Elgin Baylor, a legend in Lakers history, the owner of the hanging No. 22 jersey, died at the age of 86.
Many people know that he was always joking with fate:
Eight finals, but not a single ring: one after retirement.
He retired in 1971-72, and the Lakers began an unprecedented 33-game winning streak and finished the regular season with 69 wins — and also won the 1972 championship, without him.
And that's not all.
He clearly had a golden start to his career, averaging fourth in the NBA, third in rebounds and eighth in assists per year, leading the Lakers to beat defending champion St. Louis Hawks to reach the Finals — but losing to the Celtics:
That was the start of the Celtics' eight-game winning streak.
He was clearly the top scorer in the early 1960s, but he met Chamberlain.
In 1961, he had 63 points, 31 rebounds and seven assists against Philadelphia, but opposite Chamberlain had 78 points and 43 rebounds, setting a new NBA record.
That day Baylor prophesied Chamberlain:
"Sooner or later, he's going to score 100 points."
That year, Baylor could only play on weekends because of his service, averaging 38.4 points per game in the season; in other years, it was time to score the top, catching up with Chamberlain's season of 50 points per game.
And, on March 2, 1962, as Baylor said, Chamberlain scored 100 points.
In the fifth game of that year's Finals, Baylor scored 61 points in a single game, which is still the highest score in a single game in the Finals and the highest score in a single game in the playoffs at that time, giving the Lakers a 3-2 lead over the Celtics. But he scored 34 points in the sixth game and 41 points in the seventh game, and he still couldn't do it:
In the seventh game, Frank Selvi dropped an empty spot and the Celtics dragged it into overtime to win the championship.
Baylor and West were defeated.
As a result, Baylor was always the second oldest.
Scoring met Chamberlain and finals met Russell.
Then there was the terrible injury.
In the first game of the 1965 Western Conference Finals, the Los Angeles Lakers against baltimore bullets. Elgin Baylor fell with a knee injury. Unaware of how badly injured he was, he got up and tried to move: afterwards the doctor said it was unbelievable, because the first third of his left patella was completely detached from the rest of his kneecap.
After that, Baylor said he was "only 75 percent of the original."
When he returned, he became the lakers' de facto second boss: West led the team to the 1965 Finals alone after he left, growing into the league's first guard on a par with Oscar.
Baylor is still the third-highest-scoring average in NBA history — second to Jordan and Chamberlain — but still not the first.
In the NBA's all-time highest average of points per game:
Jordan has ten leading scorers and Chamberlain has seven leading scorers. Durant is the four-point leading scorer. West is a leading scorer. LeBron is a leading scorer. Iverson is a four-point leading scorer. Petty is two scoring champions. Harden is a three-point leading scorer. The Iceman is the four leading scorers.
Only Baylor has no leading scorer.
It was said that Oscar Robertson had bad luck, but he had the 1964 MVP and the 1971 championship.
It was said that West was unlucky, but he had the 1972 championship, and the 1969 loser finals MVP.
Barkley and the Postman don't have a championship, but add up to three MVPs.
Baylor, as if, had nothing—just reissue a ring.
Oh, and he has the love of the fans: eleven All-Star starts.
He had popular recognition: ten leagues, from 1959 to 1969. In NBA history, a striker who has been selected ten times in one game: Baylor, Petty, Duncan, Postman, LeBron.
He was the highest-scoring striker in history: he was the only striker who scored 70 points in a single game.
The record of 61 points in a single game in the Finals is still there, although the highest single-game score in the playoffs was broken by Jordan's 63 points.
Of course, Baylor and Jordan are somewhat related: both Jordan and Dr. J have expressed praise for Baylor. Bulls manager Jerry Klaus once described Jordan this way, "He's a combination of Baylor and Pearl Monroe." ”
Pearl Monroe is the king of one-on-one, spinning and jumping soft as a boneless, New York defensive glove Fraser is jealous of the floor monster; Baylor is, in the words of Dr. J, the flyer of Jordan's previous generation: aerial ballet dancer.
Not so much, of course, but the existing video — even if most of it is a video recording of Baylor's broken knee — can still be seen:
He can indeed fly.
And, more than flying. Baylor was a rare breakthrough monster of his time.
196 centimeters and 102 kilograms, which is now considered to be solid - Harden is so strong, 196 centimeters is 100 kilograms.
So Baylor can carry the breakthrough, can fly, has hookers and throws on the left and right, can break through with the left hand, and hangs russell to play three points.
And he's not just capable of flying, he's not just able to grab rebounds.
He played 846 games in his career and had 3,650 assists, more than Durant, Lovell and Odom. 34 fewer assists than Dior.
Mikael Thompson— who had a famous son named Clay Thompson — said something strange:
Baylor is a lot like a magician.
- Where's it like? A super scoring striker, a super organization guard. Except for being in the Lakers, where is it like?!
But watching the game video, it is easy to find that Baylor was one of the three monsters of the 1960s who "grabbed the rebound and I directly pushed back". Dribble with the right hand, push fast, find a teammate in a quick attack, or find a bottom corner empty shot after breaking through yourself – the other two are Oscar and Russell.
So for a long time, Baylor was the representative of the "best all around player." The Almighty King.
- An all-round forward who is strong, fast, explosive, able to fly, can score, can grab rebounds, can pass the ball, and surpasses his time.
Of course, he has his faults. The shooting is a bit casual, the defense is not top-notch, and watching his game footage in the late 1960s, it is easy to rush to get the ball in several rounds.
Consistently evaluated, he doesn't seem to be a perfect teammate either.
In 1968, Chamberlain went to the Lakers and formed the strongest big three in NBA history with West and Baylor. Originally, according to this lineup, it should sweep all the championships. Yet we all know that Russell ended perfectly with seven losses to the Celtics in 1969; seven losses to the Knicks in 1970; losses to the Bucks in 1971 and to the Knicks in 1973.
Of course Baylor retired in the fall of 1971, but it was: even as a teammate with Chamberlain, he didn't have a championship.
According to Mel Konz, Chamberlain and Baylor didn't deal much with each other. Chamberlain said many years later that he had no vendetta against Baylor, but:
"In black culture, you can't let someone else crush you."
Eriksen believes that the Lakers' coach Korf at that time was more catered to Baylor and West, and Chamberlain obviously did not like this.
A childish but quite temperamental detail: in the 1968 Lakers, the locker room only provided water for drinks, and Chamberlain shouted after he came, and he had to supply Qixi with a large supply of drinks.
Baylor then followed suit:
"If Chamberlain has seven joys to drink, I will drink soda grape juice!!"
After Baylor retired, McMillan, who replaced him, became the team's third scorer, defending steadily, grabbing rebounds and shooting. The Lakers won the 1972 championship as if it were a joke of fate.
"One Piece" was probably serialized until around 2010, when the world was still relatively simple, there was a line:
"Those who only lost to Roger and Whitebeard and won the silver medal on the sea, there are many more."
There are indeed many people in the world who only lost to the first person in the era of rule at that time, and thus became the second person at that time.
Like Buckley, like the postman.
But Baylor is an extraordinarily unfortunate one, as mentioned above:
Scoring, he was pressed by Chamberlain, no scoring king.
The champion, he was pressed by Russell and never won the championship himself.
Team history, he was somewhat overshadowed by West.
The injury slashed him once in 1965, a second in 1970.
71 points in a single game in the regular season were surpassed by Chamberlain; 61 points in a single game in the playoffs, which was surpassed by Jordan.
Even the Lakers' all-time high of 71 points in a single game was surpassed by Kobe's 81 points.
In the years when he was the general manager of the Clippers, it was not very smooth - and he caught up with the boss who was such a cargo...
There was only the praise of the crowd, once "the most versatile player", "the most underrated superstar", and so on.
He was a lone pioneer, but it didn't go well anywhere. And it just so happens that with Russell and Chamberlain, the team's achievements and personal data have reached their peak in an era, and they have also caught up with fatal injuries and several tragic seventh defeats.
There is such a thing in the world, a lot of fate.
In 1969, Russell defeated Baylor for the last time, won the eleventh championship of his thirteenth career, and retired. His second ring, the beginning of eight consecutive crowns and the eleventh ring, one head and one tail, totaling seven rings, were taken by Baylor.
The following year, in Game 4 of the 1970 Finals, Elgin Baylor had 30 points and 13 rebounds. It was the 15th game of his career. The Lakers won the Knicks.
After the game, Baylor said this:
"I still feel a little unreal. We're playing the Finals, right? But I always felt that when we won the Knicks, where the Celtics were still waiting for us. ”
This sentence condensed his ten-year feud with the Celts, and it was plain to say, and it was desolate to think about.
But in fact, even if he is old, injured, and almost 36 years old in the 1970 finals, in the seventh game, he can still do this:
High shot points to get rid of shots, as well as break through lagging throws.
It is still conceivable that he was a flying dragon in the sky when he was a teenager.
Forget it, let's say something a little happier.
On November 15, 1960, the Lakers against the Knicks, Baylor at Madison Garden, scored the NBA-recorded 71 points in a single game at the time — a record that had been held for more than a year before Chamberlain scored 78 points.
After setting the record, Baylor's teammate Hendry made that famous joke:
"My biggest achievement is that I, together with Baylor, at Madison, scored 73 points in total!"
While stories like West's 1972 victory in 1972 make people lament the rewards of hard work, Baylor's career tells a different story: Sometimes, you have to hold a self-deprecation like Hendry and continue.
After all, this is a world where maybe you have done nothing wrong and will be mercilessly joked by fate.