Spencer Haywood

American basketball player who challenged NBA eligibility rules and became first player to go directly from high school to professional basketball

Spencer Haywood was born on 22 April 1949 in Silver City, Mississippi, the eighth of ten children, and grew up in deep poverty while his mother picked cotton for $2 a day to support the family. Basketball became his escape route: he led his high school team to a state title, then starred at Trinidad State Junior College before transferring to the University of Detroit, where in 1968-69 he led the nation in rebounding at 21.5 per game while scoring 32.1 points per game. That same year he was the leading scorer for the United States' gold medal-winning team at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.\n\nHaywood decided to turn professional after his sophomore year, but NBA and ABA rules at the time barred players until four years after their high school class had graduated. An ABA hardship exemption, created specifically to account for his family's financial circumstances, allowed him to join the Denver Rockets in 1969, and he responded with one of the greatest rookie seasons in professional basketball history, leading the league in both scoring and rebounding en route to ABA Rookie of the Year and MVP honours.\n\nWhen Haywood signed with the NBA's Seattle SuperSonics in 1970, the league moved to block the deal, citing its longstanding eligibility rule. Haywood's case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 7-2 in his favour in 1971, striking down the rule and opening professional basketball to underclassmen — a ruling without which players like Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant could not have entered the NBA before turning 22.\n\nHaywood went on to earn four NBA All-Star selections and two All-NBA First Team honours with Seattle, and won an NBA championship as a reserve with the 1980 Los Angeles Lakers. He retired in 1983 with 14,592 NBA career points and 7,038 rebounds, having also battled and overcome cocaine addiction, a struggle he later wrote about candidly in his autobiography. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015, his legal legacy standing alongside his playing career as one of the most significant in the sport's history.

Powerful interior scorer and rebounder with strong physical presence

Changed professional basketball eligibility rules and was a dominant power forward in ABA/NBA

• ABA MVP (1970)
• ABA Champion (1969)
• All-Star 4x
• All-NBA First Team 2x
• Hall of Fame (2015)