Elvin Hayes

• 1. Introduction

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  Elvin 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, and it ended a 47-game UCLA winning streak. The man who made it happen was a kid from Rayville, Louisiana, who had never imagined playing for a major university. How Hayes got to that court, how he survived the turbulence of a long professional career, and how he closed out his playing days as a champion with 50,000 minutes to his name are the threads this documentary follows.

• 2. Rayville to Houston

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  Guy Lewis, the basketball coach at the University of Houston, had never heard of Elvin Hayes. It was Isaac Morehead, an African American coach at Texas Southern University, who pointed Lewis toward the young player from Rayville, Louisiana. Morehead was worried Hayes might stay close to home and sign with Grambling State or Southern University, both rivals in Texas Southern's conference. Lewis sent his assistant, Harvey Pate, to Rayville. Pate came back with a simple verdict: Hayes was the best high school player he had ever seen.

  Hayes and Don Chaney, who was from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, became the University of Houston's first African American basketball players in 1964. Before any of that, in his senior year at Britton High School, Hayes had led his team to the state championship by averaging 35 points a game in the regular season. In the title game itself, he scored 45 points and grabbed 20 rebounds. He arrived in Houston already carrying the weight of expectations.

• 3. The Game of the Century

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  Hayes averaged 31.0 points per game and 17.2 rebounds per game across his college career, and he led the Houston Cougars in scoring every one of his three varsity seasons: 27.2 points per game in 1966-28.4 in 1967, and 36.8 in his final year. None of those numbers, however, tells the story of the 20th of January 1968, as well as the simple scoreline does: Houston 71, UCLA 69.

  Alcindor had a serious eye injury going into that game, though he later credited Houston with the win, saying it came down to poor play against a better team. Hayes scored 39, collected 15 rebounds, and made Alcindor look mortal. The performance earned Hayes The Sporting News College Basketball Player of the Year award. His record of 222 rebounds in NCAA tournament play still stands as the all-time mark.

  The rematch came in the 1968 NCAA Tournament at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. UCLA coach John Wooden answered with a triangle-and-two zone defense, placing Alcindor behind Hayes and Lynn Shackleford in front of him. Hayes managed just 10 points and Houston lost 101-69. His college career ended that way: one transcendent night followed by a tactical dismantling. He finished as a fraternity brother of Calvin Murphy, another future Hall of Famer, through the Alpha Nu Omega chapter of Iota Phi Theta at Houston.

• 4. Rocket Fuel and Friction

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  Hayes entered the NBA as the first overall pick of the 1968 draft, chosen by the San Diego Rockets. The Houston Mavericks of the ABA also drafted him first, but Hayes chose the NBA. His debut season left little room for debate about the decision. He averaged 28.4 points per game to lead the entire league in scoring, making him the last rookie ever to accomplish that. He also grabbed 17.1 rebounds per game. On the 11th of November, 1968, he scored a career-high 54 points against the Detroit Pistons.

  In his second season, Hayes led the NBA in rebounding. He was the first player other than Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain to lead that category since 1957, a year when Chamberlain had missed much of the season through injury. Hayes averaged at least 25 points per game in each of his first four professional seasons. Then the friction started.

  Forward Don Kojis asked for a trade rather than continue playing under owner Bob Breitbard. Coach Alex Hannum called Hayes spoiled. When the Rockets relocated to Houston in 1971, a homecoming of sorts, the new coach Tex Winter tried to remake Hayes as a passing center. It did not work. Hayes was traded to the Baltimore Bullets on the 23rd of June, 1972, in exchange for Jack Marin and undisclosed considerations.

• 5. The Bullets Years

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  During the franchise's lone season as the Capital Bullets in 1974, Hayes put up postseason career-bests of 25.9 points and 15.9 rebounds per game in a 4-3 first-round series loss to the New York Knicks. That loss is a small footnote against what came next. Paired with co-star Wes Unseld, and later reinforced by the addition of Bob Dandridge, Hayes helped carry Washington to three NBA Finals appearances in 1975, 1978, and 1979.

  The 1978 championship run was Hayes at the height of his powers. He averaged 21.8 points and 12.1 rebounds per game across 21 playoff games. He scored more points than any other player in that entire postseason. In the Finals against the Seattle SuperSonics, he again led all scorers and finished second in rebounds as Washington won Game 7 to claim the franchise's only championship. Earlier that same season, on the 3rd of March, 1978, Hayes had set a personal best with 11 blocks in one game, a performance in which he also scored 22 points and hauled down 27 rebounds in a 124-108 win over the Detroit Pistons.

  On the 27th of May, 1979, in a Finals game again against the SuperSonics, Hayes pulled down 11 offensive rebounds in a single contest, setting an NBA Finals record. Dennis Rodman of the Chicago Bulls tied that mark twice in the 1996 NBA Finals, also against Seattle, but no one has surpassed it.

• 6. Final Seasons and Legacy

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  Hayes wanted to finish his career in Texas. On the 8th of June, 1981, Washington sent him back to the Houston Rockets in exchange for second-round picks in 1981 and 1983, the rights to Charles Davis and Sidney Lowe. He played three more seasons before retiring in 1984.

  Over 1,303 games and 16 seasons, Hayes scored 27,313 points, twelfth on the all-time list, and collected 16,279 rebounds, fourth all-time. He is still the all-time leading scorer in Washington Bullets/Wizards history. He retired holding the NBA record for total regular-season minutes played, at exactly 50,000. He never missed more than two games in any single season of those 16 years, sitting out a total of only nine games across his entire career. His 12 straight All-Star Game appearances ran from 1969 through 1980.

  Hayes was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1990. He boycotted the induction ceremony, however, and refused to participate until his college coach Guy Lewis was also admitted. In 1996 he was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History, and in 2021 he was voted to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team. The Houston Rockets retired his number 44 jersey on the 18th of November, 2022.

• 7. The Man Off the Court

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  Shortly after his playing career ended, Hayes went back to the University of Houston to complete the last 30 credit hours of his undergraduate degree. He said of the experience: "I played 16 years of pro basketball, but this is the hardest thing I've ever done."

  Raised as a Methodist, Hayes converted to Catholicism in the 1970s. During a period of religious uncertainty, he attended a Pentecostal service with his wife, then spent days alone with the Bible before describing an encounter with the holy spirit. In November 2007, he was sworn in as a Liberty County, Texas, sheriff's deputy, a role he had wanted since childhood. On the 22nd of November, 2010, it was announced that he would join the broadcast team for Houston Cougars games on Houston's KBME as a radio analyst.

  Hayes is the younger brother of Bunny Greenhouse, who served as chief contracting officer for the US Army Corps of Engineers before becoming a prominent whistleblower. Two careers, two ways of holding institutions accountable.