YouTube Gold: Jerry Lucas

More or less forgotten today, Lucas was the epitome of Midwestern values in basketball.

Jerry Lucas is one of the old-school players who kind of get overlooked today. An Ohioan by birth, Lucas went to Ohio State where he played with John Havlicek and Bob Knight among others. He played in the championship game three times, winning in 1960. He also was part of the tremendous 1960 U.S. Olympic basketball team.

He had a brilliant NBA career as well, first with Cleveland as a territorial pick and then with the New York Knicks after a 1969 trade.

With the Knicks he was part of a brilliant team that won the 1973 NBA title. He was both a superb outside shooter and a tremendous rebounder.

As fine of a player as he was he was also just brilliant. He wouldn’t accept an athletic scholarship from Ohio State, insisting on an academic scholarship instead. And he had another particular brilliance: he developed a superb memory. Lucas developed a number of techniques to improve his memory and at one point could recite 50 pages of the Manhattan phone book.

He’s kind of overlooked these days, but he was a superb player in his day as you will see.