Little did Elvin Hayes know that when he was detoured from detention in the eighth grade and taken instead to the school gym, he was beginning a Hall-of-Fame basketball career.
At 6-foot-9, Hayes became one of the NBA’s great big men, perhaps the best outside shooter for his position ever.
Before starring with three pro teams for sixteen seasons, making twelve All-Star Games and winning the NBA championship in 1977–78 with the Washington Bullets, Hayes was an All-American at the University of Houston. In 1968, he averaged 36.8 points a game, was voted player of the year, and led the Cougars to victory over UCLA in college basketball’s “Game of the Century,” scoring 39 points and grabbing 15 rebounds. That was the first nationally televised college basketball game, played before a crowd of 52,693, until then the largest attendance at a basketball game. And Hayes was at his best that night, outplaying the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
“No one ever dreamed it would be the biggest game in the history of basketball,” Hayes said. “No one thought of that before the game. We left the locker room saying, ‘We hope someone’s there at the game.’
“It changed my life, no question about it. Afterward, everyone knew Elvin Hayes.”1
Pretty good stuff for someone who used to say prayers as a teenager that he would someday succeed in the sport.
“It’s a long road,” added Hayes, whose 27,313 points ranked him third in NBA scoring when he retired in 1984. “To see a kid’s dream and then be able to touch that dream and have it become reality.”2
Hayes not only was a pinpoint shooter from long range in a day when big men rarely moved so far away from the basket, he was a terrific rebounder. That made him even more dangerous, because opposing forwards had to be quick enough to guard him on the outside and powerful enough to stop him underneath the basket. They hardly ever were.
Hayes averaged 21 points and 12.5 rebounds a game for his career. In 1973–74, he pulled down nearly as many rebounds (18.1) as he scored points (21.4) per game.
“I really don’t believe I did those things . . . that I could have scored all those points and got those rebounds,” he said. “My greatest fear every year I played was that I would be cut and wouldn’t make the team.”3
