Bing looks back on Baylor/Wilt playground battles

[Upstate]

"At that age, I didn't know what I was seeing," says Dave Bing, now the mayor of Detroit and a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, who was just a 13-year-old dreamer when Chamberlain and Baylor held court near his boyhood home in D.C. "Hell, I'd never seen anything as tall as Wilt. But now, to have those guys come down to your playground at that time, and with us just clutching the fence surrounding it and watching them play, well, it's just amazing."

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id...berlain-elgin-baylor-late-1950s-washington-dc

Neat article

 

[sufandu]

Very cool article. I love reading about the legends of the game. It was a different era.

One interesting thing I noticed was the NBA's rule about when kids were eligible for the league. Baylor was eligible only after he had been out of highschool for 4 years. Now the NBA would love to get it back to half of that.

 

[Zelda Zonk]

My father used to play in pick-up games against him in DC when they were young. I got to see Bing play once as a pro, when he visited the Spectrum in Philly. Bing was my father's favorite player - probably because of their history - and i grew up with a healthy respect for him. And, this was wayyy before my eventual attachment to Syracuse. It's good to have a man like that 'on our books.'

 

[cliftonparksufan]

Great article. I've read a lot about basketball through the years, but I just learned at least six things that I never knew. That was great.

 

[RF2044]

Amazing read.

 

[phillydad]

Very cool article. I love reading about the legends of the game. It was a different era.

One interesting thing I noticed was the NBA's rule about when kids were eligible for the league. Baylor was eligible only after he had been out of highschool for 4 years. Now the NBA would love to get it back to half of that.

Sonny Hill. "It was just us and New York." If you love hearing about the legends of the game, try to catch Sonny's, "In the Living Room", Sunday morning talk show on 610 WIP in Philly. Maybe you can hear it online or something, you'll learn a lot about the "City Game."