It was James
Naismith who invented basketball, but it was Elgin Baylor, the Laker great who died yesterday at 86, who invented modern basketball. And, as a little kid, I was present, in the stands, at the creation.
Naismith’s game involved running, standing, and shooting, and it stayed much that way through the late 1950s, when Baylor began his pro career. Undeterred by the relatively static nature of the game, Baylor began shooting from midair and hanging, somehow, in that midair, and waiting there to take his shot until after his defenders had returned to Earth.
As he soared, he could twist and contort and shift the ball from one hand to the other. Before going airborne, he would head-fake those defenders and charge the basket.
Did I say "undeterred by the static nature of the game"? Actually, he ran rings around it, twice setting the record for most points scored in a single game, along with a host of other records that still rank him among the dozen greatest players—who are great chiefly because they followed his lead and expanded on his innovations. In that sense, he is to basketball somewhat as Babe Ruth was to baseball: changing it irrevocably and in ways that made the sport vastly more popular—in Baylor’s case, more athletic and balletic and exciting and beautiful.
As I grew up
in Los Angeles, and as my father took me to a multitude of games, Baylor was one of my childhood’s two sports heroes, the other being Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax. I wasn’t cognizant at the time, of course, of how fundamentally Baylor was changing basketball; I just knew that he provided more excitement—and victories—than anyone else on the court. Which is why, when the Lakers were trailing as the clock ticked down (particularly in championship games against the Celtics), I would invariably shout the same line of advice:
"Give it to Baylor!"
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