GOAT
SPENCER HAYWOOD
Put some respeck on his name
Real Talk
The Kitchen (Women’s Sports Section)
Real Talk From The Editor
This issue comes out on an extraordinary and important day to me, as a Lakers fan and as a sports fan in general. August 24th, affectionately known as Kobe Day, has more meaning than it did five years ago. It should not be like that for many reasons but it is.
Most of the stories in this volume have a nod to Kobe in some way. Especially the cover story which, if it weren’t for Spencer, we don’t know Kobe, the basketball player, the way we do now. Thanks to his bold pioneer work in winning an antitrust suit against the NBA led the way for young men to enter the NBA out of high school or a year removed from college instead of having to wait for four years.
In the four years after his retirement, Kobe showed respect and an affinity for women’s sports, specifically basketball. It was no secret that GiGi was in line to start her own journey in basketball and even carry on the Bryant name in sports. They would both attend WNBA and NBA games, workout together and Kobe was the coach of GiGi’s AAU team.
And like Ali, there are those that consider Kobe the greatest. And like Deion, Kobe certainly impacted the culture. Just ask 12-year-old to 14-year-old me with my afro that I grew out. It wasn’t because I liked the 1970s y’all.
Lastly, in a post-Kobe world, various clips of his inspirational and motivational quotes have become a social media staple. There have also been many interpretations of what Mamba Mentality is. To me, it is perseverance, determination, grit, resolve, the right amount of stubbornness, and a dash of I-don’t-give-fuck.
In regards to this magazine, we embody that. We’re blazing our own trail in the world of journalism. We’re starting from scratch in terms of getting our name out there. Gaining followers and subscribers. Fighting for space in people’s minds and their line of sight. One day we won’t have to do that and people will know who we are. And you can tell them that you believed from the beginning. Appreciate you.
Oh, and shout out to Jesse Owens.
GOAT THE MAGAZINE
Publishers Andre Brown & Joseph Lee
Editor-In-Chief Andre Brown
Creative Director Andre Brown & Joseph Lee
Writers Andre Brown & Britney Collins
Advertising Joseph Lee For Media Inquiries, Advertising Opportunties, Subscription Options please contact us at info@goatthemag.com
Photo/Image Credits: Lawrence Shiller, New York Tech, Flip Shulke, Associated Press, USA Today, WGN-TV, Darren Abate, Amino Apps, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Greig Kriendler, Doug Mills, Paul K. Buck, Atlanta Falcons, Otto Bettmann, Lou Williams, The Spokesman-Review
GOAT The Mag is published six times per year (June, August, October, December, February and April). GOAT The Magazine is a subsidiary of GOAT Media. Any opinions expressed in The Mag are those of the writers and necessarily GOAT Media.
A League Of Their Own
Words by Britney Collins
When a woman ages out of their playing days, they typically go into coaching. It’s an eventual pathway for many athletes, especially in basketball, who desire to stay connected to their sport and inspire the next generation.
But why do they have to venture into the men's game to be considered successful after they hang up their jerseys? Why is it that we only deem their coaching career successful if they can get a crack at the men’s game? And why, if this is what it takes to prove they’ve “made it”, why hasn’t the NBA or NFL or any other professional men’s team stepped up to make sure women get a fair shot at being a head coach?
They aren’t ready. Society is not ready. And I sincerely doubt they’ll ever be ready in the world of sport. Don’t get me wrong, there are women coaches in male leagues. Alyssa Nakken (San Francisco Giants), LLindsey Harding (Los Angeles Lakers), Jennifer King (Chicago Bears), and Jessica Campbell (Seattle Kraken) are all examples of this. However, that’s where it seems to stop. At assistant.
Becky Hammon and Theresa Weatherspoon. Two perfect examples of women who have all the tools to be great head coaches in the NBA and yet are consistently passed up as the league would rather pull from their endless carousel of both failed and successful coaches.
They’ll fire one coach and will interview women as a courtesy. They don’t seriously consider them to be able to lead a team of men. They patronize them, make it a headline that they’re a “front runner”, and then eventually they fail to challenge the status quo.
In May, addressing this very issue, Hammon said, “A lot of times people are scared to do something that’s never been done before, so it’s going to have to take a special group of leadership and ownership to pull the trigger kind of. Not that I don’t think it can’t be done, I think it can be done.”
Becky Hammon was a successful assistant coach from 2014-2022 in the NBA, being named Gregg Popovich’s first assistant when Ime Udoka was hired by the Boston Celtics and even serving as acting head coach when Pop got ejected in a game.
Of Becky, Pop said, "She's special because she's Becky, the same reasons why I hired her.”
He continued, stating, "She's a competitive, competitive coach. She understands the game. She's great with relationships. She suffers no fools. She's fun to be around. What else could you ask." Are those characteristics not enough for the NBA to finally pull the trigger? What more does Becky have to do?
As a woman, those characteristics will not automatically qualify you for a position you may deserve. It’ll afford you a few glances from NBA franchises wanting to go in a new direction. This is what Hammon has received in the form of multiple interviews and a few headlines.
Hammon made the jump back home to the WNBA and has proven to be a demanding coach who can manage the personalities of superstars to win back-to-back championships. She’s made A’ja Wilson into an MVP and Defensive Player of the Year. She’s made Jackie Young a superstar. Maybe…she should start a podcast? It was all JJ Redick had to do to get hired by the Lakers.
Theresa Weatherspoon, who Zion Williamson credited his most healthy and productive season to date, served as an assistant coach with the New Orleans Pelicans. With them, she showed her penchant for connecting with the league’s budding superstar. Now getting her head coaching shot with the Chicago Sky, she took a huge risk signing Chennedy Carter, a player who was a star at Texas A&M but could not quite get her ego in check to shine in her first couple of years in the WNBA.
If it wasn’t fighting with teammates in Atlanta, it was not getting along with coaches on the Sparks, leading to her eventual benching and being ousted from the league, forced to spend a year overseas. Weatherspoon invited her to training camp and has proven to be the person Chennedy has needed to bring out her full potential in a season where she should, undoubtedly, win Most Improved Player AND Comeback Player of the Year. In a year when the Sky was predicted to be in rebuild mode, they sit a game outside the playoffs.
screenshots courtesy of USA Today
In fact, I am more inclined now to celebrate you more if your dream is to continue to help build a superior league of our own. Maybe it sounds selfish. But I want women in coaching to now realize their home is where their heart is and that’s with the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association), NWSL (National Women’s Soccer League), PWHL (Professional Women’s Hockey League), and other women's leagues around the world that are on the rise.
The four major male professional sports leagues in the U.S. are already established. You can identify legendary players and coaches from each league. It would be nice for women to be a part of that. But growing their own leagues are even better. I don’t hear people saying men need to coach in the WNBA, the NWSL, or the PWHL to give themselves credibility.
Women working in male dominated sports leagues is fine and equal. But the indirect narrative that women coaches can only enhance their careers on the backs of men is absurd. No need to water someone’s grass when yours needs to grow and you are fully capable of doing it yourself.
What if...Ali never had his career interrupted?
Let’s be clear, Muhammad Ali never went to prison. But his career WAS stalled unjustly.
On June 20, 1967, Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston, Texas for refusing induction into the U.S. Armed Forces to go fight in the Vietnam War. This was a landmark moment in American history and in the micro, just as huge of a moment in sports history. An athlete who was on top of his sport, the world heavyweight champion in boxing, put all that he worked for in his career to the side to stand for his personal values? AND those personal values spit in the face of the U.S. government? AND the one doing the spitting is a Black man? Maaannnnnnn.
Due to the conviction, Ali immediately lost his world title and at age 25, his career seemed to be over. Now he wasn’t actually in prison because he was actively fighting the conviction in appeals court for four years but a part of him was gone. Ali did use the “time off” however, to engage in speaking engagements across the country criticizing the Vietnam War and speaking about Black pride.
In August 1970, Ali officially returned to the ring in Atlanta but his conviction would not be fully overturned until 1971 when he could fully resume his boxing career. We all know about the impact that Ali’s bold choice had on society, athlete activism, and the perception of him as a human. But, what if Ali never had his career paused and he was able to fulfill his age 25 to 29 years as a boxer?
Muhammad Ali was sitting with a 29-0 record when he was convicted of military draft evasion. There is no reason to think that he wouldn’t stay undefeated for a long while before his eventful collision course with Joe Frazier. Facing top heavyweights like Ingemar Johansson, Eddie Machen, and Doug Jones in the subsequent years would bring that record to 32-0. That eventual fight against Frazier still might happen in 1971, what would be different however is Ali wouldn’t have been away from boxing for 3-4 years.
So we get a new Fight of the Century between Ali and Frazier with both fighters coming in undefeated AND active. Ali takes the first fight in Madison Square Garden in front of Frank Lucas nem. Yes, in THAT coat. After claiming heavyweight supremacy, the whispers of whether Ali could actually go undefeated in his career began. There isn’t a boxer on the horizon that looks to give Ali any competition until the rumblings about a man from Houston, Texas who is also undefeated and running through the division.
George Foreman and Muhammad Ali are on a fast track to a collision course which happens in Jamaica in 1973. Foreman does the unthinkable and knocks out Ali which is a “you wouldn’t believe it unless you saw it” moment. Then, Frazier, who wants his lick back, outpoints Ali in a rematch leaving fans to wonder if this is it for his career.
And it certainly is nowhere near being over. Ali completes two separate trilogies with Frazier and Foreman with wins, one against Frazier and two consecutive against Foreman. Closing out both legendary trilogies in a dominant fashion solidified Ali’s career in the ring. But his boxing career is not the only component of his life impacted if he never gets convicted of dodging the U.S. military draft.
The impact of Muhammad Ali standing on business, refusing to fight in the Vietnam War, and being willing to sacrifice his career has had a ripple effect on athlete activism for decades after he took a stand. He certainly was not the first athlete to engage in activism nor was he obviously the last. He certainly was the biggest name though, up to that point, and taking on the U.S. government put him on a national platform unlike any other. Ali is consistently used as the prime example of athlete activism in the post-1967 world.
But if he never gets drafted by the U.S. government to go and fight in the Vietnam War, is Muhammad Ali still held in high regard in terms of being known as an activist and a man who stood up for what he believed in? I know this is a “what if” and I am supposed to leave that as an open-ended question for you, the reader. However, in short, the answer to that question is HELL. YEAH.
Remember that Ali was born as Cassius Clay. He joined the Nation of Islam in 1961 and became Muhammad Ali in 1964. The Nation of Islam was seen, and in some ways still is seen, as a radical white American-hating religious cult. So anyone joining the religion in the 1960s was seen as people who felt that way.
Famous members during that time had to consistently defend their decision to join Islam because the majority of society was uneducated about the religion. Ali may not have had a Cleveland Summit moment or a protest against war and the U.S. government in an alternate life. As the first prominent athlete to convert to Islam and having Malcolm X as his spiritual and political advisor, you can safely assume that Ali would have been a huge spokesperson for the Muslim community within the sports world.
Perhaps his known moment is him staying in the locker room while the National Anthem is being sung before a fight. Maybe the Nation of Islam walks him out to the ring. He could have said something similarly controversial about JFK after his assassination like Malcolm did. Or he just plain and simple spoke out about the liberation of Black people whenever he could.
But instead of being defined by one singular moment, Ali would have been known for the body of his work in and out of the ring. So without a doubt, his iconic nickname, The Greatest would have still been fitting. Everything does happen for a reason though but it is always fun to wonder, what if…
TrueIntegration
It only took 74 years but Major League Baseball finally decided to truly intergrate the Negro Leagues beyond the field. How nice of them.
On April 15th, 1947, the segregation in Major League Baseball officially ended with Jackie Robinson stepping onto the playing field as a Brooklyn Dodger. It’s a move that forever changed Major League Baseball as Black players could finally compete with white players on an equal playing field—pun kind of intended.
Post-integration, the game got Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Larry Doby, Frank Robinson and so many others to add amazing plays, moments, and stats to the game. Soon after, Afro-Latino players start to join the majors as well and you think to yourself, “Damn, integration really worked out!” And maybe it did on the baseball diamond. When it came to MLB career stats, segregation was very much still alive.
Statistics are the foundation of sports. It lets you know in black and white how well, how great, how trash, how average a player was on any level. The saying goes, “Men lie, women lie, numbers don’t”. Arguing with anyone about how great any athlete is is going to come back to stats. It shouldn’t be the end all, be all in sports arguments but it is a huge factor.
Of all the four major sports leagues in America, MLB is the oldest one. The league turns 125 this year. Statistics have been rooted for decades in the majors and have been a starting point for arguing who are the best players to ever step on a baseball diamond. While Black players have been put in the “GOAT” conversation, a lot of purists commonly put a lot of white players in the best-of-all-time category simply based on their stats and how high they sit in various categories.
IOn December 2020, MLB decided to finally incorporate Negro League stats into the hallowed record books by putting together a 15-person team of researchers to get the numbers fully accurate. This was a historical and long overdue decision and undertaking by MLB.
Top picture: a portrait of Satchel Paige (on the left) and Josh Gibson
Bottom picture from L-R: Connie Morgan, Ernie Banks, Jackie Robinson, Minnie Minoso, Rube Foster
both portraits by Graig Kreindler
For decades, there have been calls for statistics from the Negro Leagues era to be a part of Major League Baseball’s statistics. Ironically, nearly a century since the Negro League went under, they are still looking for proper and true integration.
Undergoing this process seemed damn near impossible. Looking for proof of games played that none of the committee saw live and the tracked stats were far and few in between is a monumental task. Do you know what else is a monumental task? Potentially replacing some of baseball’s white great players in the record books after decades of “it just being that way”.
There are a lot of baseball fans who love the game for the game and all that comes with it. They love home runs as much as they love a sacrifice fly. They sing “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” after every 7th inning. They put on for their squad whether they’re in first place, last place, or fighting for a wild card spot.
Then there are the fans who love baseball for those same reasons but also, because their white heroes remain firmly entrenched atop “America’s Pastime” in the record books. De-segregating the majors? Fine. But saying Josh Gibson is statistically better than Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth? Based on some research?! Nah they aren’t and won’t be okay with that.
Even though integration of records is common with Major League Baseball in 1969, the Special Baseball Records Committee decided to acknowledge six separate baseball leagues as major leagues; the National League (est. 1876), the American League (est. 1901), the American Association (1882-1891), the Players’ League (est. 1890), Union Association (est. 1884), and Federal League (1914-1915).
One of the leagues not accepted was the Negro Leagues. And why didn’t the committee made up all of white men approve of them? Allegedly, because their scheduling and procedures were erratic. The National Association (of Professional Baseball Players) which ran from 1871-1875, had the same concerns. And what did they get for that? Still being recognized as the first professional baseball league, regardless. It must be nice.
So from 1969 to 2020, the Major League Baseball record books combined six major leagues' statistics. There isn’t a record of anyone being upset about this landmark integration or questioning the validity of the players’ stats. It is as if the earth kept spinning and life went on.
From December 17, 2020 to May 28th, 2024, you heard nothing about how the research was going, how much progress was made, nothing. Then on May 29th, 2024, news broke that forever changed Major League Baseball. The first set of findings came back and statistics from the Negro Leagues were officially incorporated into the MLB database. Immediate changes were made to baseball history.
And immediate ignorant reactions followed. Now MLB was “woke” (yes, I rolled my eyes too), Negro Leagues stats don’t count all of a sudden, and history was being rewritten �� When Black people are invited to the party, rightfully so, it usually pisses people off. But who the hell cares. At long last, the great baseball players of the Negro Leagues are in the record books whether bigots or myopic people like it or not.
We aren't having this discussion if Josh Gibson, a Black man, was not first in certain major categories. But he is and here we are. And what makes it even better is only 75% of the stats have been confirmed so we still have more action, baby!
After decades of pretending like the Negro Leagues didn’t exist, were less than, and played glorified exhibition games, the LEGIT baseball league finally gets truly and fully integrated into MLB with their legacy being solidified forever.
Culture Diary feat. Deion Sanders
Dear Deion,
I honestly don’t know where to begin, bro. You have impacted the culture for the last 40 years in so many ways by simply being you! There aren’t many Black athletes that can say they have been relevant over multiple decades and generations but you damn sure can. Your on-the-field accolades are great but it’s your culture resume that resonates the most with me.
Having a career in the NFL and MLB simultaneously, branding yourself with a nickname in college before anyone was doing that, showing up to the NFL Draft with that shit ON with the Jheri curl that looked wet but it was dry, having MC Hammer on the sideline during your Falcons days, the “Must Be The Money” video, high stepping into the endzone, playing both corner and wide receiver, turning around Jackson State and making Colorado relevant again, and you’re not known as Coach Sanders instead you’re known as Coach Prime.
You’re the reason I wanted to play football (my mom shut down that dream for health concerns) and the same positions and why I wore the number 21 whenever I could in sports. America cannot stand brash, confident, self-assured Black men. We piss them off. We’re not supposed to hold our heads high. When we do it, we are arrogant and selfcentered and only look out for ourselves. That’s a stigma you have been battling for decades and still, you have smiled despite it and spoken about how blessed you are throughout.
And then, I have to bring up the legendary Deion/Bo game. You have the 30 For 30 documentary about when you suited up to play for the Falcons and Braves on the same day. This game though? Two of the preeminent dual sports stars of the time, were in the lineup, fully healthy ready to put on a show and y’all did that. Bo brought out the worldclass power with 3 home runs, you brought out the world-class speed with an inside-thepark home run punctuated by the iconic evading of the Royals catcher to be safe.
Lastly, the style, the drip. There is this iconic quote from a certain someone who said, “If you look good, you feel good, If you feel good, you play good, If you play good, they pay good.” You took that quote to heart! The clean suits, the legendary bandana, and you laying out your uniform on game day. Prime, I appreciate your impact on the culture, hell, we all do!
With admiration,
Dre
Top picture (courtesy of Doug Mills): A fully kitted-out Benz golf cart. Swag on a milli.
Bottom (courtesy of Paul K. Buck): You see the windbreaker and the block celly. Nuff said.
The Forgotten Pioneer
Spencer Haywood’s name and story seemed to have gotten lost in history. And that’s not a coincidence.
Words by Andre Brown
There are a lot of well-known sports figures who have transcended the sport they play for what they have stood for. Some are superstars and icons whose names you know immediately. Such as Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Venus Williams, and Arthur Ashe. Then there the athletes who may be lesser known everywhere but they are just as important. Like Colin Kaepernick, Curt Flood, and Rose Robinson.
There always seems to be one athlete missing from all these groupings. Someone whose name you may have heard in passing but didn’t know the whole story. And like his activist peers, all he wanted to do was play. He wasn’t trying to make waves or change the game, he just wanted to play basketball which is something he was DAMN good at.
But as Spencer Haywood says in his Hall of Fame induction speech in 2015, “I had game! It’s not like I just did this Supreme Court thing, I had game!” And he didn’t tell a damn lie.
Born in 1949 in Silver City, Mississippi, a town with a population at the time of 300, to his mother, who was a sharecropper, Spencer, and his family grew up picking cotton to survive. At 15, the family moved to Detroit, Michigan and Haywood attended Perishing High School. A high school that actually has an extensive alumni list; former NBA greats Steve Smith and Kevin Willis and music legends J Dilla, and Slum Village.
Haywood was a hot recruit in the summer of 1967 and had UCLA, USC, Bowling Green, and Air Force wanting his talents. Word on the street was that he was gonna follow his high school coach, Will Robinson to the University of Detroit. But Haywood wanted to make a social statement and did so by declaring to the University of Tennessee where he would become the first Black athlete in the entire Southeastern Conference.
Unfortunately, academics got in the way of him making history and he made his way to Trinidad State Junior College in Colorado. He started as a freshman and averaged 28 points and 22 rebounds. Yes. Those numbers are correct. Stats were so damn good, he was invited to be on the 1968 U.S. Olympic men’s team! From junior college, y’all! And his basketball journey began.
After leading the Olympic team in scoring, Haywood went to the University of Detroit and balled the fuck out. The averages? 32 points per game and 21 rebounds per game. YES. However, after some coaching changes and controversies, Spencer decided enough was enough and wanted to see about pro ball with the ABA (American Basketball Association) or NBA. Problem is, during that time athletes couldn’t enter either league until they were removed from high school for four years. And his unforeseen activism journey began.
As Haywood weighs his options, someone else thinks about a way to change things up. Spencer gets a lot of credit, and rightfully so, for leading the charge in doing away with the four-year rule. Steve Arnold, a New York businessman who worked for the ABA, also confronted the league about the asinine rule.
And then Arnold came up with a great loophole for potential early entrants into the ABA and it was called the Hardship Clause. It was a rule that you would sign underclassmen who grew up poor and needed the money that the league would give, via contracts, to help out their families.
Enter Spencer. He was the perfect athlete at the right time for the Hardship Clause and with the ABA approving it, Haywood was signed to a three-year contract for $50K with the Denver Rockets (now Nuggets) at 20 years old. And the NBA and NCAA were thrilled about it! They were so happy about this! Okay, they were a tad irritated. A little unhappy. Nah they were straight out pissed, thought the sky was falling and that civilization would cease to exist!
While everyone was being overly dramatic about young Black men getting paid, Haywood was just playing the game he loved. How’d he do in his rookie year, you ask? He was aight. Let’s see, he averaged 30 ppg, 19.5 rpg, won the league’s MVP and Rookie of the Year, and the ABA All-Star Game MVP. Safe to say, he popped out and showed…..nah never mind. But you get it.
Then a funny chain of events happened! Not actually funny like ha-ha but like “Are you shitting me?” type funny. Anyway, so Spencer found out about shady contract practices from Denver, told them he was out, and signed with the Seattle SuperSonics of the NBA on a six-year $1.5 million deal and uh, the shit hit the fan y’all.
Denver said Haywood violated his contract, Haywood said his contract was a violation in general (not a direct quote), then the NBA wouldn’t recognize Haywood as a legal player because he had not been out of high school for four years at this point, he barely played for Seattle and when he did, he was booed, pelted with trash from fans, and some public announcers would call him an “illegal player” on the mic.
Haywood didn’t kill anybody, steal anything, hurt anyone, or take a strong or controversial political stance. He wanted to play basketball. And just because he didn’t wait four years after he graduated high school to do so, this was the reaction he was getting. Shameful. So the NBA sued him, and he countersued claiming the league violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and it was ON.
Haywood at his Seattle SuperSonics jersey retirement ceremony at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.
Photo courtesy of Sonics Rising
On January 6th, 1971, Los Angeles District County Judge Warren Ferguson issued a temporary restraining order against the NBA, meaning Haywood could play. And the ensuing actions resembled a game of tug-of-war. There were rulings, petitions filed, regulations lifted, and so much more over a span of two months. On March 26, 1971, the NBA asked for the Supreme Court to rule on Judge Ferguson’s original ruling and they did. The Court ruled in favor of Haywood by a vote of 7-2 and a landmark ruling had been decided.
The impact was immediate. The NBA allowed hardship cases to be allowed for early entry in the 1971 Draft and in the 1976 Draft, a modification was made to the early entry rule. A player could leave school early but not be eligible for selection until their class graduated.
But the ruling led to Moses Malone being drafted by the ABA in 1974 right out of high school, Larry Bird being drafted in 1978 after his junior season (he didn’t play until 1979), and the historic drafting of Darryl Dawkins and Bill Willoughby in 1975 as they became the first and direct prep-to-pro players in NBA history. This led to Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and various international players like Kristaps Porzingis and Luka Doncic entering the league young.
Haywood’s basketball life was both brilliant and maddening. Averaged double digits in the league except for two seasons, averaged double-digit rebounds in six different seasons, made All-NBA teams and All-Star teams, and was recognized as one of the best players in the league during the 70s and won a championship with the Lakers in 1980. Also, he developed a cocaine addiction which led to him being kicked off the Lakers and eventually kicked out of the league for a year.
The NBA tries its best to ignore the decade of the 1970s. The league was marred with hella players with drug issues, tape delay games, on-court fights, and immense racial tension between the fans and players which led to severe attendance issues.
Despite numerous great players in that decade, Haywood being one of them, it feels like the NBA has tried to throw out the baby with the bath water regarding the 1970s. Despite the historic merger with the ABA, the style of gameplay changing for the better, and salaries changing, the negative press appeared to be too much for a, then, growing league.
This is relevant because the NBA loves to highlight its stars, past and present. Players that have been exceptional on the court or made an impact off of it. Or both! But not Spencer Haywood. Is it because he embarrassed the league by daring to go against them in court and winning? Or embarrassed them by being a statistic of drug use in the forgotten decade? Only they know and the people in charge at that point are no longer with us.
One thing is for certain, Spencer Haywood deserves to be known about on and off the court. On the court, his numbers speak for themself. He should be known as one of the best forwards to ever play the game. Off the court, he successfully broke through a lame rule that could be argued as being unconstitutional. The rule might have been changed eventually or someone else might have challenged it and won but it was Haywood that did it.
Haywood’s long overdue induction into the Hall of Fame in 2015 was a step in the right direction. But for a man who, still to this day, attends his sobriety meetings as he approaches his 39th year of sobriety and has a strong desire to create a retirement community for retired athletes, he deserves better and more acknowledgment.
P S The first basketball player to entter the NBA out of high school was Reggie Harding in 1962 But he didn’t play until the 1963-64 season
Haywood speaking at his Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony
To not only Kobe and GiGi but to John Altobelli, Keri Altobelli, Alyssa Altobelli, Sarah Chester, Payton Chester, Christina Mauser, and Ara Zobayan, may all your souls rest in peace eternally.
image courtesy of the Los Angeles Lakers