Welcome to the NBA 75, The Athletic’s countdown of the 75 best players in NBA history, in honor of the league’s diamond anniversary. We’ll unveil a new player on the list every weekday through Feb. 18, culminating with the man picked by a panel of The Athletic NBA staff members as the greatest of all time.
It was a maneuver that would hardly stand up to the scrutiny of modern tampering rules. But some five decades before that term entered the NBA lexicon, Bob Short needed some luck.
So, the new owner of the woeful Minneapolis Lakers created his own.
In March 1958, Short traveled to Washington, D.C., to the childhood home of Elgin Baylor, who was visiting his parents over spring break from Seattle University. Short showed up at the front door armed with an offer. If Baylor would forego his last year of college eligibility to enter the NBA Draft, the Lakers would not only make him the No. 1 overall pick but also give him a contract worth more than any team had ever paid a rookie: $25,000.
“I know the choice seems obvious,” Baylor would later write in his autobiography, “but — no pun intended — it (was) not a slam dunk.”
It was a recruiting trip that would alter the trajectory of basketball.
Baylor, No. 23 on The Athletic’s countdown of the 75 greatest players in NBA history, eventually agreed and, in the process, became the patriarch of a legacy of high-flyers in the decades to come. From Julius Erving to Michael Jordan and
