The legendary pickup basketball games between Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor from the late 1950s in Washington, D.C.

The legendary pickup basketball games between Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor from the late 1950s in Washington, D.C.

This is an excellent article which is about basketball, but also about life, specifically what life was like for black athletes in the 1950s. Elgin Baylor, one of the greatest players in history, was the LeBron of his day. He could probably have been the top player in the NBA when he was in high school, but the NBA's then-existing rules proscribed the recruitment of teenagers.

Yet Elgin got no serious college offers except from someplace called "The College of Idaho," an all-white institution near the Oregon border which was affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. The coach who recruited him was suitably rewarded for having brought the best player on the planet (possibly excepting Wilt) to Caldwell, Idaho, where he led his team to an undefeated conference season. The nature of the reward? He was fired.

The message to America? As ol' Satchel Paige so often said, "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."