50 Greatest Basketball Players Ever - 21 to 30 of the best NBA players ever

#26 Elgin Baylor

Baylor (#22)

The greatest Laker that the average NBA fan might just not know about is Elgin Baylor - a swingman who created the model for every dominant swingman after his time.

Not many know, but the Minneapolis Lakers were in real danger of closing down a year before relocating to Los Angeles. The Minneapolis Lakers used the No. 1 overall pick in the 1958 NBA draft to select Baylor. They then convinced him to skip his senior year at Seattle University and instead join the pro ranks.

The team, several years removed from its glory days of George Mikan, was in trouble on the court and at the gate. The year prior to Baylor's arrival the Lakers finished 19–53 with a squad that was slow, bulky and aging. Baylor, whom the Lakers signed to play for $20,000 per year (a great amount of money at the time), was the franchise's last shot at survival.

With his superb athletic talents and all-round game, Baylor was seen as the kind of player who could save a franchise, and he did. According to Minneapolis Lakers owner Bob Short in a 1971 interview with the Los Angeles Times: "If he had turned me down then, I would have been out of business. The club would have gone bankrupt."

He perfected the tomahawk dunk and was one of the first great mid-range shooters of the game in an era when the 3-point line did not exist. The likes of MJ and Kobe, among others, have cited him as an influence to their playing styles.

Unfortunately for him, he has a 0-8 record in the Finals. Before encountering a knee injury that left him sapped of his elite athleticism, he came up against the Celtics led by Bill Russell on numerous occasions in the Finals, losing each time.

He retired early in the 1971-72 season after suffering another injury, though he still got a ring as a member of the roster earlier on in the season as the Lakers went 69-13 and won the Finals.