George Yardley, Millennium Hall of Fame

According to NBA lore from the 1950s, a writer for the Saturday

Evening Post once described George Yardley as having to overcome the

“horrible back alleys of Balboa Island” while growing up.

Yardley sure had them fooled, just like the defenders who would try to

guard his unstoppable jump shot.

Later in his seven-year Hall of Fame NBA career, big headlines

reported Yardley as “Basketball’s Unhappy Gunner.” He missed his family

and could make more money as an engineer. Could you imagine a player

saying that in the game’s economics today?

Cataloged among the NBA’s most noble departures (a list headed by

Michael Jordan), Yardley revolutionized the NBA before retiring early,

soaring to the basket in a bird-like manner while using state-of-the-art

jump shots and slam dunks to dazzle crowds.

Known as the original “Bird,” Yardley was a talented rocket engineer

from Stanford and retired from basketball at the zenith of his career to

better provide for his family. He left the NBA with a lifetime scoring

average of 19.2 points per game and 8.9 rebounds a contest -- 20.2 ppg in

his final season (1959-60 with the Syracuse Nationals).

Only 31 when he walked away, Yardley is one of only seven players in

NBA history to retire after averaging more than 20 points in their last

year.

Breaking Hank Luisetti’s Stanford single-season scoring record is

Yardley’s most treasured feat, but his 2,001 points in 1957-58 for the

Detroit Pistons -- the first in NBA history to reach the 2,000 milestone

-- is perhaps the creme de la creme of his career and one of the reasons

for his 1996 enshrinement into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

The pride of Newport Harbor High (Class of ‘46) and considered the

Newport-Mesa community’s most accomplished athlete, George H. Yardley III

was a lanky 6-foot-5 forward and three-time All-American at Stanford who

established numerous scoring records as an amateur and pro.

Most of Yardley’s NBA career was spent in Fort Wayne, Ind., before the

Pistons moved to Detroit in 1957. Prior to turning pro, Yardley led the

San Francisco Stewart Chevrolets to the AAU national title in 1951, when

Luisetti, the team’s coach, proclaimed Yardley as “the greatest

basketball player in the game.”

After leaving the NBA, Yardley played a season for the under-financed

Los Angeles Jets in the old American Basketball League under Coach Bill

Sharman. “I was the highest paid player in the league,” Yardley once

said, “but the bad news is that the checks never cleared.”

During the off-season, Yardley conducted research and development of

systems and components for aircraft and missiles, leading to

contributions on the X-15 aircraft designed to explore the fringes of

outer space and the Atlas and Titan intercontinental ballistic missiles.

How many NBA players could do that?

Writer Milton Gross penned in December 1958 that Yardley “has an

egglike head, bald except for a fast-disappearing halo of wispy blond

hair that straggles from temple to temple. And an ‘egghead’ is what he is

out of uniform.”

Yardley, born Nov. 3, 1928, could also paint, play the piano and

construct a house from the ground up. He could soup up hot rods and

upholster furniture.

On the court, Yardley, also a former U.S. Navy man, “had a very soft

touch with a quick release and an unstoppable jump shot,” Sharman,

another Hall of Famer and former Lakers coach and GM, once said.

Yardley broke George Mikan’s single-season NBA scoring record in

1957-58, averaging 27.8 points, a staggering figure at the time. Mikan, a

6-10 center for the Minneapolis Lakers who was known as “The Beast” in

his playing days, scored 1,932 points in 1950-51.

But when “The Bird” topped the 2,000 barrier, people began to notice.

“I really didn’t care about 2,000 points, after I had broken the

league record,” Yardley said. “Then later when everybody started making

an issue of it, I figured I’d try to respond.”

Before television prominently brought names to faces, Yardley and his

game had to be seen to be believed.

“George managed to score in so many ways,” said John Wooden, the

legendary former UCLA coach and longtime Yardley admirer who even wrote

letters to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield,

Mass., urging his election. “With the kind of body he had, he would twist

and turn and outmaneuver people underneath.”

A six-time NBA All-Star, Yardley attended Stanford as a walk-on and

never did receive a scholarship, helping to pay his way through school by

working as a union apprentice carpenter during vacations.

Yardley also learned to sew because of his trouble finding shirts with

37-inch sleeves.

Memorable games? Yardley pointed to the ’51 AAU national title game

for Stewart Chevrolets, when he was forced to play center against two

6-10 guys on the Philips Oilers, who had their 68-game winning streak

snapped. “That night I played my best game,” Yardley said.

Former Boston Celtics coach and GM Red Auerbach said of Yardley in

1958: “His jump shot is his best scoring weapon. He patterned it after

Paul Arizin’s, and now his is better than the original.”

A charter inductee into the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame in 1981

and a part of three other Hall of Fames, Yardley joins the Daily Pilot

Sports Hall of Fame, celebrating the millennium.

Born to Dorothy and George, Jr., today’s honoree and his late wife,

Diana, raised a family of twin sons and two daughters.

Yardley is an avid golfer and tennis player who lives in Newport Beach

and donates his time to charitable endeavors, including serving as

honorary chairman of a golf tournament in his name to raise funds for the

Newport Harbor golf program.