Maurice Stokes was born in 1933 in Pittsburgh. A passionate basketball player as a youth, he won back-to-back city championships with his high school team, the Westinghouse Bulldogs, but wasn’t highly recruited, because many bigger college programs didn’t offer scholarships to black players back then. Therefore, the gifted forward had to decide between a few offers from smaller schools and eventually decided to attend Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania, who made the effort to also sign one of his African-American high school teammates to make him feel comfortable. That was more than necessary because Saint Francis was an all-white, catholic school, and Stokes was neither white nor catholic, which led to some periods of loneliness during his four year stint there.
On the court, he was unlike anything the world had seen before. At 6'7", he was strong, yet agile and fast, could rebound and score around the basket, but also pass and run the break like a guard. In the 1953–54 season, he averaged 23.1 PPG and 26.5 RPG, leading the “Red Flash” to the NIT, at the time the most prestigious college basketball postseason tournament, because it offered the chance to compete in MSG. The next season, his senior year, he averaged 27.1 PPG and 26.2 PPG and became the only ever NIT MVP, whose team finished in fourth place, after he put up a masterful 43 point-performance in the semifinal against Dayton. He was clearly ready for the NBA and decided to enter the 1955 Draft, even though he was also recruited by the Harlem Globetrotters. Stokes’ unique skillset had caught the attention of NBA teams, and the Rochester Royals decided to pick him second in the first round. Additionally, the Royals used their second round pick to draft Jack Twyman, the other main character of this story. Twyman had failed to make his high school team three times and averaged just 4.2 PPG in his first season for the University of Cincinnati. Gradually, however, he improved and turned himself into a great shooter, averaging 25 points and 17 rebounds per game his senior year and thereby earning a chance to make the NBA.
Stokes quickly showed that he belonged. In his first NBA game against the Knicks, he put up 32 points, 20 rebounds and 8 assists. Later that season against Syracuse, he finished with 26 points, 38 rebounds and 12 assists, one of the earliest official triple doubles in NBA history. Stokes won ROY and became a regular on All-Star and All-NBA teams, but it took until his third season for the Royals to make the playoffs. By that time, Jack Twyman was also already a two-time All-Star. During the last game of that season on March 12, 1958, tragedy struck. Stokes drove the basket on a fastbreak, an opponent tried to block his shot causing Stokes to fly over his back and head-first onto the ground. He was unconscious for a few minutes, then revived with smelling salts and returned to the game as if nothing ever happened. Stokes didn’t complain of any ill-effects after the game and played his first ever playoff game three days later.
His teammates remember that Stokes wasn’t quite the same in that game, but didn’t think much of it until he started throwing up on the bus to the airport. Stokes collapsed on the ramp leading into the plane, but a team doctor examined him and concluded he was fine. His conditioned worsened during the flight. He was sweating profusely, his eyes started rolling back into his head a little and he had trouble breathing. When the plane landed in Cincinnati, an ambulance was waiting to pick Stokes up. In SportsCentury’s documentary on Maurice Stokes, journalism legend Jim Schottelkotte of the Cincinnati Enquirer mentioned that he still vividly remembers the flashing red lights of the ambulance, which they could only see through the plane windows because the players and staff were waiting inside the plane, while their teammate and friend was taken away to hospital.
Luckily, he survived, but was left permanently paralyzed. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic encephalopathy, an injury to the motor-control center in the brain. His brain still worked, but his body couldn’t react to the brain’s commands. Additionally, Stokes’ parents couldn’t afford to move from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati, and it was impossible to transfer him to his hometown, so his teammate Jack Tywman stepped in and became Stokes’ carer and legal guardian. Twyman taught his friend how to communicate again; he would say the whole alphabet and Stokes blinked at the letters he wanted to use, eventually forming whole words and sentences.
Additionally, Twyman started collecting funds to pay for Stokes’ medical bills. He founded the Maurice Stokes Memorial Basketball Game (there are great pictures of those on the internet, most famously one of Stokes in a wheelchair and Twyman and Wilt Chamberlain to his side), which was eventually changed into a golf tournament and continued raising money for NBA players in need. Stokes never lost his spirit after the injury. He underwent a tough physical training program, possibly hoping that normality could return to his life as suddenly as it was taken away from him. Eventually, it allowed him limited movement, and he learned how to type and paint again. Twyman cared for Maurice until he passed away way too early from a heart attack in 1970. In 2004, Stokes was elected to the Hall of Fame and Twyman held a heartwarming speech on his behalf. In 2013, the NBA introduced the Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year in honor of two great men and a beautiful friendship. This story is not inherently about race, Twyman clearly couldn’t have cared less that he was white and Stokes black, even though it may have raised some eyebrows at a time when the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. Bryan Curtis wrote: “Twyman understood the optics, but they didn’t mean much to him”. Pat Farabaugh, author of the book “An Unbreakable Bond: The Brotherhood of Maurice Stokes and Jack Twyman” stated that the “story transcends race. It is a story of perseverance, of selflessness, or brotherhood and of an unbreakable bond.”
Many basketball people offered their opinions on Stokes’ basketball talent. Bob Cousy described him as “Karl Malone with more finesse”, Gene Shue called him “competitive, hard-nosed and tough” as well as “a coach’s dream”. Twyman believed Stokes would’ve easily been one of the Top-50 players ever if he never got injured and Royals coach Bobby Wanzer thought he had the potential to be one of the ten greatest ever. During three-year tenure in the league, no one pulled down more rebounds than Maurice Stokes and only Bob Cousy dished out more assists.
The question “what could’ve been?” extends further than Stokes’ individual career. The Rochester/Cincinnati Royals weren’t too successful while he was there, and he only ever appeared in one single playoff game, but his fortunes could’ve changed in 1960 if the tragedy never occurred. That year, the Royals drafted Oscar Robertson, and because he played for the University of Cincinnati and could therefore be selected with a territorial pick, this could’ve still happened had Maurice stayed healthy. The same applies to Jerry Lucas, whom the Royals selected out of Ohio State in 1962. The Royals team revolving around Oscar, Lucas and Twyman had the league-best offensive (by Basketball-reference’s ORTG) six times during the ’60s. During three of those six years, they didn’t even make the playoffs, because their defense was that much of an issue. For the decade, their offenses scored 3.3 points more than league average per 100 possessions, but their defense also allowed 3 points more than league average. They had talented offensive bigs, but they were lacking size.
Maurice Stokes wouldn’t have solved the size issue, but he would’ve given them a strong rim protector. The Royals ranked 1st, 2nd and 2nd in his three seasons in the league, and he was only paired with a bigger frontcourt player (Clyde Lovellette) in one of those. Had the tragedy never happened, a 27-year old Stokes could’ve welcomed Oscar Robertson to the team. By 1962, Stokes was 29 and the Royals could’ve fielded the following team:
PG: Oscar Robertson
SG: Bucky Bockhorn
SF: Jack Twyman
PF: Jerry Lucas
C: Maurice Stokes
What a talented lineup. With Oscar, arguably the best offensive player of the ’60s, at least in the regular season, at Point Guard, the team would’ve been guaranteed to get plenty of good shots. Not only was he among the league leaders in assists every year, he was also a great shooter and scored at least 28 PPG on +6 to +10 efficiency throughout all of his first eight years as a Royal. While spacing the court wasn’t as much a topic of discussion then as it is now, players had an understanding that open driving lanes were very helpful for their own game (e.g. Elgin Baylor’s comments about Wilt clogging his driving lanes), and this team would’ve had great spacing by ’60s standards with superb shooters in Twyman and Lucas at the forward positions.
There’s little information out there about Bockhorn, even though it’s clear that he was a solid NBA player. I’ve seen him referred to as a really good defender, often assigned to the opposition’s best guard (that goes along with something the broadcaster said during a 1970-game between the Bucks and Knicks: “Larry Costello, this year, in contrast to what Oscar has been used to […], is assigning him to the tough offensive player. In the past four games, he held Jerry West to 12, Jeff Mullins to 10 and 15 […] Oscar is playing defense for the first time in his career.”), and also as a solid all-around player, definitely a good complementary player next to the “Big O”.
Jack Twyman was 28 when Lucas was drafted and his role was a bit smaller than it had been in 59–60, when he averaged 31.2 PPG, 8.9 RPG and 3.5 APG, but he was still a superb scorer, averaging 19.8 PPG on +3.7 efficiency for the 62–63 seasons and continuing his career until 1966. With Lucas (career high: 21.1 RPG), Stokes (18.1) and Oscar (11.5), the team could’ve been dominant on the boards, and Stokes would’ve given it elements that it didn’t have in reality. He would’ve added another capable self-creator, a strong rim protector and an inside scorer. Stokes was never really efficient in his three-year NBA stint, averaging 16.4 PPG on -4.6 efficiency, and it’s hard to determine why that was the case, but it’s pretty safe to assume that he would’ve been more successful putting the ball in the basket if he was surrounded by three Hall of Famers, all of whom could shoot from distance.
Would this hypothetical team been a favorite to win the championship in 1963 and the years following? Probably not, the Celtics still existed. But it’s easy to conclude from the Celtics’ never-ending title streak that they were much better than anyone else. Au contraire! During Bill Russell’s 13-year career, the Celtics played 10 Game 7’s, winning all of them. They were the best team in the world, but not as dominant as the eleven titles would lead you believe. They not only stepped up to the challenge every time they were on the verge of losing, they also, like any championship team, had luck on their side in the right moments (they also had the great Sam Jones. In the words of Bill Russell: “Six times during that run, we asked Sam to take the shot that meant the season. If he missed it, we were finished for the season. He never missed, and he never hesitated to take the shot”). Oscar’s Royals lost to the Celtics thrice, taking them to a decisive game twice. With the addition of a healthy Maurice Stokes, they would’ve probably met them more often in the playoffs, and possibly beat them once or twice as well …
Sources:
Bob Carter: Stokes’ life a tale of tragedy and friendship
Larry Lehmer: Maurice Stokes: One of the best players in NBA history
