Goodbye to Elgin Baylor at the age of 86.
Modern basketball fans may remember Baylor best as the often-inept general manager of the awful Los Angeles Clippers from 1986-2008, but Baylor was far more than that on the court.
As a player, Baylor won almost every accolade that a player can achieve with the exception of a world championship.
Baylor was the first selection by the then-Minneapolis Lakers, Baylor was named to the All-NBA first team on ten occasions and eleven times played in the All-Star game.
It was Baylor's 71 points that held the league record before Wilt Chamberlain's famous 100 point output and Baylor's 61 in game five of the 1962 finals that holds the record to this day for points in a finals game.
Considered the NBA's first "modern" player, it all traces back to Elgin Baylor as the beginning of the modern player that combined athleticism with elite skills of the game with averages over his career of twenty-seven points and thirteen rebounds per game and those numbers dipped due to the final two injury-plagued seasons of his career.
Only Baylor's eight losses in the NBA finals leave any sort of black mark on a Hall of Fame playing career, but there is a definite blight from a coaching career with the New Orleans Jazz that left his record forty-nine games under .500 and leading the Clippers to the playoffs only once in twenty-two years.
Baylor's reign did have bad luck as it seemed the Clippers best players had habits of tearing up knee ligaments such as Danny Manning and Ron Harper, but there were plenty of bad decisions such as winning the 1998 lottery and selecting Michael Olowokandi over players such as Dirk Nowitzki, Vince Carter, Paul Pierce, Antawn Jamison, and Mike Bibby.
Goodbye to Stan Albeck at the age of 89.
Albeck was the head coach for four NBA teams (Cavaliers, Spurs, Nets, and Bulls) and the Bradley Braves in college, but also coached in the ABA as an assistant, notably with the San Diego Conquistadors where Albeck unofficially ran the team with Wilt Chamberlain as the figurehead coach.
Albeck's teams made the playoffs in six of his seven seasons as an NBA head coach and he twice took San Antonio to the conference finals during his tenure in Texas.
Albeck's Spur teams won the Midwest Division in each of his three seasons in San Antonio and in his first season with the New Jersey Nets, Albeck took them to the conference semi-finals, which to this writing is the second-best playoff performance in the Nets history.
Goodbye to Benny Dees at the age of 86.
Dees was the head coach at four schools, but most notably at New Orleans and Wyoming, where he took both teams to the NCAA tournament.
At New Orleans, Dees landed future NBA player Ledell Eackles as the nation's top junior college player in recruiting and took the Privateers to their first NCAA tournament, while he would make the NCAA's tournament with Wyoming as well with future pros Fennis Dembo and Eric Leckner.
Dees was the first head coach ever at Virginia Commonwealth in 1968 as the school started its program from scratch.
Goodbye to Granville Waiters at the age of 60.
The 6'11 center for the Ohio State Buckeyes looked about twenty years older than he was with a badly receding hairline and a face that looked like an NBA veteran rather than a college player.
Waiters averaged ten points and seven rebounds as a senior of Ohio State and he was drafted in the second round of the 1983 draft by Portland before being traded to Indiana on draft night.
Waiters would play five seasons in the NBA as garbage time big man off the bench with Indiana, Chicago, and Houston with a career average of 2.4 points per game.
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