Curated playlist
20th-century American sportsmen
- Clyde DrexlerClyde Austin Drexler Sr. was born on the 22nd of June, 1962, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and by the time his professional basketball career ended, he had become one of only three players in history to accumulate 20,000 points, 6,000…
- Kobe BryantKobe Bean Bryant scored 81 points on the 22nd of January, 2006, the second-highest total in a single NBA game in the history of the sport. He did it wearing number 8 for the Los Angeles Lakers, against the Toronto Raptors, in a 122-104…
- Elvin HayesElvin Ernest Hayes scored 39 points and held Lew Alcindor to just 15 in front of 52,693 fans at the Houston Astrodome on the 20th of January, 1968. It was the first nationally televised regular-season college basketball game in history,…
- Jerry WestJerry West died in Los Angeles on the 12th of June, 2024, at the age of 86. That same night, before game 3 of the NBA Finals between the Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks, the league held a moment of silence in his honor. It was a fitting…
- Karl MaloneKarl Anthony Malone grew up on a farm in Summerfield, Louisiana, the youngest of nine children raised by a single mother named Shirley. He chopped trees, hunted, and fished as a boy. He would go on to score 36,928 career points in the NBA,…
- Tim DuncanTim Duncan was born on the 25th of April 1976, on the island of Saint Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and he nearly never played basketball at all. His first passion was swimming. His sister Tricia had competed at the 1988 Summer…
- Larry BirdLarry Bird walked into the locker room at the inaugural Three-Point Shootout during the 1986 NBA All-Star Weekend and asked who was going to finish second. Then he won the contest. That moment captures something essential about him: the…
- Patrick EwingPatrick Aloysius Ewing Sr. was born on the 5th of August, 1962, in Kingston, Jamaica, one day before his home country declared independence. He would go on to become one of the most recognizable and dominant big men in the history of…
- Tom BradyTom Brady arrived at the New England Patriots' old Foxboro Stadium as a sixth-round draft pick, carrying a pizza box and wearing the look of someone who had something to prove. Patriots owner Robert Kraft remembered the moment: Brady…
- Hakeem OlajuwonHakeem Abdul Olajuwon did not pick up a basketball until the age of 15. He was a soccer goalkeeper in Lagos, Nigeria, a city he would later describe as "very cosmopolitan" with "all different types of people." His first real exposure to…
- Isiah ThomasIsiah Lord Thomas III grew up on the West Side of Chicago, the youngest of nine children, in a household that would eventually be without his father. He started dribbling a basketball at age three. By his early twenties, he was one of the…
- Bill RussellBill Russell won eleven NBA championships in thirteen seasons, a record in North American professional sports that no team has matched since. He won his first title in 1957 and his last in 1969, bookending a run so dominant that his…
- Chuck Cooper (basketball)Chuck Cooper stepped onto an NBA court for the first time on the 1st of November, 1950, against the Fort Wayne Pistons. That night, three men crossed a line that had been drawn for decades. Cooper, Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton, and Earl Lloyd…
- Chuck DalyChuck Daly was born on the 20th of July, 1930, in Kane, Pennsylvania, a small town in the Allegheny Mountains. He would go on to become one of the most decorated coaches in American basketball history. Two NBA championships. An Olympic…
- Charles BarkleyCharles Wade Barkley was born on the 20th of February 1963 in Leeds, Alabama, a small town 17 miles east of Birmingham. He was the first Black baby born at what had been a segregated, all-white hospital. He would go on to become one of the…
- Scottie PippenScottie Pippen grew up in Hamburg, Arkansas, the youngest of twelve children, and was not offered a single college scholarship out of high school. He walked on to the University of Central Arkansas, a school competing in the NAIA rather…
- Magic JohnsonMagic Johnson stood at the free throw line on the 7th of November 1991 and told the world he had HIV. He was 32 years old, five-time NBA champion, and arguably the most beloved athlete in America. The announcement rippled through every…
- Chris BoshChris Bosh once stood at center court in Toronto's Air Canada Centre as fans broke into a chant usually reserved for the league's biggest stars: 'MVP'. It happened on the 7th of February 2007, after Bosh scored a career-high 41 points at…
- Dave CowensDave Cowens stood six feet nine inches tall, which made him one of the shortest centers in the NBA during the 1970s. In an era when rivals like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar towered over almost everyone, that gap in height should have been a problem…
- Norm DruckerNorm Drucker was born on the 4th of July, 1920, in New York City, and died on the 6th of February, 2015. In the span of those 94 years, he became one of the most consequential figures in the history of professional basketball officiating.…
- John StocktonJohn Stockton walked off the court for the last time on the 2nd of May 2003, not at a press conference surrounded by cameras and microphones, but through a quiet written statement released to the public. No fanfare. No podium. Just words…
- Paul TagliabuePaul Tagliabue was born on the 24th of November, 1940, in Jersey City, New Jersey, the third of four sons. He died on the 9th of November, 2025, at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, of heart failure and complications from Parkinson's…
- Landon DonovanLandon Donovan scored the only goal of the match in the dying seconds against Algeria at the 2010 FIFA World Cup, off a rebound from a Clint Dempsey attempt, sending the United States to first place in their group for the first time since…
- Bob CousyBob Cousy fell out of a tree as a teenager in Queens, New York, broke his right hand, and spent months forced to use his left. He described the accident as "a fortunate event." It made him ambidextrous. And ambidexterity, in the hands of a…
- George GervinGeorge Gervin scored 63 points in a single regular-season game while protecting a scoring title by the slimmest margin in NBA history: seven-hundredths of a point. That night in 1978, he sat out most of the second half once the math was…
- Chauncey BillupsChauncey Ray Billups was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024. The honor capped a 17-year playing career that included five All-Star selections, an NBA championship, and a Finals MVP award. Less than fourteen…
- Dolph SchayesAdolph Schayes practiced so relentlessly at New York University that his coach, Howard Cann, once said, "He was in the gym practicing every spare minute. We had to chase him out." That habit turned into a professional career spent entirely…
- Walt FrazierWalt Frazier posted 36 points, 19 assists, and six steals in the seventh game of the 1970 NBA Finals, while his teammate Willis Reed limped through just two minutes and four points before leaving the floor. That night at Madison Square…
- Lou FerrignoLou Ferrigno grew up in Brooklyn knowing he was different before he had words for why. By the time doctors diagnosed his hearing loss at age three, he had already lost 75 to 80 percent of his hearing to what he believes were a series of…
- Kareem Abdul-JabbarOn the road against Utah on the 5th of April 1984, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar caught a pass from Magic Johnson and rose into his skyhook from 15 feet. The ball arced over Mark Eaton, a 7 foot 4 inch shot-blocking specialist, and dropped through…
- Phil JacksonPhil Jackson holds eleven NBA championships as a head coach, a record no other coach in league history has matched. Born on the 17th of September, 1945, in Deer Lodge, Montana, he grew up in a household where dancing and television were…
- Rick BarryRick Barry holds a record that no other basketball player in history can claim. He is the only person ever to lead the NCAA, the ABA, and the NBA in scoring in a single season each. That triple crown places him in a category entirely…
- Artis GilmoreArtis Gilmore stood 7 feet 2 inches tall and played 670 consecutive professional basketball games without missing a single one. Born on the 21st of September, 1949, in Chipley, Florida, Gilmore grew up as one of 10 children in a family…
- Christian LaettnerChristian Laettner topped an ESPN fan poll as the most hated college basketball player in history. That vote came more than twenty years after he left Duke University. By then he already held a spot in multiple halls of fame and a…
- Ossie SchectmanOssie Schectman scored the first basket in what would become the NBA, and he did it on the 1st of November, 1946, in Toronto. The New York Knicks were playing the Toronto Huskies at Maple Leaf Gardens. Nobody in the building that night…
- George HalasGeorge Halas was running late in 1915, and that delay saved his life. He had planned to board the SS Eastland in Chicago but was trying to put on weight for Big Ten football. He never made it to the docks. The ship capsized, killing 844…
- George MikanGeorge Mikan stood six feet ten inches tall, weighed 245 pounds, and wore thick round spectacles , and he single-handedly forced professional basketball to rewrite its own rules. Born on the 18th of June 1924, in Joliet, Illinois, Mikan…
- Gregg PopovichGregg Popovich was born on the 28th of January 1949 in East Chicago, Indiana, the son of a Serbian father and a Croatian mother. Decades later, a group of scientists would name a plant gene after him. The gene, discovered in columbine…
- Pete MaravichPete Maravich died on the 5th of January 1988, midway through a pickup basketball game at a church gym in Pasadena, California. He was 40 years old. Less than a minute before he collapsed, he told the group he was playing with, which…
- Red AuerbachRed Auerbach lit a cigar on the bench while the game was still being played. It was his signal to the opposing team, to the crowd, to anyone watching: this one is over. The habit became so iconic that Boston restaurants in the 1960s posted…
- Wat MisakaWat Misaka stood five feet seven inches tall and played point guard, and in 1947 he walked onto an NBA floor before any other non-white player had ever done so. His name is Wataru Misaka, and in the same year Jackie Robinson broke…
- Andrei KirilenkoAndrei Kirilenko was born on the 18th of February 1981 in Izhevsk, a Soviet industrial city whose most famous export was a rifle. That coincidence would become the foundation of one of the most memorable nicknames in basketball history:…
- Charley RosenCharley Rosen grew up in The Bronx with a body built for basketball and a mind built for argument. By the time he died in Kingston, New York, on the 13th of September 2025, he had filled more than two dozen books with his knowledge of the…
- Damon JonesDamon Jones once told anyone who would listen that he was "the best shooter in the world." Not one of the best. Not among the best. The best. For a player who went undrafted in 1997 and spent years bouncing through ten different…
- Earl LloydEarl Francis Lloyd stepped onto a basketball court on the night of the 31st of October 1950, and changed American sports history. He was twenty-two years old, a 6-foot-5 forward drafted by the Washington Capitols in the ninth round of the…
- Harold Hunter (basketball)Harold Hunter signed his name to a contract on the 26th of April 1950, and in doing so became the first African American to sign a professional deal with an NBA team. The Washington Capitols drafted him the day before. He was a guard, a…
- Julius ErvingJulius Winfield Erving II was born on the 22nd of February, 1950, in East Meadow, Long Island, and by the time he retired in 1987, he had scored more than 30,000 points across two professional leagues and reshaped what a basketball player…