Elgin Baylor: the original high-flyer

Elgin Baylor arrived in the NBA at the end of the 1950s and introduced a way of playing the game that no one had seen before. Where his contemporaries stayed grounded, Baylor hung in the air, twisting and improvising his way to the basket with a body control that seemed to defy physics. He was an acrobat with a scorer's instinct, finishing from angles that should not have been possible. Long before the dunk became the sport's signature image, Baylor was the man who first took basketball off the floor.

Baylor did not merely look spectacular; he produced at an extraordinary rate. He was among the most prolific scorers of his time, averaging huge point totals season after season for the Lakers and once pouring in seventy-one points in a single game, a landmark figure for the era. He combined his aerial creativity with strength and determination, drawing contact and finishing through it. For years he was the offensive engine of a Lakers side that reached the game's biggest stage again and again.

For all his brilliance, a championship eluded Baylor. He led the Lakers to the NBA Finals many times, only to fall short on each occasion, frequently against the great Boston Celtics dynasty. In one of the sport's cruellest twists, he retired early in a season in which the Lakers would go on to win the title, leaving his individual greatness forever without the team crown it deserved. It stands as one of basketball's most poignant near-misses, a reminder that the finest players are not always rewarded.

Baylor's true legacy is stylistic. Every player who has ever soared toward the rim, hung in the air and improvised a finish owes something to the template he created. The aerial, acrobatic game that Julius Erving glamorised and Michael Jordan perfected began with him. He later served as an executive, but his place in history was secured decades earlier, on the court, as the original high-flyer — the pioneer who first showed the world that basketball could be played in the sky.