Curated playlist
American 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…
- LeBron JamesLeBron Raymonde James Sr. was born on the 30th of December 1984, at Cleveland Clinic Akron General, to a 16-year-old mother named Gloria Marie James. His father was not involved in his life. The family moved through the run-down…
- 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…
- 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…
- Joel EmbiidJoel Embiid scored 70 points on the 22nd of January 2024, breaking a franchise record that had stood since Wilt Chamberlain set it in 1967. He did it in a regular-season game against the San Antonio Spurs, finishing with 70 points, 18…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- Tony ParkerTony Parker walked into the San Antonio Spurs' summer camp before the 2001 NBA draft as an unknown teenager from France. Coach Gregg Popovich watched him struggle against a scout named Lance Blanks, and after just 10 minutes, Popovich was…
- 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…
- Moses MaloneMoses Eugene Malone Sr. grew up in Petersburg, Virginia as an only child, raised almost entirely by his mother Mary, who had left school after the fifth grade. She worked to give him a life she never had. He repaid her by becoming one of…
- 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…
- 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…
- Klay ThompsonKlay Alexander Thompson was born on the 8th of February 1990, the son of Mychal Thompson, the first overall pick of the 1978 NBA draft. That lineage would shape everything about who Klay became. But it didn't guarantee anything. What Klay…
- Kyrie IrvingKyrie Andrew Irving was born on the 23rd of March 1992 in Melbourne, Australia, the son of two American expatriates who had followed basketball to the other side of the world. His father, Drederick Irving, had played college ball at Boston…
- 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.…
- 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…
- 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…
- Al CerviAl Cervi earned the nickname "Digger" not for anything gentle, but for the way he dug into opponents on defense. Born on the 12th of February 1917 in Buffalo, New York, Cervi spent decades as one of the hardest-nosed backcourt players in…
- 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…
- Michael CrichtonMichael Crichton stood 6 feet 9 inches tall, and he spent much of his life feeling out of place because of it. That restlessness never left him. It pushed him through Harvard's English department and into biological anthropology, through…
- 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…
- Big Three (Miami Heat)The Miami Heat's Big Three announced themselves to the world on the night of the 3rd of January 2011, when LeBron James, fresh off a road win over the Charlotte Bobcats, grabbed the microphone and compared his new trio to the most famous…
- 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,…
- 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…
- Terry RozierTerry William Rozier III carries a nickname meant to unsettle opponents: Scary Terry. In the fall of 2025, though, it was the Federal Bureau of Investigation studying his next move, not an opposing defender. He had built a long NBA career…
- 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…
- Edwin HubbleEdwin Hubble grew up in Marshfield, Missouri, known more for his athletic prowess than his intellect, a boy who won seven first places and a third in a single high school track meet in 1906. He earned good grades in every subject except…
- 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…
- 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…