Curated playlist
All-American college men's basketball players
- Kevin DurantKevin Durant was born on the 29th of September 1988 in Washington, D.C., and grew up dreaming of one day playing for his favorite team, the Toronto Raptors, and his favorite player, Vince Carter. Few childhood sports fantasies have…
- Dwyane WadeDwyane Wade grew up on the South Side of Chicago, where he described his early childhood as "trying." His mother, JoLinda, struggled with drug addiction and cycled in and out of prison. When Wade was eight years old, his older sister…
- 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…
- 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…
- Stephen CurryStephen Curry was born on the 14th of March, 1988, at Akron General Medical Center in Ohio, and grew up shooting baskets on a backyard court in Charlotte with his younger brother Seth. Nobody could have predicted that the slender kid who…
- 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…
- Kawhi LeonardKawhi Leonard hit a shot on the 12th of May, 2019, that bounced off the rim four times before falling. Game 7. Eastern Conference semifinals. The Toronto Raptors down one with under a second left. As the ball rattled in, Leonard let out a…
- 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…
- 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…
- Kevin LoveKevin Love's uncle is Mike Love, a co-founder of the Beach Boys. His cousins Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, and Dennis Wilson were also founding members of the same group. Love was born on the 7th of September 1988, in Santa Monica,…
- Michael JordanMichael Jeffrey Jordan was born on the 17th of February 1963, in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, and before he was done, he would hold every scoring record that mattered in professional basketball. But the numbers alone miss the…
- 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…
- 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…
- Shaquille O'NealShaquille Rashaun O'Neal was born on the 6th of March, 1972, in Newark, New Jersey, to a mother named Lucille and a biological father, Joe Toney, who would vanish from his life before it had barely begun. Toney was imprisoned for drug…
- Andrew WigginsAndrew Wiggins shattered a glass backboard at the Dufferin Clark Community Centre in Vaughan, Ontario, when he was 14 years old. That moment captures something essential about his trajectory: a teenager with so much physical force that the…
- Wilt ChamberlainWilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single game. Not in a pickup game, not in some forgotten exhibition. On the 2nd of March 1962, on a neutral court in Hershey, Pennsylvania, against the New York Knicks, a man who stood 7 feet 1 inch…
- 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…
- 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…
- Dan IsselDan Issel grew up in Batavia, Illinois, with a backyard that touched his friend Ken Anderson's backyard. Anderson went on to become an NFL quarterback and the 1981 Most Valuable Player of the entire league. Another kid in that same circle…
- Dikembe MutomboDikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo arrived in Washington, D.C. in 1987 speaking almost no English. He had grown up in Kinshasa, attended Boboto College to prepare for a medical career, and spoke French, Spanish,…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- Andrew BogutAndrew Bogut stood seven feet tall, and on the 28th of November 1984, he was born in Melbourne to Croatian immigrants who had arrived in Australia in the 1970s. At fifteen, he was cut from the Victoria junior state representative team.…
- 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…
- Ben SimmonsBen Simmons arrived at the 2016 NBA draft carrying the weight of the highest expectation the league can bestow: the first overall pick. He was twenty years old, born in Fitzroy, Melbourne, the son of a man who had played professionally in…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- Detlef SchrempfDetlef Schrempf was born on the 21st of January, 1963, in Leverkusen, West Germany. He made his way to the United States as a teenager. Dallas selected him eighth overall in the 1985 NBA draft. The 16 seasons that followed brought him to…
- Joakim NoahJoakim Simon Noah was born in New York on the 25th of February, 1985. He played professional basketball for more than a decade. Though most of his career unfolded in the United States, he wore the colors of the France national team. At the…