sport cov-ered in the article Appendixes at the end of thevolume contain additional sources in publishedbooks and Web sites

Averaging three pages in length, each article iswritten in clear language and presented in a uni-form, easily readable format All articles are di-vided into four subheaded sections that cover theathlete’s life and achievements chronologically

• Early Life presents such basic biographical

in-formation as vital dates, parentage, siblings,and early education It also sketches the socialmilieu in which the basketball player grew upand discusses other formative experiences

• The Road to Excellence picks up where the

player’s earliest serious involvement in sportsbegan This section describes experiences andinfluences that shaped the subject’s athleticprowess and propelled the player toward bas-ketball greatness These sections also oftendiscuss obstacles—such as poverty, discrimi-nation, and physical disabilities—that manygreat athletes have had to overcome

• The Emerging Champion traces the player’s

ad-vance from the threshold of basketball

star-dom to higher levels of achievement This

section explains the characteristics and

cir-cumstances that combined to make the player

among the best in the world in basketball

• Continuing the Story tracks the player’s

subse-quent career, examining how the player may

have set new goals and had achievements that

inspired others This section also offers

in-sights into the player’s life away from sports

Readers will also learn about the innovations

and contributions that these basketball

play-ers have made to their sports and, in many

cases, to society at large

• Summary recapitulates the player’s story,

pay-ing special attention to honors that the

sub-ject has won and to the human qualities that

have made the player special in the world of

sports

Appendixes

At the back of this volume, readers will find 20

appendixes, most of which are entirely new to this

edition The appendixes are arranged under these

five headings:

• Resources contains a bibliography of recently

published books on basketball and a detailed,

categorized listing of sites on the World Wide

Web that provide basketball information This

section is followed by a Glossary defining

most of the specialized terms used in essays

and a Time Line that lists names of all the

players covered in essays in order of their

birth dates

• All-Time Great Players contains lists of the fifty

greatest NBA players up to 1996, the WNBA’s

first all-decade team, and all members of the

Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame

• Annual Awards and Honors includes lists of

John R Wooden Award winners and USA

Bas-ketball Athletes of the Year

• National Basketball Association has 6

appen-dixes listing the league’s top draft picks and

annual award winners

• Women’s National Basketball Association has 5

appendixes listing the league’s top draft picksand annual award winners

The Cumulative Indexes volume, which nies the full Great Athletes series, includes every ap-

accompa-pendix found in this and other volumes on specific

sports, plus additional appendixes containing

in-formation that pertains to all sports These dixes include a general bibliography, a compre-hensive Web site list, a Time Line integrating the

appen-names of all 1,470 athletes in Great Athletes, 2 lists of

the greatest athletes of the twentieth century, 3multisport halls of fame, and 10 different athlete-of-the-year awards

completely new to this edition of Great Athletes

Be-cause some athletes have competed in more than

one sport, readers may wish also to consult the mulative Indexes volume Its sport, country, and

Cu-name indexes list all the athletes covered in the full

Great Athletes series.

Acknowledgments

Once again, Salem Press takes great pleasure inthanking the 383 scholars and experts who wrote

and updated the articles making Great Athletes

pos-sible Their names can be found at the ends of thearticles they have written and in the list of contribu-tors that follows the “Introduction.” We also takeimmense pleasure in again thanking our specialconsultant, Rafer Johnson, for bringing his uniqueinsights to this project As an Olympic championand world record-holder in track and field’s de-manding decathlon, he has experienced an ex-traordinarily broad range of physical and mentalchallenges at the highest levels of competition.Moreover, he has a lifetime of experience workingwith, and closely observing, athletes at every level—from five-year-old soccer players to Olympic andprofessional champions He truly understands whatconstitutes athletic greatness and what is required

to achieve it For this reason, readers will not want

to overlook his “Introduction.”

Great Athletes: Basketball

Acronyms Used in Articles

Salem’s general practice is to use acronyms only

after they have been explained within each essay

Because of the frequency with which many terms

appear in Great Athletes: Basketball, that practice is

partly suspended for the acronyms listed here:

ABC American Broadcasting CorporationCBS Columbia Broadcasting SystemESPN Entertainment and Sports ProgrammingNetwork

NBA National Basketball AssociationNBC National Broadcasting CorporationNCAA National Collegiate Athletic AssociationWNBA Women’s National Basketball AssociationPublisher’s Note

Five decades after reaching my own pinnacle of

success in sports, I still get a thrill watching other

athletes perform I have competed with and against

some of the greatest athletes in the world, watched

others up close and from a distance, and read

about still others I admire the accomplishments of

all of them, for I know something of what it takes to

achieve greatness in sports, and I especially admire

those who inspire others

This revised edition of Great Athletes provides a

wonderful opportunity for young readers to learn

about the finest athletes of the modern era of

sports Reading the stories of the men and women

in these pages carries me back to my own youth,

when I first began playing games and became

inter-ested in sports heroes Almost all sports interinter-ested

me, but I gravitated to baseball, basketball,

foot-ball, and track and field Eventually, I dedicated

most of my young adult years to track and field’s

de-cathlon, which I loved because its ten events

al-lowed me to use many different skills

Throughout those years, one thing remained

constant: I wanted to win To do that meant being

the best that I could be I wondered what I could

learn from the lives of great athletes From an early

age I enjoyed reading about sports champions

and wondered how they did as well as they did

What traits and talents did the greatest of them

have? I gradually came to understand that the

essence of greatness in sports lies in competition

In fact, the very word athlete itself goes back to a

Greek word for “competitor.” Being competitive is

the single most important attribute any athlete can

have, but other traits are important, too Readers

may gain insights into the athletes covered in these

volumes by considering the ten events of the

de-cathlon as symbols of ten traits that contribute to

athletic greatness All champions have at least a

few of these traits; truly great champions have most

of them

Speed and Quickness

Decathlon events are spread over two days, with

five events staged on each day The first event is

al-ways the 100-meter dash—one of the most

glamor-ous events in track and field Men and women—such as Usain Bolt and Florence Griffith-Joyner—who capture its world records are considered thefastest humans on earth In a race that lasts only afew seconds, speed is everything, and there is noroom for mistakes

Appropriately, speed is the first of the three dards of athletic excellence expressed in the Olym-

stan-pic motto, Citius, altius, fortius (faster, higher,

stron-ger) Its importance in racing sports such as cycling,rowing, running, speed skating, swimming, andthe triathlon is obvious: Athletes who reach the fin-ish line soonest win; those who arrive later lose.Speed is also important in every sport that requiresmoving around a lot, such as baseball, basketball,boxing, football, handball, soccer, tennis, volley-ball, water polo, and virtually all the events of trackand field The best athletes in these sports are usu-ally fast

Athletes who lack speed generally make up for it

in other kinds of quickness For example, whilerunning speed has helped make some footballquarterbacks—such as Vince Young—great, somequarterbacks who are slow afoot have achievedgreatness with other forms of quickness Joe Na-math is an example Although he was embarrass-ingly slow on his feet, he read opposing teams’ de-fenses so fast that he could make lightning-quickdecisions and release his passes faster than almostany other quarterback who played the game

As important as speed is, there are a few sports inwhich it means little Billiards, bowling, and golf,for example, all permit competitors to take consid-erable time responding to opponents’ moves Even

so, speed can be important where one may least pect it For example, major chess competitions areclocked, and making moves too slowly can costplayers games

ex-Courage

The decathlon’s second event, the long jump,represents one of the purest contests in sports:Competitors simply run up to a mark and jump asfar as they can Each jumper gets several tries, andonly the best marks matter While it sounds simple,

it involves critical little things that can go wrong

and ruin one’s chance of winning When the great

Jesse Owens jumped in the 1936 Olympics in

Ber-lin, for example, he missed his takeoff mark so

many times that he risked disqualification What

saved him was the encouragement of a rival

Ger-man jumper, who advised him to start his jump

from well behind the regular takeoff mark It takes

courage to overcome the fear of making mistakes

and concentrate on jumping It also takes courage

to overcome the fear of injury

A great athlete may have abundant courage but

rarely need to call upon it However, most truly

great athletes eventually face moments when they

would fail if their courage abandoned them In

fact, courage is often what separates being good

from being great True courage should not be

con-fused with the absence of fear, for it is the ability to

overcome fear, including the very natural fears of

injury and pain A wonderful example is gymnast

Kerri Strug’s amazing spirit in the 1996 Olympics

Ignoring the pain of torn ligaments and a serious

ankle sprain, she helped the U.S women win a

team gold medal by performing her final vault at

great personal risk

Some sports challenge athletes with real and

persistent threats of serious injuries and even death

Among the most dangerous are alpine skiing, auto

racing, boxing, football, horse racing,

mountaineer-ing, and rodeo—all of which have killed and

dis-abled many fine athletes No one can achieve

great-ness in such sports without exceptional courage

Consider also the courage required to step up to

bat against a baseball pitcher who throws hardballs

mere inches away from your head at speeds of

more than ninety miles an hour Or, imagine

pre-paring to dive from atop a 10-meter platform,

rest-ing only on your toes, with your heels projectrest-ing

over the edge, knowing that your head will pass

within inches of the rock-hard edge of the

plat-form Greg Louganis once cut his head open on

such a dive After he had his scalp stitched up, he

returned to continue diving into a pool of water

colored pink by his own blood He won the

compe-tition

Another kind of courage is needed to perform

in the face of adversity that may have nothing to do

with sport itself The best known example of that

kind of courage is the immortal Jackie Robinson,

who broke the color line in baseball in 1947 As the

first African American player in the modern majorleagues, Jackie faced criticism, verbal harassment,and even physical abuse almost everywhere heplayed He not only persevered but also had a ca-reer that would have been regarded as exceptionaleven if his color had never been an issue

Strength

The shot put, the decathlon’s third event, quires many special traits, but the most obvious isstrength The metal ball male shot putters heaveweighs 16 pounds—more than an average bowlingball Agility, balance, and speed are all important tothe event, but together they can accomplish noth-ing without great strength Strength is also thethird standard expressed in the Olympic motto,

re-Citius, altius, fortius.

Strength is especially valuable in sports that putcompetitors in direct physical contact with eachother—sports such as basketball, boxing, football,and wrestling Whenever athletes push and pullagainst each other, the stronger generally prevail.Strength is also crucial in sports requiring lifting,pulling, pushing, paddling, or propelling objects,

or controlling vehicles or animals Such sports clude auto racing, baseball and softball, bodybuild-ing and weightlifting, canoeing and kayaking, golf,horse racing, rowing, and all track and field throw-ing events

in-One sport in which the role of strength hasnever been underestimated is wrestling One of themost impressive demonstrations of strength in thesport occurred at the 2000 Olympic Games at Syd-ney when Rulon Gardner, in a performance of alifetime, defeated former Olympic champion Alek-sandr Karelin in the super-heavyweight class ofGreco-Roman wrestling

Visualization

Visualization is the ability to see what one needs

to do before actually doing it Perhaps no sportbetter exemplifies its importance than the highjump—the decathlon’s fourth event In contrast tothe long jump and throwing events—in which com-petitors strive to maximize distance in every effort,the high jump (like the pole vault) sets a bar at afixed height that competitors must clear Beforejumping, they take time to study the bar and visual-ize what they must do to clear it If the bar is set at 7feet, a jump of 6 feet 113⁄4inches fails; a jump of 8Great Athletes: Basketball

feet succeeds, but counts only for 7 feet To

con-serve strength for later jumps, jumpers must

care-fully calculate how much effort to exert at each

height, and to do this, they must be able to

visu-alize

Great baseball and softball batters also visualize

well Before pitches even reach the plate, batters

see the balls coming and visualize their bats hitting

them Likewise, great golfers see their balls landing

on the greens before they even swing Soccer

play-ers, such as Ronaldo, see the balls going into the

goal before they even kick them Billiard players,

such as Jeanette Lee, see all the balls moving on the

table before they even touch the cue balls Bowlers,

like Lisa Wagner, see the pins tumbling down

be-fore they release their balls

Visualization is especially important to shooters,

such as Lones Wigger, and archers, such as Denise

Parker and Jay Barrs, who know exactly what their

targets look like, as well as the spots from where

they will fire, before they even take aim In contrast

to most other sports, they can practice in

condi-tions almost identical to those in which they

com-pete However, the athletes against whom they

compete have the same advantage, so the edge

usu-ally goes to those who visualize better

Players in games such as basketball, hockey,

soc-cer, and water polo fire upon fixed targets from

constantly changing positions—often in the face of

opponents doing everything they can to make them

miss Nevertheless, visualization is important to

them as well In basketball, players are said to be in

a “groove,” or a “zone,” when they visualize shots so

well they seem unable to miss Kobe Bryant and

Lisa Leslie are among the greatest visualizers in

their sport, just as Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and

Al-bert Pujols have been great at visualizing home

runs in baseball In tennis, I always admired Arthur

Ashe’s knack for planning matches in his mind,

then systematically dismantling his opponents

At another level, boxer Muhammad Ali was great

at visualizing his entire future Big, strong, and

quick and able to move with the best of them, he

had it all I had the great pleasure of touring

col-lege campuses with him after we both won gold

medals at the Rome Olympics in 1960 Muhammad

(then known as Cassius Clay) had visualized his

Olympic victory before it happened, and when I

first knew him he was already reciting poetry and

predicting what the future held for him He saw it

all in advance and called every move—something

he became famous for later, when he taunted ponents by predicting the rounds in which hewould knock them out

op-Determination and Resilience

The final event of the first day of decathlon petition is the 400-meter run Almost exactly aquarter mile, this race stands at the point that di-vides sprints from middle-distances Should run-ners go all out, as in a sprint, or pace themselves, asmiddle-distance runners do? Coming as it does, asthe last event of the exhausting first day of decath-lon competition, the 400-meter race tests the met-tle of decathletes by extracting one last great effortfrom them before they can rest up for the nextday’s grueling events How they choose to run therace has to do with how determined they are to winthe entire decathlon

com-Every great athlete who wants to be a championmust have the determination to do whatever ittakes to achieve that goal Even so, determinationalone is not enough This was proven dramaticallywhen basketball’s Michael Jordan—whom journal-ists later voted the greatest athlete of the twentiethcentury—quit basketball in 1994 to fulfill his life-long dream to play professional baseball Despiteworking hard, he spent a frustrating season and ahalf in the minor leagues and merely proved twothings: that determination alone cannot guaranteesuccess, and that baseball is a more difficult sportthan many people had realized

Resilience, an extension of determination, isthe ability to overcome adversity, or apparentlyhopeless situations, and to bounce back from out-right defeat Some might argue that no one can begreater than an athlete who never loses; however,athletes who continually win are never required tochange what they do or do any soul searching Bycontrast, athletes who lose must examine them-selves closely and consider making changes I havealways felt that true greatness in sports is exempli-fied by the ability to come back from defeat, asheavyweight boxer Floyd Patterson did after losinghis world title to Ingemar Johansson in a humiliat-ing 3-round knockout in 1959 Only those athleteswho face adversity and defeat can prove they haveresilience

Among athletes who have impressed me themost with their determination and resilience isIntroduction

speed skater Eric Heiden, who was not only the first

American to win world speed-skating

champion-ships, but the first speed skater ever to win all five

events in the Winter Olympics Another amazingly

determined athlete is Jim Abbott, who refused to

allow the fact that he was born with only one hand

stop him from becoming a Major League Baseball

pitcher—one who even pitched a no-hit game

Who could not admire Bo Jackson? An all-star in

both professional football and Major League

Base-ball, he suffered what appeared to be a

career-ending football injury After undergoing hip-joint

replacement surgery, he defied all logic by

return-ing to play several more seasons of baseball Cyclist

Lance Armstrong also falls into this category He

won multiple Tour de France championships after

recovering from cancer

Execution

Day two of the decathlon opens with the

techni-cally challenging 110-meter high hurdles A

bru-tally demanding event, it requires speed, leaping

ability, and perfect timing In short, it is an event

that requires careful execution—the ability to

per-form precisely when it matters Sports differ greatly

in the precision of execution they demand Getting

off great throws in the discus, shot put, and javelin,

for example, requires superb execution, but the

di-rection in which the objects go is not critical By

contrast, archers, shooters, and golfers must hit

precise targets Some sports not only demand that

execution be precise but also that it be repeated A

baseball pitcher who throws two perfect strikes fails

if the opposing batter hits the third pitch over the

fence Likewise, a quarterback who leads his team

down the field with five consecutive perfect passes

fails if his next pass is intercepted

Consider the differences between the kind of

execution demanded by diving and pole vaulting

Divers lose points if their toes are not straight the

moment they enter the water By contrast, pole

vaulters can land any way they want, so long as they

clear the bar Moreover, a diver gets only one chance

on each dive, while pole vaulters get three chances

at each height they attempt—and they can even

skip certain heights to save energy for later jumps

at greater heights On the other hand, a diver who

executes a dive badly will merely get a poor score,

while a pole vaulter who misses too many jumps

will get no score at all—which is exactly what

hap-pened to decathlete Dan O’Brien in the 1992 U.S.Olympic Trials Although Dan was the world’s topdecathlete at that time, his failure to clear a height

in the pole vault kept him off the Olympic team.(To his credit, he came back to win a gold medal in1996.)

Figure skating and gymnastics are other sportsthat measure execution with a microscope In gym-nastics, the standard of perfection is a score often—which was first achieved in the Olympics byNadia Comaneci in 1976 However, scores in thosesports are not based on objective measures but onthe evaluations of judges, whose own standards canand do change By contrast, archery, shooting, andbowling are unusual in being sports that offer ob-jective standards of perfection In bowling, thatstandard is the 300 points awarded to players whobowl all strikes

Among all athletes noted for their execution,one in particular stands out in my estimation: golf’sTiger Woods After Tiger had played professionallyfor only a few years, he established himself as one ofthe greatest golfers ever He has beaten the bestthat golf has had to offer by record margins in ma-jor competitions, and wherever he plays, he is thefavorite to win Most impressive is his seeming abil-ity to do whatever he needs to win, regardless of thesituation Few athletes in any sport, or in any era,have come close to matching Tiger’s versatile andconsistent execution

Focus

After the high hurdles, the decathlon’s discusevent is a comparative relief Nevertheless, it pre-sents its own special demands, one of which isfocus—the ability to maintain uninterrupted con-centration Like shot putters, discus throwers workwithin a tiny circle, within which they must concen-trate all their attention and all their energy intothrowing the heavy disk as far as they can

Not surprisingly, one of the greatest discus ers in history, Al Oerter, was also one of the greatestexamples of focus in sports His four gold medalsbetween 1956 and 1968 made him the first trackand field athlete in Olympic history to win anyevent four times in a row In addition to beating outthe best discus throwers in the world four consecu-tive times, he improved his own performance ateach Olympiad and even won with a serious rib in-jury in 1964 Eight years after retiring from compe-Great Athletes: Basketball

throw-tition, he returned at age forty to throw the discus

farther than ever and earn a spot as an alternate on

the 1980 U.S Olympic team

Important in all sports, focus is especially

impor-tant in those in which a single lapse in

concentra-tion may result in instant defeat In boxing, a

knockout can suddenly end a bout Focus may be

even more crucial in wrestling Wrestlers grapple

each other continuously, probing for openings that

will allow them to pin their opponents Few sports

match wrestling in nonstop intensity; a single

split-second lapse on the part of a wrestler can spell

di-saster Great wrestlers, such as Cael Sanderson and

Aleksandr Karelin, must therefore rank among the

most focused athletes in history

Balance and Coordination

Of all the decathlon events, the most difficult to

perform is the pole vault Think of what it entails:

Holding long skinny poles, vaulters run at full

speed down a narrow path toward a pit; then,

with-out breaking stride, push the tips of their poles into

a tiny slot, propel their bodies upward, and use the

poles to flip themselves over bars more than two or

three times their height above the ground, finally

to drop down on the opposite side Success in the

pole vault demands many traits, but the most

im-portant are balance and coordination Vaulters use

their hands, feet, and bodies, all at the same time,

and do everything at breakneck speed, with almost

no margin for error There are no uncoordinated

champion pole vaulters

Despite its difficulty, pole vaulting is an event in

which some decathletes have performed especially

well—perhaps because they, as a group, have

versa-tile skills I have long taken pride in the fact that my

close friend, college teammate, and Olympic rival,

C K Yang, once set a world record in the pole vault

during a decathlon C K.’s record was all the more

impressive because he achieved it midway through

the second day of an intense competition Imagine

what balance and coordination he must have had

to propel his body over the record-breaking height

after having subjected it to the wear and tear of

seven other events

I cannot think of any athlete, in any sport, who

demonstrated more versatility in coordination and

balance than Michael Jordan, who could seemingly

score from any spot on the floor, at any time, and

under any conditions Not only did he always have

his offensive game together, he was also one of thegreatest defensive players in the game Moreover,his mere presence brought balance to his entireteam

Preparation

The ninth event of the decathlon is the javelin—

a throwing event that goes back to ancient times Amore difficult event than it may appear to be, it re-quires more than its share of special preparation.This may be why we rarely see athletes who com-pete in both the javelin and other events, thoughthe versatile Babe Didrikson Zaharias was an excep-tion

Along with determination—to which it is closelyallied—preparation is a vital trait of great athletes,especially in modern competition It is no longerpossible for even the greatest natural athletes towin against top competition without extensive prep-aration, which means practice, training for strengthand stamina, proper diet and rest, and studying op-ponents diligently Football players, especially quar-terbacks and defensive backs, spend hours beforeevery game studying films of opponents

I was fortunate to grow up with an athlete whoexemplifies preparation: my younger brother,Jimmy Johnson, who would become defensive backfor the San Francisco 49ers for seventeen years andlater be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.Every week, Jimmy had to face a completely differ-ent set of pass receivers, but he was always ready be-cause he studied their moves and trained himself

to run backward fast enough to keep offenses infront of him so he could see every move they made.Coach Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys oncetold me that he always had the Cowboys attack onthe side opposite from Jimmy

Another exceptionally well prepared athlete wasMagic Johnson, the great Lakers basketball guard,who played every position on the floor in morethan one game During his rookie season he hadone of the greatest performances in playoff historyduring the NBA Finals When a health problemprevented the Lakers’ great center, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, from playing in the sixth game against Phil-adelphia, Magic stunned everyone by filling in forhim at center and scoring 44 points He went on tobecome one of the great point guards in basketballhistory because he always knew where every player

on the court should be at every moment

Introduction

If there is one event that most decathletes dread,

it is the grueling 1,500-meter race that concludes

the two-day competition While C K Yang once set

a world-record in the pole vault during a

decath-lon, no decathlete has ever come close to anything

even resembling a world-class mark in the 1,500

meters On the other hand, it is probable that no

world-class middle-distance runner has ever run a

1,500-meter race immediately after competing in

nine other events To win a decathlon, the trick is

not to come in first in this final race, but simply to

survive it For decathletes, it is not so much a race as

a test of stamina

When I competed in the decathlon in the Rome

Olympics of 1960, I had to go head-to-head against

my friend C K Yang through nine events, all the

while knowing that the gold medal would be

de-cided in the last event—the 1,500 meters C K was

one of the toughest and most durable athletes I

have ever known, and I realized I could not beat

him in that race However, after the javelin, I led by

enough points so that all I had to do was stay close

to him I managed to do it and win the gold medal,

but running that race was not an experience I

would care to repeat

Stamina is not really a skill, but a measure of the

strength to withstand or overcome exhaustion Rare

is the sport that does not demand some stamina

Stamina can be measured in a single performance—

such as a long-distance race—in a tournament, or

in the course of a long season

The classic models of stamina are marathon

runners, whose 26-plus-mile race keeps them

mov-ing continuously for more than two hours Soccer

is one of the most demanding of stamina among

team sports Its players move almost constantly and

may run as far as 5 miles in a 90-minute game that

allows few substitutions Basketball players runnearly as much as soccer players, but their gamesare shorter and allow more substitutions and restperiods However, the sport can be even more tir-ing than soccer because its teams play more fre-quently and play more games overall Baseball play-ers provide yet another contrast They spend agreat deal of time during their games sitting on thebench, and when they are on the field, playersother than the pitcher and catcher rarely need toexert themselves more than a few seconds at a time.However, their season has the most games of all,and their constant travel is draining All thesesports and others demand great stamina from theirplayers, and their greatest players are usually thosewho hold up the best

To most people, chess seems like a physically demanding game However, its greatest playersmust be in top physical condition to withstand theunrelenting mental pressure of tournament andmatch competitions, which can last for weeks.Bobby Fisher, one of the game’s greatest—and mosteccentric—champions, exercised heavily when hecompeted in order to stay in shape Even sprinterswho spend only 10 or 11 seconds on the track ineach race, need stamina In order to reach the fi-nals of major competitions, they must endure thephysical and mental strains of several days of pre-liminary heats

un-In reducing what makes athletes great to just tentraits, I realize that I have oversimplified things, butthat matters little, as my purpose here is merely to in-troduce readers to what makes the athletes in thesevolumes great Within these pages you will find sto-ries exemplifying many other traits, and that isgood, as among the things that make athletes end-lessly fascinating are their diversity and complexity

Rafer Johnson

Great Athletes: Basketball

Southern Illinois University

Elizabeth Jeanne Alford

Southern Illinois University,

Eastern Kentucky University

Jo-Ellen Lipman Boon

University of Northern Iowa

Richard Hauer Costa

Texas A&M University

North Carolina State University

Mary Virginia Davis

California State University, Sacramento

Arkansas State University

Jane Brodsky Fitzpatrick

Graduate Center, City University

Auburn University, Montgomery

Margaret Bozenna Goscilo

Kent State University, Stark

Bernadette Zbicki Heiney

Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania

East Tennessee State University

Raymond Pierre Hylton

Virginia Union University

Eastern Illinois University

Mary Lou LeCompte

University of Texas, Austin

Denyse Lemaire

Rowan University

Great Athletes: Basketball

Nancy Farm Mannikko

Centers for Disease Control &

Wendy Cobb Orrison

Washington and Lee University

Bill Plummer III

Amateur Softball Association

John David Rausch, Jr

West Texas A&M University

Ohio State University

Great Athletes: Basketball

University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Elizabeth Ferry Slocum

Pasadena, California

John Slocum

Pasadena, California

Gary Scott Smith

Grove City College

Texas A&M University

Glenn Ellen Starr Stilling

Appalachian State University

Roger Williams University

Felicia Friendly Thomas

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Jennifer L Titanski

Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania

Evelyn Toft

Fort Hays State University

Alecia C Townsend Beckie

New York, New York

Anh Tran

Wichita State University

Marcella Bush Trevino

Texas A&M University, Kingsville

Spencer Weber Waller

Loyola University Chicago

Annita Marie Ward

Jerry Jaye Wright

Pennsylvania State University, Altoona

University of North Texas

Great Athletes: Basketball

BASKETBALL

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Born:April 16, 1947

New York, New York

Also known as:Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr

(birth name); Lew Alcindor

Early Life

Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr., was born in Harlem,

New York, on April 16, 1947 Harlem was a

tradi-tionally lower-income community However, Lew’s

family was not poor His father was a graduate of

the famed Juilliard School of Music in virtuoso

trombone His family was Roman Catholic and

lived in northern Manhattan’s Inwood district, an

integrated neighborhood

Lew inherited his height from his 6-foot 8-inchgrandfather, who had come to the United Statesfrom Nigeria, Africa, via Trinidad, in the West In-dies Lew’s father worked as a bill collector, then as

a New York subway policeman, because careers inserious music were virtually closed to AfricanAmericans Lew learned to love jazz from hearing itplayed at the Elks Club by his father and other mu-sicians

At St Jude’s, the Inwood neighborhood mentary school, Lew was one of only two black stu-dents His height, 6 feet 5 inches in seventh grade,drew the attention of Farrell Hopkins, his firstcoach Hopkins urged Lew to lift weights, skiprope, and spend time alone on the court to perfecthis basketball shots

ele-The Road to Excellence

At Power Memorial High School, Lew came underthe protective care of coach Jack Donohue Hetook charge of Lew’s life even in summer vacation,which Lew spent, lonesome and unhappy, atDonohue’s Friendship Farm basketball camp Lewled Power to seventy-one consecutive victories and

an overall 79-2 record He was a prep all-Americanfor three years However, Lew finally came to resentthe coach, who tried to take advantage of Lew’sskills for his own benefit Later, Lew decided not toattend Holy Cross College, where Donohue took acoaching position

During his time at Power Memorial High School,Lew was growing increasingly resentful of whiteprejudice One summer, while working for a Har-lem newspaper, he learned from his journalisminstructor, Al Calloway, about the great historicalAfrican kingdoms and about the courageous suf-fering of black people during the slavery period

He became proud of his black heritage However,Lew “vowed to rise above hating whites” becausehis mother was light-skinned, with white blood

The Emerging Champion

More than two hundred colleges made offers toLew, one of the most publicized high school stars ofall time He chose the University of California at

Los Angeles Lakers center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

dem-onstrating his famous sky hook during a 1970’s game

against the Washington Bullets (Focus on Sport/Getty

Images)

Los Angeles (UCLA) Coach John Wooden had led

UCLA to a National Collegiate Athletic Association

(NCAA) title in 1964-1965 The school had built

a new facility, Pauley Pavilion In the first game

ever played in the new arena, the UCLA

fresh-man team—which was differentiated from the

var-sity squad under the NCAA rules of the time—

defeated the NCAA-champion varsity team 75-60

Lew, at 7 feet 2 inches, scored 31 points and had 15

rebounds The freshman team was 21-0 in

1965-1966

The next year, in his first varsity game, Lew

scored 56 points UCLA’s varsity team was

unde-feated in thirty games and again won the NCAAChampionship Lew was United Press Internationaland Associated Press player of the year and a unani-mous all-American His ability to score baskets fromabove the rim resulted in the “Alcindor Rule,”which outlawed the slam-dunk shot in 1967; theNCAA rescinded the rule in 1977 Unable to dunkthe basketball, Lew perfected a swooping hookshot that allowed him to elevate the ball above therim from several feet away, utilizing his height yetabiding by the new rule Because he delivered theshot so high in the air, Lew’s patented maneuverbecame known as the “skyhook.”

In 1967-1968, UCLA’s unbeaten streak hadreached forty-seven games before the Univer-sity of Houston defeated the Bruins 71-69.Houston star Elvin Hayes boasted of his team’svictory and belittled Lew’s ability However,Lew had played with a scratched eyeball thathad kept him out of two games When the teamsmet later in the NCAA tournament, Lew’s 19points and 18 rebounds led UCLA to a thor-ough 101-69 victory and another NCAA title.Hayes had 10 points In 1968-1969, Woodenwon a fourth- and Lew a third-consecutiveNCAA Championship In all three seasons,

NBA Statistics

1969-70 82 938 518 485 653 1,190 337 2,361 28.8 1970-71 82 1,063 577 470 690 1,311 272 2,596 31.7 1971-72 81 1,159 574 504 689 1,346 370 2,822 34.8 1972-73 76 982 554 328 713 1,224 379 2,292 30.2 1973-74 81 948 539 295 702 1,178 386 2,191 27.0 1974-75 65 812 513 325 763 912 264 1,949 30.0 1975-76 82 914 529 447 703 1,383 413 2,275 27.7 1976-77 82 888 579 376 701 1,090 319 2,152 26.2 1977-78 62 663 550 274 783 801 269 1,600 25.8 1978-79 80 777 577 349 736 1,025 431 1,903 23.8 1979-80 82 835 604 364 765 886 371 2,034 24.8 1980-81 80 836 574 423 766 821 272 2,095 26.2 1981-82 76 753 579 312 706 659 225 1,818 23.9 1982-83 79 722 588 278 749 592 200 1,722 21.8 1983-84 80 716 578 285 723 587 211 1,717 21.5 1984-85 79 723 599 289 732 622 249 1,735 22.0 1985-86 79 755 564 336 765 478 280 1,846 23.4 1986-87 78 560 564 245 714 523 203 1,366 17.5 1987-88 80 480 532 205 762 478 135 1,165 14.6

Most points, career, 38,387

Most playoff points, career, 5,762

Most All-Star Game appearances, 18

Most most valuable player awards, 6

Most seasons, and most consecutive seasons, 1,000 or more points, 19

Most seasons leading league in blocked shots, 4

Single-game record for most defensive rebounds, 29

Most playoff games played, 237

Single season record for most defensive rebounds, 1,111

Most field goals made, 15,837

Most minutes played, 57,446

Lew was selected the most outstanding player of

the NCAA Basketball Tournament In Lew’s three

seasons at UCLA, the Bruins’ record was 88-2

During his college years, Lew, a history major

with a 131 IQ and always troubled by the plight of

black Americans, read The Autobiography of Malcolm

X (1965), about the American Black Muslim

leader He was attracted to Malcolm’s teachings of

universal brotherhood rather than his declaration

of black supremacy and hatred of whites Lew

be-came a Muslim in 1968 In an autobiographical,

three-part series in Sports Illustrated in 1970, he

an-nounced his conversion

In 1969, Lew accepted the $1.4 million offer of

the last-place Milwaukee Bucks of the NBA over

that of the New York Nets of the American

Basket-ball Association, although he had long dreamed of

playing in New York He also turned down an offer

to play with the Harlem Globetrotters, a famous

all-black touring team However,

Lew did not consider their

enter-taining and clownish form of

bas-ketball to be a serious sport He was

graceful and quick, but professional

basketball was a rougher game than

he had known in college He often

had to control his temper against

veterans, especially Willis Reed of

the New York Knicks, who were

try-ing to test him Not surpristry-ingly, Lew

was rookie of the year and second in

scoring in 1969-1970

The following year, Milwaukee

coach Larry Costello acquired Oscar

Robertson and Lucius Allen, Lew’s

former UCLA teammate

Robert-son, a ten-year veteran, was regarded

as the best playmaker in the league

The combination of Lew and

Rob-ertson produced a 66-16 record and

a championship season Lew won his

first scoring title with 31.7 points per

game and received the NBA’s most

valuable player award

After the season, Lew officially

began using his new Muslim name,

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which means

“Noble and Generous Servant of the

All-Powerful Allah.” In May, 1971,

he married Janice Brown, who took

the name Habiba In 1974, he grew a beard andAfro hairstyle to emphasize his pride in his Africanheritage Also in 1974, Kareem began wearing pro-tective goggles, which became an identifying trade-mark Just as in his days at UCLA, Kareem suffered

a scratched eyeball during a preseason contest, and

he missed the first sixteen games of the season.When he returned, Kareem used a set of goggles toprotect his eyes, and he wore it for the rest of his ca-reer

Continuing the Story

When his five-year contract with the Bucks expired

in 1975, Kareem asked to be traded He had ledMilwaukee to the playoffs four times, but he hadproblems with Costello’s coaching philosophy In

1975, he joined the Los Angeles Lakers, a cre team at the time In his second season, theLakers had the best record in basketball but lost in

Honors and Awards

1967-69 Helms Division I Player of the Year

Sporting News College Player of the Year Citizens Savings College Basketball Player of the Year NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player NCAA All-Tournament Team

Consensus All-American

1967, 1969 Rupp Trophy

United Press International Division I Player of the Year United States Basketball Writers Association Division I Player of the Year

1969 Naismith Trophy Overall first choice in the NBA draft

1970 NBA Rookie of the Year 1970-74, 1976-81, 1983-86 All-NBA Team 1970-71, 1974-81, 1984 NBA All-Defensive Team 1971-72, 1974, 1976-77, 1980 NBA most valuable player

1971, 1985 NBA Championship Finals, most valuable player

1989 Uniform number 33 retired by Los Angeles Lakers

1995 Inducted in Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame

1996 NBA 50 Greatest Players of All Time Team

1999 Uniform number 33 retired by Milwaukee Bucks

2002 Inducted into Pacific Ten Conference Hall of Fame

2006 Named to NCAA’s One Hundred Most Influential Student-Athletes

2007 Inducted into National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame

the playoff semifinals The addition of Earvin

“Magic” Johnson in 1979 created a powerhouse

team that won five NBA Championships over a

nine-year span The Lakers teams of the 1980’s

played a type of basketball known as “Showtime,” a

fast-paced and high-scoring offense with Kareem

and Johnson as the main assets When he retired in

1989, after twenty seasons in the NBA, Kareem had

scored 38,387 points—more than anyone in NBA

history—and been named most valuable player an

unprecedented six times

During the 1990’s, Kareem worked in the

enter-tainment business, appearing in many television

shows His greatest claim to Hollywood fame was as

a copilot in the film Airplane (1980) Afterward, he

made minor appearances in a number of television

shows In 1995, Kareem was honored for his

accom-plishments in basketball when he was inducted

into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of

Fame During the 1996-1997 season, he was named

one of the fifty greatest NBA players of all time In

1999, he was named one of the twenty best NBA

players of all time

After retiring, Kareem served as a self-appointed

“basketball ambassador,” trying to promote the

val-ues of the game wherever he went In 1998, he

signed a contract to coach the boys’ basketball

team at Arizona’s Alchesay High School on the

Fort Apache Indian reservation His goals were to

teach the young men how to play basketball and

help develop a better relationship between Native

Americans and African Americans He has also

worked with or coached for the Los Angeles

Clip-pers, Seattle SuperSonics, New York Knicks, and,

beginning in 2005, the Lakers Furthermore, in

2002, he coached the Oklahoma Storm of the

United States Basketball League for one year

Kareem authored several books, including Brothers

In Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII’s Forgotten Heroes (2004), a history of an all-

black armored unit in World War II

Summary

In 1972, the former Boston Celtics superstar BillRussell was asked whether he or Wilt Chamberlainwas the better player He responded, “KareemAbdul-Jabbar is the greatest player to play thisgame.” At each increasing level of play—highschool, college, and professional—Kareem suc-ceeded in making his team the best After retire-ment, he devoted himself to a career in movie pro-duction, acting, and coaching As an indication ofhis impact on American sport, he has appeared on

the cover of Sports Illustrated twenty-nine times Daniel C Scavone, updated by Steven J Ramold

Additional Sources

Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem A Champion Strategy New

York: William Morrow, 2000

Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem, and Raymond Obstfeld On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Har- lem Renaissance New York: Simon & Schuster,

2007

Borrello, Helen A Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Basketball Legends Broomall, Pa.: Chelsea House, 1995.

Howard-Cooper, Scott, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The Bruin One Hundred: The Greatest Games in the History of UCLA Basketball Lenexa, Kans.: Ad-

Walter Ray Allen was born on July 20, 1975 His

par-ents are Walter Allen, who worked as a welder in

the U.S Air Force, and Flora Allen He has two

older and two younger siblings Because Ray’s

fa-ther was in the military, the family moved

fre-quently and lived overseas occasionally,

including in the United Kingdom and

Ger-many

Ray played baseball, football, and soccer

at an early age He immediately

demon-strated superior athletic skills At the age of

eight, he was the only child in the local

baseball Little League who could hit the

ball far enough to reach the home-run

line In later years, Ray first played

orga-nized basketball when his father was

sta-tioned at Edwards Air Force Base in

Cali-fornia His mother told him basketball was

his best sport

The Road to Excellence

After the family moved to Shaw Air Force

Base in South Carolina, Ray made the

var-sity basketball team as a freshman at

crest High School He eventually led

Hill-crest to a state championship His success

at the high school level led several top

col-lege basketball programs to recruit him,

and he decided to attend the University of

Connecticut

During his freshman year, he did not

start but was productive as a reserve He

be-came a starter his sophomore season In

1994-1995, Connecticut was ranked

num-ber one for most of the season The team

won its second consecutive Big East

Con-ference regular-season championship In

the National Collegiate Athletic

Associa-tion (NCAA) Basketball Tournament,

Con-necticut lost in the West Regional Finals to

the University of California at Los Angeles, theeventual national champion Then, Ray was se-lected to play for the U.S team at the World Uni-versity Games in Japan, where the Americans fin-ished undefeated and won the gold medal Ray wasnamed USA Basketball’s male athlete of the year

The Emerging Champion

Ray had an even better year the following season

He led Connecticut to a 30-2 record, a top seed in

Ray Allen taking the ball to the hoop in a 2008 game against thePortland Trail Blazers (NBAE/Getty Images)

the NCAA Basketball Tournament, and a Big East

Conference tournament championship Perhaps

his best individual moment in college was making

the game-winning shot in the conference-title

game, providing Connecticut with a 75-74 win over

Georgetown He was named as a first-team

all-American

After his junior season, Ray decided to move to

the professional level, declaring himself eligible

for the NBA draft in 1996 He was selected by the

Minnesota Timberwolves as the fifth-overall pick in

the draft However, he was immediately traded tothe Milwaukee Bucks for Stephon Marbury and afuture first-round pick

Ray had an instant impact on the team Hestarted all but one game his rookie season for theBucks and finished third on the team in scoring,with 13.4 points per game As his career contin-ued, he was consistently one of the best players

on his team His strengths were three-point ing and free throws His performance helped theBucks make the playoffs in three consecutive sea-sons, from 1999 to 2001 In the 1999-2000 season,

shoot-he led tshoot-he Bucks in scoring with 22.1 points pergame, which was fourth best in the NBA After theseason, he played for the U.S Olympic team, whichwon the gold medal He served a key role for theUnited States, averaging more than 10 points pergame

Continuing the Story

The Bucks’ best season during Ray’s tenure was2000-2001 The team advanced to the Eastern Con-ference Finals before losing to the Philadelphia76ers in the seven-game series Ray’s individualperformance contributed to the Bucks’ successthat year He had career-best statistics in field-goalpercentage, rebounds, assists, and steals He alsoshowed outstanding longevity, starting in 366 con-secutive games and playing in 378 straight games,retroactive to his rookie year

Though the Bucks’ performance declined nificantly following the 2000-2001 season, Ray’s

NBA Statistics

1996-97 82 390 430 205 823 326 210 1,102 13.4 1997-98 82 563 428 343 875 405 356 1,602 19.5 1998-99 50 303 450 176 903 212 178 856 17.1 1999-00 82 642 455 353 887 259 308 1,809 22.1 2000-01 82 628 480 348 888 428 374 1,806 22.0 2001-02 69 530 462 214 873 312 271 1,503 21.8 2002-03 76 598 439 316 900 381 334 1,713 22.5 2003-04 56 447 440 245 904 286 268 1,287 23.0 2004-05 78 640 428 378 883 347 289 1,867 23.9 2005-06 78 681 454 324 903 332 286 1,955 25.1 2006-07 55 505 438 279 903 247 228 1,454 26.4 2007-08 73 439 445 215 907 268 225 1,273 17.4

Totals 863 6,366 446 3,395 889 3,903 3,327 18,227 21.1

Notes: GP = games played; FGM = field goals made; FG% = field goal percentage; FTM = free throws made; FT% = free throw percentage; Reb = rebounds; Ast = assists; TP = total points; PPG = points per game

Milwaukee Bucks Records

Most consecutive games played, 400

Most three-pointers in career, 1,051

Most three-pointers attempted, 2,587

NBA Records

Most regular-season three-pointers, 269 (2005-06)

Most three-pointers attempted in one season, 653 (2006)

Second most three-pointers made in career, 2,100

Most seasons as league leader in three-pointers, 3 (2001-02,

2002-03, 2005-06)

Most three-pointers in one half, 8 (record shared)

Honors and Awards

1997 NBA all-rookie second team

2000 Gold medal, Olympic Basketball

2000-02, 2004-08 NBA All-Star

2001 All-NBA Third Team

NBA three-point shootout champion

2003 NBA sportsmanship award

2005 All-NBA Second Team

level did not In the next year, he was named to his

third-consecutive all-star team He scored a

career-high 47 points in a single game He ranked among

NBA leaders in scoring, three-point percentage,

three-point field goals made, and free-throw

per-centage He extended his streaks of consecutive

games played to 400 and consecutive games started

to 388, until tendinitis in his left knee briefly

pre-vented him from playing

Halfway through the 2002-2003 season, Ray was

traded to the Seattle SuperSonics In almost five

seasons with the Sonics, he increased his

points-per-game average Prior to the 2007-2008 season,

he was traded to the Boston Celtics Along with

Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, Ray helped lead the

team to an NBA-best 66-16 regular-season record

and an NBA Championship, the franchise’s first in

twenty-two years

Ray also had a major impact off the court He

served as a member of the all-star advisory

coun-cil for the Junior NBA youth basketball program

He has also been the NBA spokesperson for the

Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund In 2000 and

2001, he was named The Sporting News “good guy.”

Summary

Ray Allen has established himself as one of the bestshooting guards in professional basketball He hasconsistently ranked high in the categories of scor-ing, free-throw percentage, and three-point per-centage Furthermore, his endurance is notewor-thy; he has put together remarkable streaks ingames played and games started These achieve-ments helped make him an all-star eight times

Su-Spears, Marc J “Allen Takes a Strange Route to His

Roots.” The Boston Globe, October 10, 2007.

Carmelo Anthony

Born:May 29, 1984

Brooklyn, New York

Also known as:Carmelo Kiyan Anthony (full

name); Melo

Early Life

Carmelo Kiyan Anthony was born in Brooklyn,

New York, on May 29, 1984 When Carmelo was

young, his family lived in the Red Hook Projects in

Brooklyn Carmelo’s father was of Puerto Rican scent, and his mother was of African American de-scent Carmelo’s father, after whom Carmelo wasnamed, died of cancer when Carmelo was two yearsold Carmelo’s family lived briefly in Friona, Texas,before moving to the Druid Hill section of Balti-more, Maryland, when Carmelo was eight yearsold The housing projects near Carmelo’s homewere rife with drug dealing and violence Carmelo

de-and his friends used sports, most ten basketball, as a diversion fromsuch activities

of-As a teenager, Carmelo muted to Towson Catholic HighSchool for three years During thesummer after his sophomore year,

com-he grew five inccom-hes, sprouting to 6foot 5 inches The following sea-son, he was the Baltimore CatholicLeague’s player of the year as well

as the Baltimore Sun’s metro player

of the year In order to gain morenational exposure, Carmelo trans-ferred to the famed Oak Hill Acad-emy in Virginia As a senior, he was

a first-team all-American and a Donald’s All-American

Mc-The Road to Excellence

While many of Carmelo’s poraries were heading straight toprofessional basketball after highschool, his mother pressed him to

contem-go to college Carmelo accepted abasketball scholarship from Syra-cuse University and moved to theupstate New York campus in 2002

He had a short but historical stay

at Syracuse During the 2002-2003season, Carmelo led the team inmost offensive categories, includ-ing scoring and rebounding Moresignificantly, he guided Syracuse to

a 30-5 record and the school’s firstNational Collegiate Athletic Associ-

Carmelo Anthony of the Denver Nuggets dunking the ball against the

To-ronto Raptors (Gary C Caskey/UPI/Landov)

ation (NCAA) Basketball Tournament

Champion-ship He was named the most outstanding player of

the Final Four, the NCAA freshman of the year, and

the Big East Conference freshman of the year and

was an all-Big East first-team selection

Soon after Carmelo helped Syracuse to the

championship, he declared himself eligible for the

NBA draft On June 26, 2003, he was drafted by the

Denver Nuggets with the third overall pick In July,

2003, Carmelo signed a four-year contract with the

Nuggets that paid him more than $15 million, or

$3.75 million per year

In a stellar rookie season, Carmelo averaged 21

points, 6.1 rebounds, 2.8 assists, and 1.18 steals per

game, while playing in all eighty-two games He was

the driving force in a tremendous turnaround for

the Denver Nuggets He led the team to a 43-39

record and a berth in the NBA playoffs Before

Carmelo’s arrival, the Nuggets were consistently

one of the worst teams in the NBA In fact, the year

before Carmelo arrived in Denver, the Nuggets

record was a horrible 17-65, which earned the team

a share of the worst record in the league

Interest-ingly, the tie was with the Cleveland Cavaliers, who

drafted LeBron James with the first pick in the 2003

NBA draft Starting on draft day and continuing

throughout their careers, James and Carmelo were

linked in superstardom In addition to his regular

season statistics, Carmelo became the first rookie

in fourteen years to lead a team in playoff scoring

average Though the Nuggets lost to the Minnesota

Timberwolves, simply appearing in the playoffs was

a testament to Carmelo’s impact

The Emerging Champion

During the early part of his NBA career, Carmelo

compiled impressive statistics, In the 2006-2007

season, he had a career-high average of 28.9 points

per game As of 2008, his career per-game averageswere 24.4 points, 6 assists, 3 rebounds, and 36.5minutes Though the Nuggets could not advancepast the first round of the playoffs, Carmelo led theNuggets to the postseason in each of his first fiveyears in the league Early in his career, he had somebehavioral problems: He was suspended from theleague for fifteen games for his involvement in a

2006 on-court brawl in Madison Square Garden in

a game against the Knicks However, as he tured, he left behind those problems

ma-Continuing the Story

Carmelo defined himself as one of the league’smost consistent scorers In 2006, the Nuggets ac-quired Allen Iverson to help Carmelo lead theteam deeper into the playoffs In addition to hisNBA experience, Carmelo played on several U.S

NBA Statistics

2003-04 82 624 426 408 777 498 227 1,725 21.0 2004-05 75 530 431 456 796 426 194 1,558 20.8 2005-06 80 756 481 573 808 394 216 2,122 26.5 2006-07 65 691 476 459 808 391 249 1,881 28.9 2007-08 77 728 492 464 786 571 259 1,978 25.7

Parade first-team all-American

USA Today first-team all-American

2003 Big East Conference freshman of the year National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament most outstanding player

The Sporting News first-team all-American

2004 NBA all-rookie team Bronze medal, Olympic Basketball

2006 International Basketball Federation (FIBA) World Championship all-tournament team

USA Basketball men’s athlete of the year

2006, 2007 All-NBA Third Team

2007, 2008 NBA All-Star

2008 Gold medal, Olympic Basketball

national teams and was named USA Basketball

male athlete of the year in 2006 He was a member

of the U.S team that won a gold medal at the 2008

Summer Olympics in Beijing, China Also, he was

an NBA all-star in 2007 and 2008

Summary

Carmelo Anthony rose from the Red Hook

Proj-ects in Brooklyn, New York, to lead the Syracuse

University Orangemen to the 2003 NCAA national

championship In his first NBA season with the

Denver Nuggets he helped his team reach the

play-offs for the first time in nine seasons He became

one of the best scorers in the NBA and, along with

LeBron James, a face of the next generation of ketball superstars

bas-Theodore Shields

Additional Sources

Anthony, Carmelo, and Greg Brown Carmelo thony: It’s Just the Beginning Kirkland, Wash.: Pos-

An-itively For Kids, 2004

Chappell, Kevin “The Future of the NBA: CarmeloAnthony, Dwyane Wade, and LeBron James arePositioned as the Sturdy Foundation of the Ex-

panding League.” Ebony, May 1, 2007.

Porterfield, Jason Basketball in the Big East ence New York: Rosen Central, 2008.

Nate Archibald

Born:September 2, 1948

New York, New York

Also known as:Nathaniel Archibald (full name);

Tiny

Early Life

Born in New York City, Nathaniel Archibald was

the oldest child in a family of seven children He

spent his youth in the Patterson projects in New

York’s South Bronx district During the 1960’s,

these projects were among the most notorious

slum areas of New York City His father abandoned

the family when Nate was fourteen Nate attended

DeWitt Clinton High School, where he made the

all-city team in basketball At 6 feet l inch in

height, he was usually one of the smaller

play-ers on the basketball court and was called

“Tiny.” After playing one year at a community

college in Arizona, he played college

basket-ball at the University of Texas-El Paso, coached

by the legendary Don Haskins, who had led an

all-African American team to a national

cham-pionship in the college finals when the school

was known as Texas Western

The Road to Excellence

In 1970, Nate joined the NBA after the

Cincinnati Royals drafted him in the second

round The Royals’ general manager, Bob

Cousy, who had been a great point guard, had

confidence that Nate could handle the

respon-sibilities of the point-guard position At first,

Nate was inconsistent and passed the ball too

much However, Cousy traded veteran Norm

Van Uer and entrusted Nate with floor

leader-ship Because of this, Nate’s talent and zest for

the game became evident

In 1973, the Royals moved to Kansas City—

also playing some games in Omaha,

Ne-braska—where the franchise changed its name

to the Kings because the city’s baseball team

was already called the Royals In Kansas City,

Nate began playing spectacularly In

1972-1973, he became the first man ever to lead the

league in both scoring and assists He was

named to the all-star game and became a regularfixture there for several years

Nate was the focal point of the team, but thisbrought both fame and problems He was a star,but the other Kings players were no more than roleplayers This meant Nate was given the ball atnearly every opportunity, which made him seemlike a show-off The Kings never rose above medi-ocrity, and Nate’s career seemed to stall despite hisindividual success

The Emerging Champion

In 1976, Nate was traded to the New York Nets, aformer American Basketball Association (ABA)

Nate Archibald playing for the New York Nets in early 1976.(Focus on Sport/Getty Images)

franchise that was in its first year in the NBA The

Nets had been forced to trade Julius Erving, the

team’s star, in order to pay league admissions costs

and badly needed Nate’s scoring abilities A serious

foot injury, though, limited Nate’s season to

thirty-four games

Nate’s career entered a troubled phase In

1977-1978, he was theoretically the property of the

Buf-falo Braves However, the foot injury kept him out

for the entire season, and he never played a game

for the Braves He was then traded to the Boston

Celtics in a multiplayer deal Neither the Celtics

nor Nate was happy with his first year with the team

Nate considered himself a star player, and the

Celtics had many players, such as Dave Cowens and

Jo Jo White, who had been with the team for manyyears and did not want to give up their scoring op-portunities Nate played inconsistently as theCeltics suffered through an unsuccessful season.The next year, White left, and a new era dawned

in Boston with the arrival of Larry Bird With Bird,the Celtics became a team in which the front courtled the offense The team’s new coach, Bill Fitch,encouraged Nate to specialize in playmaking and

to get the ball to forwards such as Bird and Cedric

“Cornbread” Maxwell Nate meshed with the newoffense, and Boston was the surprise team of the1979-1980 season Nate’s career, which had seemed

to be virtually over, had suddenly changed course.With the arrival in the following season of cen-

ter Robert Parish, the Celtics became

a complete team Nate’s role as floorleader was crucial as the Celtics pow-ered to a league championship, re-deeming the fortunes of a once-proudfranchise that had fallen on hardtimes Nate became a rare phenome-non in basketball—the star who will-ingly accepts a reduced role in order

to help his team win a championship.The Celtics had at least three playerswho received more scoring chancesthan Nate Nate concentrated on hisrole as a playmaker and distributor ofthe basketball He became as famous

as a passer as he earlier had been as ascorer Playing an average thirty-five

NBA Statistics

1970-71 82 1,095 486 444 444 336 757 242 450 1,308 16.0 1971-72 76 1,511 734 486 824 677 822 222 701 2,145 28.2 1972-73 80 2,108 1,028 488 783 663 847 223 910 2,719 34.0 1973-74 35 492 222 451 211 173 820 85 266 617 17.6 1974-75 82 1,664 759 456 748 652 872 222 557 2,170 26.5 1975-76 78 1,583 717 453 625 501 802 213 615 1,935 24.8 1976-77 34 560 250 446 251 197 785 80 254 697 20.5 1978-79 69 573 259 452 307 242 788 103 324 760 11.0 1979-80 80 794 383 482 435 361 830 197 671 1,131 14.1 1980-81 80 766 382 499 419 342 816 176 618 1,106 13.8 1981-82 68 652 308 472 316 236 747 116 541 858 12.6 1982-83 66 553 235 425 296 220 743 91 409 695 10.5 1983-84 46 279 136 487 101 64 634 76 160 340 7.4

Totals 876 12,628 5,899 467 576 4,664 810 2,046 6,476 16,481 18.8

Notes: GP = games played; FGA = field goals attempted; FGM = field goals made; FG% = field goal percentage; FTA = free throws attempted; FTM = free throws made; FT% = free throw percentage; Reb = rebounds; Ast = assists; TP = total points; PPG = points per game

Honors, Awards, and Milestones

1970 Honorable Mention All-America WAC most valuable player WAC 20-year All-Star Team member

1972, 1981 All-NBA Second Team

1973 First player to lead NBA in both scoring average (34.0) and average assists (11.4)

1973, 1975-76 All-NBA First Team

1973, 1975-76, 1980-82 NBA All-Star Team

1981 NBA All-Star Game most valuable player

1991 Inducted into Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame

1996 NBA 50th Anniversary All-Time Team (1996)

1997 NBA 50 Greatest Players of All Time Team

out of a possible forty-eight minutes a game, Nate

was a key contributor to the Celtics’ success

Continuing the Story

In the early 1980’s, Nate was in his mid-thirties, and

the Celtics began to rely on other players as point

guards In 1983, after his skills begun to diminish,

Nate left the Celtics After playing one more year

with the Milwaukee Bucks, he retired He went

back to his hometown, where he sponsored

basket-ball clinics and was in charge of sports activities at a

homeless shelter in Harlem Nate was commended

for his work with children by New York mayor

Da-vid Dinkins In 1991, Nate was inducted into the

Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame

Summary

Nate Archibald overcame adversity to reach the

pinnacle of NBA stardom He also epitomized

un-selfishness on the basketball court Long after he

had achieved fame as one of the league’s foremost

players, he agreed to take fewer shots and

concen-trate on passing so he could help the Celtics win achampionship His playmaking abilities were ex-traordinary He distributed the ball in a spectacu-lar and exciting manner The fact that he was theonly player ever to lead the league in both scoringand assists during the same season testifies to hisversatility He withstood potentially devastating in-juries and gave new life to his career Not surpris-ingly, when the NBA named its fifty greatest playersever in 1997, his name was on the list

Nicholas Birns

Additional Sources

Denlinger, Ken.“‘Tiny’ Came up Big in ’81.” The Washington Post, February 4, 2001, p D8 Hareas, John NBA’s Greatest New York: Dorling

Kindersley, 2003

Shaughnessy, Dan Ever Green: The Boston Celtics, a History in the Words of Their Players, Coaches, Fans, and Foes, from 1946 to the Present New York: St.

Martin’s Press, 1991