Seattle U. Men's Hoops | Elgin Baylor returns for home opener

More than 50 years later, the name Elgin Baylor still resonates.

Cameron Dollar had that reaffirmed recently on a trip to Atlanta when a sky cap took an initially quizzical look at his Seattle University basketball shirt.

"I said, 'That's where Elgin Baylor played,' and he said, 'Really? Then you guys must be for real,' " recounted Dollar, the men's basketball coach at Seattle U. "Everybody knows Elgin Baylor."

Many know him best for a 14-year NBA career with the Lakers that concluded with him being named, in 1997, as one of the league's top 50 all-time players.

But Baylor got his start with two years at Seattle U., from 1956-58 when he led the Chieftains, as they were known then, to the 1958 NCAA title game, won by Kentucky.

And it's that legacy the school will celebrate tonight with the Elgin Baylor Classic at KeyArena. Seattle U. — playing its first full Division I schedule since 1980 — plays Fresno State at 7:10 p.m.

The game also represents a chance for Baylor to reunite with the Seattle U. basketball community.

He entered coaching, then worked in NBA front offices, after his playing days, and says he has not attended a Seattle U. game since the last one he played in.

"It's a great honor," said Baylor, 75, living in the Los Angeles area and not currently working in basketball. "I'm excited about it. I just want it for the people that spent their time, work and effort to try to get this program back intact."

It is the memory of the great successes the program had in its 1950s heyday that has helped spur the return to Division I. As Dollar says, "There's some backbone" to the program that others trying to make a similar leap don't have.

Much of it is due to Baylor, a 6-foot-5 forward whom many have credited with bringing an acrobatic athleticism to the game more widely seen later in the play of Julius Erving and Michael Jordan.

Baylor was a Washington, D.C., native who said in a phone interview this week that playing for a segregated high school limited his college options (he refutes a commonly told version that he had an incomplete academic record). A friend helped lead him to the College of Idaho, an NAIA school in Caldwell, where he also planned to play football.

He was so spectacular his first season that he drew the attention of Seattle car dealer and Chieftains booster Ralph Malone, who suggested to Baylor that he might be better off at a bigger school. Baylor knew about Seattle U.'s basketball reputation after reading a story in a sports magazine about Johnny O'Brien, who at 5-9 often played center for the Chieftains and remains the school's all-time leading scorer.

"I said, 'Well sure, I'd be interested in visiting,' " he said. That led to the first plane ride of Baylor's life. "I was scared to death," he said. "But I met such nice people and enjoyed it very much and had a good time and it was a bigger school and I'd read about it, so I said, 'Hey, this would be a great opportunity.' "

So he made the move, though he had to sit out a year first due to transfer rules, and played for a local AAU team. His game translated immediately to the D-I level once eligible, however. He led the nation in rebounding and was third in scoring in the 1956-57 season as Seattle U. advanced to the quarterfinals of the NIT in New York.

The following year, he was second in scoring at 32.5 points per game, behind only Oscar Robertson and one spot ahead of Wilt Chamberlain. Seattle U. was ranked No. 18 in the final regular-season poll, but beat Wyoming, San Francisco and one of Pete Newell's California teams to get to the Final Four in Louisville, Ky.

"It was terrific because no one expected us to do what we did," Baylor said. "The teams that we beat, all those teams were favored to beat us. We were just the underdogs the whole time."

Seattle U. crushed Kansas State in the semifinals. But Baylor suffered a broken rib in the process in a collision with KSU's Bob Boozer, later a Sonic and also a teammate of Baylor's with the Lakers.

Baylor labored through the injury in the title game. Seattle U. had an early lead on Kentucky, which had something of a home-court edge playing about 90 minutes from its campus. But Kentucky rallied in the last 10 minutes to pull away for an 84-72 victory.

"It was one of those games that we didn't play well and I wasn't 100 percent," said Baylor, who scored 25 in the game. "I couldn't breathe or anything. I could barely lift my arm."

Baylor was eligible to turn pro because his class was due to graduate, thought he had initial intentions to stay another season. But Seattle U. coach John Castellani resigned about a month after the season due to recruiting violations that didn't involve Baylor or any of the players on the 1958 team. Baylor decided to turn pro and was selected with the first pick in the draft by the Lakers, something he says would never have happened had he not made the move from the College of Idaho.

Baylor has corresponded with a few teammates in the years since, and returned to Seattle often for games while with the Lakers, and later as a coach for the Jazz and as a general manager with the Clippers. But he's never made any of the reunions for the 1958 team, nor seen a Seattle U. game in person.

He said he's not coming back "for all of that hoopla or stuff like that." Instead, he said he's mostly here to help the school celebrate its return to Division I and catch up with some old friends.

"I'm happy that they are back now," he said. "I just think about the good times I had there, the pleasant times I had there. It was some of the best years of my life."

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com