Arizin, Paul
Basketball
b. April 9, 1928, Philadelphia, PA
d. Dec. 12, 2006
Arizin couldn't make his high school basketball team, but he practiced constantly at night during his senior year in high school and his freshman year at Villanova University and made the Villanova varsity as a sophomore.
He had developed a quick, accurate jump shot that made him a prolific scorer. Arizin later explained that the shot came to him by accident. Practicing and playing on a gym floor that had been waxed for dances, he lost his footing when he tried a hook shot, so he went to the jump shot instead.
As a junior, he once scored 85 points in a game, and he led the nation in scoring with 25.3 points a game as a senior in 1949-50, when he was a consensus All-American. The first draft choice of the Philadelphia Warriors in the NBA, he led the league in scoring his second year, 1951-52, with 25.4 points a game.
After serving in the Marine Corps for two years during the Korean conflict, Arizin returned to the Warriors and led the league for a second time with a 25.6 average in 1956-57. In ten seasons, all with Philadelphia, he averaged 22.8 points. He was the fifth player in NBA history to score more than 10,000 points.
After leaving the NBA in 1962, Arizin played for the Camden team in the Eastern Basketball League for three seasons, averaging 25 points per game. He was named the league's most valuable player in 1963.
At 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds, Arizin was small for a forward, but his quick leap enabled him to get the shot off over bigger defenders. A victim of asthma and sinus problems, he seemed constantly out of breath on the court, but he said the condition never bothered his endurance.
Arizin was named to the NBA Silver Anniversary team in 1971 and was selected in 1995 as one of the 50 greatest players in the league's history.