Portrait of Elgin Baylor

Birthday profile

Elgin Baylor

Elgin Baylor, American basketball player and coach (died 2021)

Born
September 16, 1934
Died
March 22, 2021
Zodiac sign
Virgo
Birth year
1934

About Elgin Baylor

Elgin Gay Baylor was an American professional basketball player, coach, and executive. He played 14 seasons as a forward in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Minneapolis/Los Angeles Lakers. Baylor was a gifted shooter, a strong rebounder, and an accomplished passer, who was best known for his trademark hanging jump shot. The No. 1 draft pick in 1958, NBA Rookie of the Year in 1959, 11-time NBA All-Star, and a 10-time member of the All-NBA first team, Baylor is regarded as one of the game's greatest ever players. In 1977, Baylor was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 1996, Baylor was named as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. In October 2021, Baylor was again honored as one of the league's greatest players of all time by being named to the NBA's 75th Anniversary Team. Baylor is the leader for most career rebounds in Lakers franchise history with 11,463. Baylor played his first two years of high school basketball at Phelps Vocational High School in the 1951 and 1952 seasons. There, Baylor set his first area scoring record of 44 points, versus Cardozo H.S.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Elgin Baylor timeline

  1. Baylor played his first two years of high school basketball at Phelps Vocational High School in the 1951 and 1952 seasons.
  2. The No. 1 draft pick in 1958, NBA Rookie of the Year in 1959, 11-time NBA All-Star, and a 10-time member of the All-NBA first team, Baylor is regarded as one of the game's greatest ever players.
  3. In 1977, Baylor was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

The world when Elgin Baylor was born

Elgin Baylor was born in 1934. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1934

  • #1 song"Stars Fell on Alabama"
  • Top movieIt Happened One Night
  • Best-selling bookTender Is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Masters Tournament held at Augusta National
  • Top headlineFBI kills John Dillinger outside a Chicago theater
  • Technology milestoneFirst streamlined passenger train (Burlington Zephyr)
  • Defining fadShirley Temple mania
  • Notable inventionLaundromat
  • World population2.20 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
  • Sports championSt. Louis Cardinals (World Series)
  • U.S. population126.4M

1934 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Elgin Baylor's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19342026
Gas$0.19$3.45/gal
Average home$4,900$435,000
Average income$2,500$67,500
Minimum wage$0.25$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.20$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population126.4M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, NBA, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.