YouTube Gold: Walt Frazier

Walt Frazier grew up in Atlanta when it was still segregated and learned to play basketball on a ratty outdoors court because that’s all his school was allowed.

He was also an outstanding baseball player and a highly promising quarterback, but he stuck with basketball because, as he put it, there were no black quarterbacks.

He went to Southern Illinois which, culturally, is pretty southern, from 1963-1967. The Salukis went to the NIT in his senior year and won it in the final college game in the old Garden.

Perhaps impressed, the Knicks drafted him and he became the point guard of the most glorious era in the history of the Knickerbockers.

He was smooth and cool on the court. Off the court he became famous as a fashion plate and his penchant for 1930’s style fedoras earned him the nickname Clyde.

He was a New York icon but shamefully, the Knicks traded him near the end of his career and he spent the last few seasons with Cleveland.

Perhaps the greatest Knick of all, he deserved better.