Elgin Baylor — an NBA legend and former star of the Los Angeles Lakers — once brought the future of basketball to Idaho, before changing the game nationwide, Defector reports.
Baylor left Washington, D.C., to play basketball at the College of Idaho in the all-white town of Caldwell, Idaho.
- “The integrated team, led by the dominating freshman who’d eventually get credit for changing the way basketball was played, went on to have the best season in school history,” according to Defector.
Multiple people associated with the team talked about Baylor to Defector, explaining how successful he was at his Idaho college.
And it was Baylor’s friend Warren “W.W.” Williams who encouraged him to play in Idaho, according to Defector.
- “W.W. says, ‘Come out to Idaho!’” Baylor said, according to Defector. “So I say, ‘Where’s Idaho?’”
Head over to Defector to read the entire piece about Baylor’s experience in Idaho.
Elgin Baylor almost ended up in Utah
Baylor was the coach of the New Orleans Jazz when they moved out to Utah. He even coached Pete Maravich.
“He had been fired as the team’s coach and never found his way to the Rockies. That was a shame, even though he had retired as a player,” Brad Rock wrote for Deseret.com. “He was the original sky pilot. Connie Hawkins, Julius Erving and Michael Jordan followed in his slipstream.”