Bob Lanier’s legacy extended far beyond his days with Pistons, Bucks

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Bob Lanier spent so much time spreading the NBA’s gospel that he wasn’t just an ambassador, he was The Ambassador.

He may have been born in Buffalo, blossoming into a star at Bennett High School after getting cut from the team as a sophomore. He may have become an essential part of two different NBA franchises, in Detroit and in Milwaukee, both of which would retire his No. 16 jersey. He earned a bust at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

“I learned to be a man here, and how to treat people the right way,” he said in a quiet moment that December weekend in 2019, when Lanier and the rest of the 1969-70 Bonnies gathered to be feted on the 50th anniversary of the team’s remarkable trip to the Final Four. “I learned about love and about loss and how to handle them both.”NBAE via Getty ImagesNBAE via Getty Images

And, of course, there was this eternal tribute from Kareem, as Roger Murdock, in “Airplane”: “Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes!”Bob Lanier reads to kids as part of the NBA’s Read to Achieve program at a Detroit school in 2004.It was Lanier’s misfortune to spend 10 years with some terribly pedestrian Pistons teams, then five years with the Bucks when they were very good – just never good enough to bypass the Sixers or Celtics in the East.

There were times when he could joke about that. The Bonnies never did get a crack at UCLA, which was between the Kareem/Walton eras and had Steve Patterson playing center.

 

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